We’re putting the HomePod mini in the top spot on the basis of its low price tag, excellent sound quality and deep integration with Apple’s software ecosystem – as long as you don’t mind being tied to Siri.

The HomePod mini can’t match the bass punch of the full-size HomePod, but the output is still far better than we have any right to expect at this size and price. (Just to reiterate, it’s a third of the price and a seventh of the weight of its larger sibling.)

For jazz, rock and classical we were blown away by its clear, rich sound. And while it’s not quite got the welly to deafen your neighbors with house music at 3 am, it does fill a room beautifully – especially when teamed with a second model as a stereo pair.

If you’re deep in the Apple ecosystem and you appreciate quality audio, this is the smart speaker for you: it will play your music beautifully and make TV watching a delight.

As with the HomePod mini, ease of setup is one of its strongest features–plug in the HomePod and wave an iPhone vaguely in its direction and an onscreen popup (on the phone) will invite you to set it up. If there’s another HomePod of the same model in the selected room, you’ll be given the option to join them as a stereo pair.

It sounds great whether used as a single unit, or as a stereo pair, and it’s a great accompaniment to your Apple TV as it supports Dolby Atmos and Spatial Audio (the HomePod mini doesn’t). To find out more, read more about how the HomePod compares to the HomePod mini.

The main disadvantages of the 2023 HomePod are the high price (three times that of the HomePod mini) and the frustrations associated with being reliant on Siri to control it. We really want a HomePod with a screen.

Roku is well-known for its range of streaming media devices, which offer an affordable alternative to Apple’s own Apple TV box. However, the Roku Streambar goes a step further by combining streaming features with a compact soundbar speaker and support for Apple’s AirPlay 2 – and all for a highly competitive $129.99/£129.99.

The AirPlay support and built-in dual-band Wi-Fi mean that you can simply use the Streambar as a conventional AirPlay speaker, using AirPlay to stream music via Wi-Fi from any Apple device. It’s surprisingly powerful for such a compact speaker, and more than loud enough for playing music at home or watching a few Hollywood blockbusters. It even provides pretty good bass too, landing the bass guitar and crashing drums on Kate Bush’s The Big Sky with real impact (and Roku has recently announced a new range of wireless speakers that also support AirPlay 2, although we’ve not had the chance to test these yet).

Going beyond basic speaker mode, you can also use the HDMI port on the back of the Streambar to connect it to a TV or computer display, and this allows you to stream video at up to 4K resolution from your Apple devices as well. You can even get rid of your Apple devices altogether, and just use the Streambar’s built-in streaming features to connect your TV or computer monitor to a wide range of video services–including Apple TV+, Netflix, Disney+ and so on. It also supports a number of music streaming services too, such as Apple Music and Spotify.

Admittedly, the low cost of the Streambar means that it does lack a few advanced features, such as support for Dolby Atmos, which you can get from Apple’s HomePod and also the Apple TV 4K. But, of course, the Apple TV box doesn’t include a speaker, and the Streambar’s low-cost combination of AirPlay speaker and music and video streaming features makes it an absolute bargain at this price.

When Sonos first introduced the Era 100 it was positioned as a mid-range option that sat between the entry-level Sonos One and the imposing Era 300 with Dolby Atmos at the top of the range. However, the veteran Sonos One quietly faded away a few months ago and the Era 100 has taken over as the new entry point for the Sonos range of multi-room speakers, with a $249/£249 price tag that makes it a good alternative to the Apple HomePod at £299/$299.

At first glance, the Era 100 does look very similar to the original Sonos One, with an upright cylindrical design that is available in black or white. It’s slightly larger than the Sonos One, though, standing 182.5mm high, 120mm wide and 130mm deep. This allows the Era 100 to squeeze in an additional high-frequency tweeter, so that it now houses two tweeters that are angled out to the right and left to spread sound more widely than the Sonos One. It also includes a larger woofer than the Sonos One, to handle the mid-range and bass and add a little extra power as well.

This new design works a treat and the Era 100 provides very good sound quality for a relatively compact speaker. The atmospheric harmonies of Enya’s Orinoco Flow have a light, shimmering sound, but the compact speaker has got some muscle too, and is easily able to fill the room around me with Enya’s swirling cloud of sound. The twin tweeters provide a crisp, clear sound for the electronic loops that fly through the air, but that larger woofer can also reach down and embrace the slow bass pulse and rumbling drums that enter as Enya’s multi-tracked vocals chant – “turn it up, turn it up”.

