Gear4 AirZone Series 1 AirPlay Speaker Review

Somebody needs to put AirPlay into a car audio system. Cause that's about the only place we haven't seen it yet. In fact, Apple's wireless technology seems to be steadily infiltrating the home audio segment. We'd say Gear4 is jumping on the bandwagon, but they're too early to market to slap that on them - they're one of the pioneers. So this is Gear4's new AirZone Series 1. It's a stereo speaker that can dock your iOS device, stream music from AirPlay, take audio from an auxiliary source, play FM radio and it smells like bacon. It doesn't really smell like bacon, but if it did I would totally buy it. I would.

Since its primarily an AirPlay speaker, and you're paying a solid $300 for that feature, we're interested in two specifics: what's it take to configure it, and how does it sound? On the first part, setup involved using the included mini membrane remote to select our wireless network and get it connected. Since we could use the top-mounted dial to quickly scroll to the right letters and numbers, it wasn't troublesome at all to enter our password. We don't really like the remote, but with a product like this is isn't a deal-breaker. You're not going to use it much since your iPhone or iPod will handle most of the functions. The top of the unit also has buttons for Navigation, Power, Volume, Mode and EQ - which is good, cause we lost the remote about 10 minutes after opening up the speaker. We found it eventually, but if you're like me, and God help you if you are, you'll lose any remote that's smaller than your palm.

We did most of our listening in AirPlay mode, but as we alluded to earlier, there are three other modes, including FM radio, Aux input and just docking your iPod/iPhone/iPad/iWhatever device. You hit the 'Mode' button to switch between them. The nice thing is that AirPlay will override anything else, so you can whip out your iOS device and take over the speaker at will. We kinda like that. It also lends itself to lots of possibilities for practical jokes... Also, when you play music from your iOS device, the track and artist info scrolls across the top LCD display. This is also where you view feedback on volume level, FM station and your EQ mode.

The sound quality was OK. It doesn't have much bottom end, but we liked that there was no artificial bass down below what the AirZone could actually handle. As a result, you didn't get that boominess that's common in many speakers like this. The highs were clean but a tad bright and even fatiguing over time. But if you're not parked directly in front of the speaker for extended periods of time, the additional brightness will actually help to fill the room with more audio.

For this speaker we decided to listen to some contemporary Christian tracks from Mercy Me, Caedmon's Call, Out of the Grey, and Switchfoot. Male and female vocals - our go-to tests - sounded clean and refined, with just a hint of upper-mid emphasis. You could really hear the gravelly nature of rougher voices; and highs, like sibilance and cymbals were, as we mentioned, bright (for our tastes) but not unpleasant. On the contrary, the AirZone seemed like a really small speaker that could generate a lot of output in a decent-size room. We measured 88dB SPL C-weighted from 8 feet away. That's a decent amount of volume from a ported stereo speaker measuring just over 13" wide and using only a single pair of what look to be 3" drivers.

So is the AirZone Series 1 worth the money? Well, AirPlay speakers are at a premium right now, and for good reason. They are truly set and forget products. They just work and it's really cool to be able to send music to it at will. Some people pay this much money for a glorified clock radio. I don't, but some people do. In any case, this is a good-looking tabletop speaker that can dock, play FM radio and stream music wirelessly from your iWhatever. If you're a bass hog you may want to steer clear, but if you dig AirPlay, FM and want a sharp-looking, compact speaker, you should check out the AirZone Series 1 from Gear4.

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Unless otherwise indicated, this is a preview article for the featured product. A formal review may or may not follow in the future.