Klipsch (PWK) – genius, madman, and maverick – designed and hand-built the legendary Klipschorn ® loudspeaker with the goal of bringing live music into his living room. Next, I compare the speakers directly—sometimes by myself, sometimes with a listening panel, and always with the levels matched to within 0. Since it doesn't have an IP rating for dust and water resistance, we recommend against placing it in areas where it may get wet, like near your kitchen sink or in the bathroom. It also isn't very portable due to its wired design, making it bothersome to transport from room to room in your home. It follows on from the equally strangely-named The Three | Google Assistant speaker which launched at the tail end of last year.

We were curious about the Tribit BTS50, which combines a Bluetooth speaker with alarm-clock functions. With more than 70 years of experience, Klipsch continues to be the legendary high-performance brand of choice for audiophiles and aficionados around the world. The One II (not to be confused with its battery-powered predecessor, The One) is every bit as stylish as its big brother, with its solid walnut top (also available in matte black) and retro-inspired wrap-around fabric grille. Obviously, they sound great, but the thing I really like is that they look great too - with almost ornament-like styling they don't stick out in a room and blend in with existing decor. The One Plus has two improvements over its predecessor, the now-discontinued One II, that make it easier to use.The only potential downside is that there’s no play/pause button on the unit itself; you have to control playback through your Bluetooth source device. You may prefer either the Klipsch The One II or the JBL Xtreme 3, depending on your listening habits.

Unfortunately, it also lacks low-bass, so you can't feel the deep thump and rumble in bass-heavy music, and there aren't any sound customization features like a graphic EQ or presets to tweak its sound to your liking. We have a couple of these in the office for entertainment during the day, and one down by my workbench in the warehouse, I can easily jump between them with very little interruption, and they possess great ease of use.The big downsides of Bluetooth speakers, compared with Wi-Fi speakers, are that the range is limited, you can’t usually send audio to multiple rooms simultaneously, and in most cases Bluetooth slightly degrades sound quality. Klipsch does offer an app that controls the speaker remotely, but you don’t have to use it, and the only feature in the app that we found valuable was the three-band equalizer to fine-tune the sound. The only buttons are for power and party mode, which lets you create a simple multiroom audio system—the speaker your phone is paired with broadcasts to other Newport speakers, so they all play in sync as long as they’re within Bluetooth range of the first speaker (in our tests, about 25 feet with no more than two walls in between). With a built-in switchable phono preamp and dual RCA input connection, you can hook this powerhouse stereo up to your turntable and enjoy your vinyl collection in style. To make your upgrade hassle free, we can take back your older equipment in part exchange against the cost of new equipment.

That’s an excellent result; it suggests you should be able to carry the phone around a typical suburban home without losing the wireless connection. Pairing your Bluetooth® device with The One II is extremely easy — just press and hold the source button on The One II and select 'Klipsch The One II' on your smartphone. Because the speakers featured here are all-in-one designs, they don’t deliver the big, enveloping sound of separate stereo bookshelf speakers or computer speakers (though our picks can be paired with a second speaker to work that way).Once they’re playing, you can start and stop playback using the reset button, but we couldn’t find a way to skip tracks, or to play any type of file other than MP3s. There's a switch to turn the speaker on/off and two knobs to control the speaker's volume level and chosen input. First, it uses an internal power supply rather than a wall wart, so there’s one less component to keep track of.