The only minor disappointment is that the Era 100 doesn’t support Dolby Atmos or spatial audio. If you’re a home cinema fan who really wants Atmos then you’ll need to pay a little more for alternatives such as the Apple HomePod or the high-end Era 300. But, if you’re just looking for a compact, high-quality speaker with wi-fi and support for AirPlay, then the Era 100 delivers the goods at a lower price than most of its AirPlay rivals.

Sonos’ Roam has to be the smallest and most portable AirPlay 2 speaker we’ve seen so far.

Sonos’s original Roam smart speaker was released back in 2021, and it was one of the best portable speakers we’ve ever seen, providing very good sound quality in a highly compact design that also managed to squeeze in useful features such as wireless charging and even support for Wi-Fi and AirPlay for Apple devices. The Roam 2 fine-tunes a number of features such as its set-up and tuning process, and provides more straightforward controls.

Available in a variety of colors–including red, green, blue and plain old black and white–the Roam 2 looks identical to its predecessor. It is 168mm tall, 62mm wide and 60mm deep, and weighs 0.43kg. It’s not pocket-size, but it will fit into a backpack. It has a IP67 rating water and dust resistance, so it’s suited to the outdoors.

There’s no room for a large battery in the compact design, but it should last for up to 10 hours with music at 50% volume. It needs to stand upright for wireless charging and the volume, playback and microphone controls sit on the top, but you can turn the speaker onto its side and lay it flat. A USB-C port on the back can be used for charging too. 

Roam 2 supports Bluetooth 5.2 and now has separate buttons for Power and Bluetooth pairing, which are easier to use than the fiddly multi-function button on the original Roam. You can press the Bluetooth button to pair via Bluetooth, but you need to download the Sonos app for iOS in order to set the speaker up properly. We encountered problems getting the speaker connected to our Wi-Fi network and had to spend time changing the Wi-Fi settings. But, once that was done, the Roam 2 worked really well. Lucky its support for AirPlay made connecting it to additional Apple devices straightforward.

The Roam 2 offers great sound quality for such a compact speaker, especially over a Wi-Fi connection. It did a good job with Sturgill Simpson’s Sing Along, laying down the grinding, fuzzy guitars that form the bedrock of the sound. On Billie Eilish’s Bad Guy it achieved a pretty respectable bass beat for such a small speaker.

Switching to Bluetooth caused the sound to lose a little clarity–but that’s a limitation of Bluetooth rather than the speaker itself, and the Roam 2 can go head-to-head with any portable speaker of this size and weight. The Roam 2 really punches above its weight when it comes to sound quality and its sturdy and lightweight design is great for outdoor use. 

Apple has been banging the drum for spatial audio for a few years now, but Sonos really took a step forward with that technology when it launched the Era 300 in 2023. Appropriately enough, it also marked a new era for the Sonos range of multi-room speakers, with an entirely new design that was at least eye-catching even if it wasn’t perhaps as elegant as Sonos claimed.

Available in black or white, the bulky, hourglass design of the Era 300 is very much designed for spatial audio, housing no less than six separate speaker drivers, with support for Dolby Atmos when watching films and video, or listening to spatial audio on Apple Music. There’s one woofer and one tweeter on each side of the unit, which provide a wide stereo soundstage, while another tweeter on the front highlights vocals and dialogue, or lead instruments. There’s one more tweeter on the top, which is designed to fire sound off the ceiling to help create a sense of height and space when listening to music or video that uses Atmos.

Like most Sonos speakers, the Era 300 uses dual-band Wi-Fi (2.4GHz/5.0GHz) to connect to your home network, and also supports AirPlay 2 for use with Apple devices and other AirPlay-compatible speakers. But, unlike previous Sonos speakers, the Era now supports Bluetooth as well, so that it can provide a quick and easy wireless connection for mobile devices and computers when required. You can also buy an adaptor that provides a wired connection (although it’s annoying that this costs an extra $19/£19, given the speaker’s hefty $449/£449 price tag).

The Era 300 can earn its keep, though. The Dolby Atmos support works really well on the opening scene of Blade Runner, creating a real sense of movement as the hovercar flies over the Los Angeles skyline, and there’s a satisfying bass rumble to the bursts of steam and flame that erupts into the air.

It does a good job with spatial audio on Apple Music too, especially with Ringo’s deft percussion on the Atmos mix of Come Together by the Beatles. The bongos skip lightly through the air and the bass guitar glides forward with a swaying, sinuous rhythm. There’s real weight behind the guitar riff that leads into the chorus, but the Era 300 can still pick out gentler details such as the shimmering cymbals and rhythmic keyboards. Admittedly, it’s one of the more expensive AirPlay speakers currently available, but the powerful and atmospheric sound of the Era 300, and support for Dolby Atmos, make it a good alternative to more expensive soundbar systems for music and watching video.

