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Hi-fi quality music was once only the preserve of audiophiles and those with expensive sound systems. But the rise of wireless speakers has brought high sound quality in reach of the masses – provided you know which speakers to buy. Our tests reveal the top products on the market.
Our expert lab and professional listening panel prove it no longer costs the earth to get superior sound. We’ve found remarkable Best Buy portable speakers for well under £50, and even exquisite-sounding multi-room speakers for less than £100. So whatever your budget, our experts give you the insider knowledge so you don’t have to compromise.
And for those looking to invest long-term in a multi-room audio setup, when even a single speaker can stretch into the hundreds of pounds, it’s even more important to make sure you’re spending your money the most wisely.Below we reveal the best speakers from our tests – whatever type or price you’re looking for.
Which? members can log in to see the products behind the scores. If you’re not already a member, try Which? and get access to all our online reviews and product test scores.
To see which models we recommend, head straight to our best wireless and Bluetooth speakers.
Smart speakers have voice assistants you can talk to to perform functions, rather than controlling them through your smartphone or the physical buttons on the speaker.
If you're considering a smart speaker, see our separate guide to how to buy the best smart speaker.
Portable Bluetooth speakers come in all shapes and sizes, from ones that will fit in the palm of your hand, to larger varieties intended for use at home. Their built-in batteries let you move them around easily without needing to be in range of a plug socket.
We’ve selected excellent Bluetooth speakers of different sizes to best suit your needs below.
This is a fantastic Best Buy Bluetooth speaker that offers powerful sound with hefty bass despite its pretty compact dimensions. It has a robust, waterproof design plus a strong 19-hour battery life that makes it perfect for outdoor parties or the campsite, and you can even connect two together for stereo sound. It’s one of the best portable speakers around.
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This innovative Bluetooth speaker’s ideal for taking down the lawn or to the park. It’s a superb, nice-looking and affordable speaker. Sound has nice energy and high volume, although could have more body at times. The battery lasted almost 20 hours in our tests. You can even buy two for true stereo sound in the garden – it’s a sensation.
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Many buyers want a compact speaker – the challenge is making one that sounds great, particularly in the bass. This small Bluetooth speaker succeeds where many have failed, despite its slim pocketable design. Speech is clear and music is well-balanced and detailed. Build quality is good, it’s waterproof and the battery lasted more than 9.5 hours in our tests too – it’s a bargain.
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Pricing and recommendations correct as of May 2022.
All portable wireless speakers have Bluetooth which lets you wirelessly connect to play audio from devices such as your smartphone, and the best portable speakers will be easy to carry around with you and have battery power that’ll last throughout the day.
Our experts have selected their top multi-room speaker recommendations in the table below. Smart speakers (which have voice assistants) are also often multi-room speakers - for more on smart speakers, see our dedicated guide including model recommendations for how to buy the best smart speaker.
This is one of the best Bluetooth and wi-fi wireless speakers we’ve seen in the Which? test lab. It’s a a great all-rounder, supporting Spotify Connect for music streaming, Google Chromecast and Apple Airplay. Sound remains crystal clear and detailed across a wide variety of genres and speech. It’s easy to set up, with multi-room support. Find out how easy it is to use and how competitively it’s priced in our expert review.
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This could be described as the mother of all wireless speakers – it’s for audio connoisseurs looking for the very best sound possible. It offers a huge array of features, including Chromecast multi-room compatibility to connect with Chromecast-compatible speakers. Plus there’s a wide range of physical connections rarely seen on wireless speakers these days. It’s the standard bearer delivering the best sound we’ve heard from a wireless speaker, with exceptional clarity of detail.
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This wireless speaker offers exceptional quality sound at a great price. It’s nicely compact, well build and easy to use too via its app on your smartphone. A plethora of music-streaming services are supported (may require subscriptions). Our professional listening panel praised its balanced, warm and engaging sound, packed full of detail and depth.
