TechRadar Verdict
Pros
- +
Very easy to set up
- +
Can tweak bass and treble
- +
Pop-out dock for charging
- +
Very good sound
Cons
- -
For the price, sounds a little flat
- -
Materials feel cheap
- -
Volume control ill-conceived
- -
Only for iOS iPods
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We like Logitech's speakers, and we like AirPlay, Apple's technology for streaming video and uncompressed audio over Wi-Fi. In theory, then, we should like Logitech's first AirPlay speaker, the Logitech UE Air Speaker. And we do - but not without reservations.
Let's talk AirPlay first. So long as you have a Wi-Fi network and at least one PC or Mac running iTunes 10.1 or later, or a recent iOS device, you can stream your music to the Logitech UE Air Speaker.
With an iOS device, you can stream to one AirPlay target at a time - this speaker, say, or an Apple TV. But fire up iTunes and you can stream to more than one at once, setting the volume independently for each from your PC or Mac, or adjusting the volume on the speaker and having that update on your computer's screen.
Rather more impressively, you can pull an iPhone or iPod touch out of your pocket, or pick up your iPad, and use Apple's free Remote app to control the library on your PC or Mac.
And because it's then your computer that's doing the heavy lifting, you can pick as many of your AirPlay speakers as your network can cope with, and wander round the house gleefully changing tracks and tweaking the volume for all your speakers from the device in your hand.
How many AirPlay speakers you can have depends on your network and environment - Apple suggests it'll be between three and six - but it's a gloriously easy and comparatively cheap way to add multi-room audio to your house.
We say "comparatively cheap" because although we're finally seeing AirPlay speakers turn up in decent numbers, manufacturers are really only putting the technology in their high-end speakers. And while the price tag of £300 in the UK or $400 in the US is cheap compared to a traditional installed multi-room audio system, that's still a fair old chunk of change.
AirPlay, though, is something you can set up yourself, and Logitech has made set up almost laughably simple. Dock your iOS device and without doing anything else, it will prompt you to download a free app to complete the set up process; all you need to know is the password to your Wi-Fi network.
The app even enables you to tweak bass and treble - laudable when iOS's equaliser presets are so inflexible. If you don't have an iOS device, the Logitech UE Air Speaker can create an ad-hoc network to which you can connect your computer in order to configure it.