It sounds better than most portable speakers this size, but still sounds clipped at high volumes and some controls are a little opaque.

The Beats Pill is much improved over previous versions, but it has a few faults that we’d love to see addressed in the next revision.

Beats’ iconic “pill” shape is handy to carry around, fits anywhere a water bottle would go, and sits well on a table or similarly flat surface. You can get one in classic Beats colors—black, red, or champagne.

When at rest the speakers are tilted 20 degrees upward, which is a great way to project the sound more directly at you. 

The Pill is IP67-rated, so is should be safe on the beach, beside a pool, or in the rain. A silicone outer wrap helps prevent bumps and dings, while adding weatherproofing.

Along the top, you’ll find volume buttons, a center multi-function button, and a power button. They’re far enough apart and labeled clearly enough that it’s easy to hit the right one without paying close attention.

In the back is a single USB-C port that can be used for charging or as an audio input, with support for lossless audio (not that the Pill has the sound quality to do it justice). It even reverse-charges with a triple-tap of the power button so it can be a sort of power bank for your phone.

Beats says the battery will last 24 hours. We can confirm it can easily run all day without recharging.

With a single woofer capable of 90 percent more air displacement than the woofer in the Beats Pill+ and a paired tweeter, the new Beats Pill sounds OK. Like all portable speakers with a cylindrical design it lacks low-end oomph. There’s more bass than you’d expect, but still less than you need. It does get pretty loud, but at high volumes, there’s a clipped or limited feel.

There’s a microphone to enable speakerphone or voice assistants, but it doesn’t have much in the way of noise reduction to protect from strong wind or nearby highway noise.

The weatherproofing, relatively loud volume, and fantastic battery life all make this a really great affordable speaker for hanging out by the pool. The $149.99/£149.99price is reasonable, too. You just need to manage your expectations for getting great sound quality out of a little portable speaker like this.

If you want something powerful that can also venture outdoors occasionally, then the A15 from Audio Pro is a really good option. It’s slightly more expensive than Apple’s HomePod, but its portable design and connectivity features make it a lot more versatile than the HomePod (there’s also a smaller model, called the A10 which costs just $250/£149 but isn’t portable as it lacks an internal battery).

The A15 is quite large, measuring 8.1 x 11.2 x 5.3 inches (206 x 286 x 137mm), and weighing in at a fairly hefty 2.2lb (3.4kg). However, it’s still light enough to carry from room to room, or out into the garden when the summer comes along, and there’s a bass port on the back of the speaker that doubles up as a handle so that you can quickly pick it and head outdoors when you want to.

The smart fabric cover is also rated IPX2 for water resistance, to ensure that it can cope with the occasional burst of rain. Battery life is good too, lasting for eight hours at full blast, or 11 hours at 50% volume. The A15 supports dual-band Wi-Fi with AirPlay 2 for Apple devices, Google Cast for our Android friends, as well as Bluetooth and a 3.5mm connector for wired audio.

You’ll need to download the Audio Pro app to connect the A15 to your Wi-Fi network, but after that it works just like any other AirPlay speaker, allowing you to play any music or video from your Apple devices. It sounds great too, with the large speaker providing a firm, pulsing bass on Low’s Cut. There’s an icy clarity to the haunting steel guitar, but also warmth too, on singer Alan Sparhawk’s softly spoken vocals. And, if you really want to go to town at party-time, the A15 even has a connector for hooking it up to an external sub-woofer too.

Most AirPlay speakers have a compact, all-in-one design, very similar to Apple’s HomePod. However, these compact speakers don’t provide very good stereo separation, and there are many people who may need a proper two-piece (2.0) speaker system that really shows how stereo audio is meant to sound. Edifier’s S1000W is a good stereo system for musicians who are recording their own songs, or for podcasting or video-editing that involves audio editing work. And, of course, it sounds great for just listening to your favorite music too.

The two-piece S1000W costs $449.99/£399.99 – which is a lot cheaper than buying two HomePods and using them for stereo. The two speakers are solidly built, with an attractive wood finish, which also helps to reduce vibrations that might affect the sound quality. They stand 7.8 x 13.6 x 11.6 inches (345 x 198 x 295mm), so they need a fairly large desk or shelf, but we were able to stand them on either side of our office iMac’s screen without too much trouble, so they’re well suited for audio work for musicians or other content creators.

