This article is more than 1 year old
Logitech Squeezebox Boom wireless music player
Small box, very big sound
The Boom's remote is a cheap and cheerful affair – it does the job but won't win any awards for design or innovation. Of course, the Boom has a trick up its sleeve on this front: it'll work with the Squeezebox Duet remote, a lovely – if pricey – bit of kit that we have waxed lyrical about elsewhere.
The remote is basic - use the Duet's instead
In fact, it's as a partner to the Duet that the Boom makes the most sense. Hook the Duet up to your main audio system and use the Boom to relay the same or different content to another part of the house, all from the same remote. Running two different sound sources via a Duet and a Boom should be simplicity itself – we say 'should' as we've never actually had both devices in the same place at the same time – as all you have to do is make the necessary selection from the Source menu on the Duet controller.
The Boom comes fitted with a handy alarm clock function, and squirrelled away inside is a small rechargeable battery so your alarm settings won't evaporate during any nocturnal power cuts. A handy secondary use is that if you unplug the thing and move it about the house, you don't have to mess about re-imputing your wireless security codes.
At £199 the Boom isn't exactly what we'd call cheap but you will be getting a well made, clever and highly desirable bit of kit for your hard-earned so it rates as pretty decent value for money. We would like to see Logitech bundle the Boom and Duet together for around the £400 mark to provide true out of the box multi-room wireless sound.
No UPnP/DLNA but plenty of audio formats are supported
Some may have an issue with the fact that SqueezeCentre is not UPnP or DLNA compliant, but we aren't sure what percentage of potential customers will find this a problem – not a large one, we suspect. Most purchasers will simply want a device that is easy to set up and works reliably out of the box, and this the Boom, like the Duet, most certainly does. Others may argue that the Boom would be better if it had a built-in DAB receiver but that does rather overlook that fact that it's a wireless music streamer and not a radio.
Verdict
We can see no good reason not to give the Squeezebox Boom the same glowing recommendation we have the Duet since it does everything the Duet does but in a smaller and self-contained form-factor. For a device of its size, the sound quality is quite superb.