August WS300 Multiroom Wi-Fi Speaker

Rating: 5/5

Review:
An excellent wi-fi speaker

August sent me this wi-fi speaker for review, and I think it's absolutely excellent.  It looks good, it works really well and the sound is terrific.

I'll start with the sound, because if you're paying this much for a speaker (it costs a hundred quid at the time of writing) you expect very good sound – and you'll get it.  It's important to break in the speaker with at least an hour's playing at low volume (I played it for three hours before trying anything louder) and after that it's really, really good.  It's beautifully balanced with crystal clear tops and middles and a very firm but not over-dominant bass.  It responds very well to EQ adjustment, too.  I have played a lot of music through this now, from 16^th-Century choral music to beaty, bassy modern stuff with most things in between and it all sounds really good.  In classical music, individual instruments and voices are clear and excellently articulated, rock has a terrific punch and the deep bass in things like London Grammar's Hey Now is all there.  In short, I'm delighted with the sound.

Functionally, it's very good, too.  Connection via Bluetooth (NFC and conventional pairing) was simple and gave a good solid connection up to at least 8 metres.  AUX input also works fine, and the stylish, simple controls on the top are very good.  Wi-fi set-up was pretty simple, too, even for this first-time user.  The app downloads and installs without difficulty and connection was pretty easy after that.  (When the app says "Press WPS button," it means the button on the speaker, not on the router, by the way!)  Once connected, you can stream and play your own music via the app and it's excellent.  Because it's wi-fi, lossless really means lossless and music from places like Tidal sounds great.

The wi-fi gives real flexibility.  If you have more than one speaker you can put them in different rooms and choose which to play, configure them to act as left and right channels or wireless stereo and so on.  It just works, and once I'd got used to the app (which didn’t take long) it was all very simple.

August have built up a reputation over several years for quality products and this lives up to that reputation.  I think it's an excellent speaker and I can recommend it very warmly indeed.