All the controls are located on the right-hand speaker, which includes an impressive number of both wired and wireless input options. There are 3.5mm, RCA, optical, and coaxial connectors for devices such as CD players or turntables, and you can quickly switch between inputs using the remote control included in the box. And, for wireless audio, the S1000W also supports Bluetooth, dual-band Wi-Fi, and AirPlay 2 for streaming from Apple devices. The S1000W provides a thumping 120W total output, and I was only able to set the volume level to around 50% before I started to worry about annoying the neighbors. And it’s not just loud – the sound quality is great too, with the sturdy speakers providing a firm, rhythmic bass when playing Billie Elish’s Bad Guy, combined with clear, precise vocals and higher frequencies.

Apple is very keen on getting people to buy two of the second-gen HomePods in order to use them for stereo music, or for watching films and videos that have a soundtrack that uses the Dolby Atmos surround sound format. That’s not the only option for film buffs, though, and there are plenty of soundbars that support both AirPlay 2 and Dolby Atmos, including the Denon Home 550.

The Home 550 costs $649 in the US, which is slightly more expensive than a pair of HomePods ($598), but it’s a lot more versatile when it comes to connecting to non-Apple devices and fitting into a larger home entertainment system. And, in the UK, the price is £599 (compared to £598 for two HomePods).

As mentioned, the Home 550 supports dual-band wi-fi with support for AirPlay 2, but also includes Ethernet for wired networks too, along with Bluetooth and a standard 3.5mm connector for non-Apple devices. It has two 4K HDMI ports for connecting to a TV, and an optical audio connector for older TVs that don’t support HDMI.

The Denon app helps you to connect the Home 550 to your network for AirPlay streaming, or you can use the remote control that’s included in the box to quickly switch between AirPlay, Bluetooth and other audio sources.

The large soundbar – 25.95 x 2.95 x 4.72 inches (650 x 120 x 75mm) – produces an equally large sound, with deep, pulsing bass on The Orb’s Prime Evil, and a nervous, manic energy on the rattling percussion. And, switching into Dolby Atmos mode, it works a treat on the opening scene of Blade Runner, with a dramatic bass rumble on the bursts of flame that leap across the Los Angeles skyline. It also creates a real sense of movement as Harrison Ford’s hover-car zooms forward out of the screen and the sound pans smoothly over to my left-hand side.

Bowers & Wilkins’ Zeppelin was a landmark product for Mac users – and it’s great to see it back again.

Originally launched in 2007, the Zeppelin was the first Hi-Fi-quality speaker system for the iPod, and really helped to boost that device’s credibility amongst audiophile music fans. A few years later an updated Zeppelin was also one of the first speakers to support Apple’s AirPlay software for streaming audio over Wi-Fi. However, the Zeppelin was left behind when Apple released AirPlay 2 – with its new support for multi-room music – so it was discontinued a few years ago. But now, with very little fanfare, B&W has launched a new version of the Zeppelin that adds support for AirPlay 2, along with a number of other new features too.

Available in either Midnight Grey or a silvery Pearl Grey, the new Zeppelin initially looks very similar to its predecessors, with the eye-catching oval design that gives the speaker its name. But on the inside, the Zeppelin has been completely redesigned, with a pair of high-frequency tweeters and mid-range woofers located on each side of a central sub-woofer, while the entire unit is powered by a roof-rattling 240W amplifier.

As mentioned, the new Zeppelin now supports AirPlay 2, along with Bluetooth and Apple’s AAC codec and the AptX Adaptive codec that is used on many Android devices, and Spotify Connect too. My only minor complaints are that the Zeppelin only seems to work with 2.4GHz Wi-Fi, and it’s completely reliant on Wi-Fi or Bluetooth for streaming, with no wired inputs for connecting to devices such as a CD player, or maybe even an old iPod.

The sound quality, though, is terrific, with the massed harmonies of Queen’s Somebody To Love ringing out bright and clear, and a lively, ringing tone on Roger Taylor’s shrieking falsetto and crashing cymbals. At the other end of the spectrum, the Zeppelin delivers the bouncing bass on Bad Guy by Billie Eilish with a firm, taut sound that immediately gets you tapping your foot. It easily fills the room with sound even at just 40% of maximum volume, so the Zeppelin will be great for getting the party going over Christmas and the New Year.

It is a little pricey, at $799/£699, but that’s only slightly more expensive than Apple’s AirPods Max, and the Zeppelin is certainly better value for money. What’s more, its room-filling sound and AirPlay 2 support mean you can share its excellent sound quality with everyone in your home.