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This smart speaker is a real triumph. Its voice control is snappy and responsive, and the sound quality is so high even hi-fi system fans will be impressed. It’s easy to set up and use, and well-built with a discreet design that will blend well into any home. You can even combine two for stereo sound and connect to any other Chromecast speakers including those from rival brands. It’s superb value, too.
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With easy setup and controlled by one of the most well-featured apps around, this speaker is one of the leading lights among an increasingly competitive market of multi-room speakers. As clever as this speaker is, it’s sound quality that matters most and we weren’t disappointed. The soundscape is rich and powerful, but subtle enough that you can still pick out individual instruments and melodies. You can adjust the sound too, with the equaliser to tweak bass and treble built into the app.
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Some multi-room speakers can be among the most expensive on the market, offering premium build quality designed to last and a wide range of features, but cheaper options are available too. These days, multi-room systems usually connect over wi-fi to avoid costly and messy cable installations.
That said, investing in multi-room audio with multiple speakers can cost thousands. Many brands including Bose and Sonos only let you connect to other speakers from the same brand, so you need to choose carefully as you become restricted to the brand’s app and speaker ecosystem – regretting your choice later is incredibly costly.
To avoid this, many Chromecast and other Google Home app-supporting speakers let you connect to one another across different brands (to find out what speakers support Chromecast, head to our wireless speaker reviews and select 'Chromecast' using the filter menu).
Our Best Buy speakers set a high bar, and so if you’re not quite as demanding, we recommend Great Value models as well. These are cheaper options and still score well in our tests, making for excellent bargains.
We’ve listed speakers that are Great Value or other more affordable models below. For even more, head to our speaker reviews and select the Great Value filter (in the left-hand menu alongside our Best Buys).
This is our best-scoring portable speaker since 2015 – and it’s at a great price too. This Bluetooth speaker is fully waterproof, and you have the option of a 3.5mm wired connection to connect to your devices. It’s easy to use with a choice of using the buttons on the speaker or the accompanying smartphone app. Music is engaging and detailed, and you can connect two together for stereo sound.
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This innovative Bluetooth speaker’s ideal for taking down the lawn or to the park. It’s a superb, nice-looking and affordable speaker. Sound has nice energy and high volume, although could have more body at times. The battery lasted almost 20 hours in our tests. You can even buy two for true stereo sound in the garden – it’s a sensation.
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Many buyers want a compact speaker – the challenge is making one that sounds great, particularly in the bass. This small Bluetooth speaker succeeds where many have failed, despite its slim pocketable design. Speech is clear and music is well-balanced and detailed. Build quality is good, it’s waterproof and the battery lasted more than 9.5 hours in our tests too – it’s a bargain.
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Some say the best speaker is the one you take with you, and they don’t get more portable than this. It’s a breeze to attach to your belt or backpack and take with you anywhere on your travels. And sound quality impresses too: music has lovely punch, energy and drive and volume is reasonable too. Battery life was a commendable 11.5 hours is our tests – it’s a remarkable package.
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Wireless speakers can vary greatly in price. Entry-level small Bluetooth speakers that are light on features can be picked up for less than £50, whereas larger, premium models can cost 10 times as much.
Wi-fi-enabled wireless speakers tend to cost a little more. There are few sub-£100 models on the market, so creating a multi-room speaker system can soon become an expensive venture.
Best Buy speakers need to score 70% or more in our expert tests, and Great Value speakers 60% or more.
To be awarded Great Value, a speaker also needs to cost at least 20% less than the average speaker of that type (such as other portable Bluetooth speakers). We only make speakers that offer the very best value for money Great Value. Some Great Value speakers even also score well enough to be Best Buys as well.
Watch the video below to help you choose which type of wireless or Bluetooth speaker is best for you.
Particularly when buying online, it’s very difficult to know how good speakers really sound compared with each other. Every manufacturer will say their speaker sounds exceptional, and that’s clearly not true.
We’ve found speakers costing many hundreds of pounds with poor sounding bass, and many portable speakers with tinny sound that distorts unpleasantly even if they have modest maximum volumes.
