August WS150 wi-fi speaker

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Excellent build and functionality with decent sound

August sent me this wi-fi speaker for review, and I think it's very good.  The WS150 is the smaller sibling of the WS300; it has all the same functionality and electronics as the WS300 but is around half the size and only one third the weight.  This is great if you need an easily transportable wi-fi speaker, but the sound isn't as special on the WS150.  However, it looks good, the build quality is excellent, it works really well and the sound is still very decent.
 
Functionally, it's very good. Connection via Bluetooth (NFC and conventional pairing) was simple and gave a good solid connection up to at least 8 metres. AUX wired 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 novice. 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 works very well.

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 all works very nicely, and once I'd got used to the app (which didn’t take long) it was all very simple.

The sound is good but it's not spectacular.  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).  Thereafter, the WS150 gives a nice, balanced sound with very good tops and middles.  The bass is very decent for a speaker of this size, but the real depth and richness of bass in tracks like London Grammar's Hey Now isn't quite there.  I have played a lot of music through this now, from 16th-Century choral music to modern rock and acoustic music with most things in between and it all sounds good. In classical music, individual instruments and voices are clear and excellently articulated, rock has a decent punch and it goes loud enough to fill a medium-sized room with no distortion.

The larger August WS300 is an outstanding speaker, I think, and if you don't need the convenience of a small, easily transportable speaker I'd say it was well worth the extra twenty quid to get the WS300.  For sound alone at this sort of price, the Audio Dynamix Pulse V4 or the Archeer A320 are better (especially in the bass) but they're not wi-fi, of course, and for a small, high-quality wi-fi speaker this is still very good.  August have built up a reputation over several years for quality products and this lives up to that reputation. I can recommend it.

Amazon page  HERE