We have been working on a special feature comparison of
small “personal” speakers, a growing market trend aimed at smartphone and
tablet users as well as the perfect accessory when you want to share you iPod’s
music with your friends. We’re not sure this speaker neatly fits into that
product category however. Read on to find out what it does and why you want it.
WHAT IS IT:
The HEOS line of speakers from Denon is not just another
personal Bluetooth speaker; in fact it isn’t a Bluetooth speaker at all. It’s
much larger and much heavier than the ever-growing crop of palm-size personal
speakers on the market. It doesn’t run on batteries and doesn’t play “from”
your smartphone, tablet or music player in the traditional sense of the word.
Instead, it plugs in to your home network, wired or wireless, and streams music
from numerous sources like Pandora, Spotify, Rhapsody, TuneIn, etc.
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| HEOS remote app |
You use
your Android or iOS device like a remote control to identify which source you
want to listen to and control the volume and tone controls. From that point the
HEOS speaker is connected to your home network and you can turn your
phone/tablet off and even leave the house and the HEOS will stay connected.
Of course you can also steam tunes that are already in your
personal playlist on your device or on your home PC and you can also plug any
music source in that you can connect with a standard mini stereo plug.
HOW GOOD IS IT:
To be brutally honest this one small stereo speaker probably
sounds better than many people’s entire home entertainment system. With 7
drivers and 5 amplifiers the quality of sound the HEOS 7 pumps out is nothing
short of amazing. Even at low volume levels the bass is floor rattling. I’ve
thrown virtually every genre of music at it and in every case the instrumentals
and vocals do not sound like they’re coming out of a box … they sound like a
live performance. Placed, as the manufacturer recommends, at a room-length
distance from you, at ear level and a few inches from a hard surface (and never
in an enclosed space) it is difficult to pinpoint one single source of the
sound – it seems to envelop you with direct and reflected sound just like being
at a live performance. Mine lives in my upstairs office at home. It replaced a
set of high-end bookshelf speakers and a subwoofer. For grins last night I
turned the speaker on while I was in my media room downstairs and turned it up,
not all the way but maybe to 40%. The sound filled the entire house and it was
hard to pinpoint that the sound was actually coming from upstairs – it just
seemed to be coming from everywhere. Other than my Mirage home entertainment
system speakers it is easily the best sounding speaker I own.
HOW WELL DOES IT WORK:
The idea behind the HEOS concept is that you could, and
should, have one in every room. To make this practical they offer three
different models, the HEOS 3, the HEOS 5 and the HEOS 7, each larger than the
other and having correspondingly more powerful sound. Setup is a no-brainer,
you plug the speaker into an AC outlet, plug your Android or iOS device into it
temporarily using the supplied stereo mini cable and push a button so they can
get to know each other. That takes a few seconds. From that point you can load
the HEOS app on as many Android/iOS devices as you wish and they will
automatically set themselves up. The app is virtually identical for both
operating systems, and is fresh, clean and utterly simple to use.
COMMENTS:
There are a few things to know about. This speaker isn’t a
Jack of All Trades. There is no Bluetooth. No Airplay. No ability (yet) to play
iTunes directly, or be used as a remote speaker for web-based music or videos
(think YouTube for an example). There is no handle to carry it, Denon sees it
as a speaker you would plug in and leave in a designated room. To that end the
app allows you to direct a different sound source to each of the 29 rooms in
your house or link any 2, 3, 4, etc. sources together (the app actually names
each room) or you can drag them all together for a Party Mode. So I guess
rather than calling it a personal speaker I might want to call it a roommate
speaker.
Don’t panic about the lack of Bluetooth or Airplay, neither
can transmit the full potential of sound quality that the HEOS 7 is capable of
and when the speaker is used as intended neither feature is necessary.
There’s not much that HEOS didn’t think about, but there are
some missed opportunities. The one I would most like to see is car radio type
screen of preset buttons you can assign to your favorite sources. My Marantz
network receiver app does that and I love it.
Two other minor quibbles are, one, that in order to use the
stereo AUX jack you must have an Android/iOS device handy to select that input.
The other was referred to above but worth repeating … several times a day I
want to listen to the audio from YouTube or another source on my phone or
tablet on a larger speaker. While the HEOS can play something that’s already on
your device it can’t simply be used as a remote speaker for internet-based
sources.
TECH TOY WIZARD RATING: 5/5
SEE IT IN MOTION:
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