This week we are reviewing the Jam Symphony Wireless (WiFi) Multiroom speaker (HX-W14901). Since Sonos wireless speakers entered the market, WiFi speakers have been extremely popular. Unfortunately Sonos speakers are very expensive, luckily the Jam series of wifi speakers offers similar functionality at a much lower cost.
If you’re unfamiliar with WiFi speakers, they refer to speakers that connect to your home WiFi network and allow you to have the same (or different) music playing in different rooms of your house. They differ from the popular bluetooth speakers in a few ways, mainly in that they are not portable (have to be plugged into the wall), and bluetooth speakers do not have multi room functionality.
First Impressions
Overall I’m very impressed with the quality of the speaker. It looks great, with a mesh front and a curved back. It fits well either flat against a wall or in a corner. The back is made of a hard plastic which feels fairly durable, but as these are not designed for portability, they shouldn’t have to deal with much wear and tear.
The setup of these speakers was extremely easy. After downloading the Jam Wireless App from the app store, you simply plug in the speaker to the wall, and follow the instructions on the app. I was up and running in minutes. It’s also very easy to group speakers together to play at the same time, or to separate them and play different music in each room. You can group up to 8 speakers this way.
Sound Quality
These speakers pound! The first one I setup in a 15×15 room and it easily puts out enough volume to fill the room. At about half volume I would consider it to be loud enough for a party. The Symphony is advertised as having 2.1 stereo sound achieved though the 3 speakers, 2 tweeters, and a ported back for enhanced bass response. When testing with bass heavy music such as hip hop, it performed significantly better than my 2×4″ portable bluetooth speaker. For maximum bass response, I recommend placing the unit in a corner of a room. One great feature, is you can easily configure multiple speakers to preform in a Left / Right configuration if you want to use multiple symphony wifi speakers in the same room.
Jam Symphony vs Sonos
For the money, the Jam Wifi Speakers are great, that being said, I have to give the edge in sound quality, and support to Sonos. I’ve heard great customer support stories of Sonos supporting people who bought speakers 10 years ago. That being said, the Jam does have one huge advantage over Sonos, which is the auxiliary port on the speaker. This allows you to plug in a TV, Laptop, or any other device that can’t stream over Wifi. The other obvious advantage is the price, at the time of this writing, the Jam Symphony was less than 1/2 the price of the Sonos Play:1, when it performs to the level of the Play:3.
One major difference between the Jam Symphony & Sonos is which device actually plays the music. With the Jam speakers, you are playing the music from your phone or tablet, so if someone calls you, it will interrupt the music. With Sonos, the music is being played from the speakers, so if someone calls your phone it will not interrupt the music. You will have to decide how important of a feature this is to you.
Other Considerations
The Jam Symphony Wifi Speakers only use 2.4 Ghz WiFi networks, and not the newer 5 Ghz networks. The app includes native support for Last.fm, Spotify Premium, iHeartRadio, Tidal. and also supports the DLNA standard, which includes Apple Airplay, iTunes, and you can play the media downloaded onto your device. Some free streaming apps such as Jango however do not support DLNA and cannot be streamed over wifi (however you can connect using the aux port).
Final Thoughts
I hope you’ve found our review of the Jam Symphony Wifi Speaker (HX-W14901) helpful. Overall this speaker is a game changer in the Wifi multi-room category. It’s ease of use, excellent sound quality, and attractive price is sure to give established players like Sonos and Bose a run for their money.
Do you have any questions about the Jam Symphony Wifi Speaker not answered in this review? Let us know in the comments below!