Below we are three of the many offenders our expert tests have exposed as well below standard – despite what their marketing says.
This Bluetooth speaker may sound like a neat solution for getting sound wherever you want it – but you’ll soon regret buying. It was already showing signs of wear during our weeks of testing – it’s simply not built to last. Sound is also thin and weedy – you can get much better sound for this price, including from models with equally handy features.
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There’s no doubt this model is a convenient size and the voice control is great, but if great sound quality is what you’re after, stay well away. Far superior alternatives cost only a little more, so there’s little good reason to choose this model. Here music sounds small and artificial, with speech very nasal as if people have colds.
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It may look the ideal size for a small Bluetooth speaker to carry round with you, but you'll quickly regret your purchase when you discover this speaker's weak sound and low volume. Some functions are also awkward to access even for a simple speaker such as this. We've found notable small Bluetooth speaker success stories, but buying this one would be a mistake.
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Unlike other tech publications, Which? uses a professional lab and expert listening panel with decades of experience between them to really find out which wireless speakers are the best on the market – and those that offer superb value for money.
Which? uses a unique benchmarking system that means you can directly compare our results, including sound quality, to find out which speaker really is best for you.
We're also entirely independent – we don't take advertising and buy every product ourselves just like a consumer would. For more, read our guide on how we test wireless, smart and Bluetooth speakers .
Modern wireless speakers aren’t simply passive speakers you plug into a hi-fi. Everything is built-in, and they come in all shapes and sizes from large, powerful wi-fi speakers that can be audio systems in their own right, to compact battery-powered small Bluetooth speakers.
Here are the key things to consider to buy the best wireless speaker for you:
Many wireless speakers, particularly portable models, are rated as being water resistant or waterproof.
The official system for this is known as IP ratings (ingress protection). This system is also used for dust protection – such as to prevent sand getting in if using the speaker on a beach.
The first digit of an IP rating tells you the level of protection against solids such as dust, and the second digit is the key one for protection from water.
Ratings | What it means |
---|---|
IPX4 | Protection from splashes of water or a bit of drizzle. |
IPX5 | Protection from jets of water - from a garden hose, for example. |
IP55 | The same water resistance as IPX5, but this speaker is also dust-protected. You’ll only ever see a ‘5’ or ‘6’ for dust protection on speakers. 5 means small amounts of dust may enter, but not enough to impact the function of the speaker. |
IPX7 | For properly waterproof speakers, look for a second digit of 7 or 8. IPX7 means the speaker can be fully immersed to a depth of up to one metre in water. The manufacturer will state how long this is for – a typical time would be up to 30 minutes. |
IP67 | The same water resistance as IPX7, but this also means the headphones are fully dust tight, meaning no dust should enter. This is the most common IP rating for portable speakers, and is a good choice if you regularly use your portable speaker on the beach. |
IP68 | This is the highest waterproof IP rating on the scale. The speaker can be immersed in water to depths beyond one metre, and the manufacturer will state the maximum depth and time. The speaker is also fully dust tight. This rating is rare – IP67 should be enough for anything other than the most extreme environments. |
Do take care though: don’t assume a waterproof model can survive any amount of submerging. The tests are done by the manufacturer under lab conditions to limited time and depth, and usually only done in fresh water and not salt water.
If your speaker has any flaps, such as for the charging port, these often need to be firmly secured, and if they degrade over time this can affect the waterproofing. The water resistance rating is usually only intended as protection from accidents.
All wireless speakers can access music streaming services like Spotify by streaming it over Bluetooth from your smartphone (may require subscriptions). If you’d like music streaming built-in to the speaker itself, you’ll need a wireless speaker with wi-fi, so it can connect to the internet directly.
Each wi-fi speaker will support a different range of music streaming services, so make sure it features the one you want to use. To discover the best music streaming services to go for, see our expert best music streaming services guide.
To browse all the wireless speakers we've tested, head to our wireless, smart and Bluetooth speaker reviews.