Best Buys Audio & AV 2019-#15
use the HEOS app to group them or
send the same music everywhere — party
mode, as it’s often called, although
equally useful for, say, radio or podcast
listening, so you can move around your
home with the same sound everywhere.
All four can stream via your home
Wi-Fi network, playing from streaming
services like Spotify, Tidal, Deezer,
iHeartRadio and TuneIn, or from
your own music collection stored on
computer, tablet or phone; all of the
latest ‘HS2’ generation can stream high-
resolution music files that offer better
than CD quality. There?s also Bluetooth
onboard, so they can all link with your
phone or tablet for easy direct playback,
and each HEOS speaker has both a
minijack auxiliary input to connect a
local music player, and a USB socket
which not only plays back files from a
stick or drive, it can send that music to
other HEOS players.
The smallest wireless speaker is the
$299 HEOS 1 — yet being the smallest
doesn’t mean it lacks for abilities, indeed
it offers things the larger ones don’t.
Its enclosure is sealed for humidity
resistance, making it ideal for use in
damp environments like bathrooms,
and it can be wall-mounted to sit conve-
niently out of the way. You can also add a
Go Pack to the HEOS 1, a battery which
gives the speaker the portability to go
anywhere — even off the home network,
since you can then use that Bluetooth
connection to play music.
The wireless speakers then grow in
size, with higher driver counts able to
fill larger rooms with music. The $
HEOS 3 is a versatile speaker 27cm
long — or high, if you like, since it can
play standing up as well, and again can
be conveniently wallmounted using its
threaded screw-hole for mounting.
Next up in size, the $649 HEOS 5
is one of our favourites in the range (see review
above right), a medium-sized speaker that
delivers solid and powerful music yet still takes
up remarkably little space.
Finally there’s the HEOS 7, impressively wide
and incorporating five channels of amplification
and seven drivers, including a subwoofer and
two passive bass drivers to deliver the ultimate in
HEOS wireless speaker sound from its 48cm wide,
20cm high cabinet, able to energise sizeable rooms
— and quite the looker as well.
This variety provides a HEOS speaker suitable
for any space, though there’s one additional trick
— if you have two of the same HEOS speakers,
you can use the app to pair them up for stereo,
one playing the left channel, the other playing the
right. The difference in terms of spaciousness of
sound and stereo imaging is significant, and it’s so
HEOS abilities then driving the speakers with its
100W of built-in Class-D amplification — and it
has additional analogue and digital inputs so you
can play local sources, perhaps your television,
through the same system.HEOS FOR YOUR TV: If you want more than
stereo for your TV and movie sound, you have
a number of HEOS choices. The largest of the
components on that lowest shelf is the $
HEOS AVR, a versatile 5.1-channel receiver
with four HDMI inputs, able to drive any five
conventional speakers (or four, if you don’t
want a dedicated centre channel). But you can
also use any HEOS wireless speaker pair for the
rears, a great way to bring surround sound to the
lounge when you want it, then use those speakerseasy to do that it needn’t be a permanent solution
— bring one in from another room and pair it up
for a special listening session.COMPONENTS: The three boxes on the lowest
shelf of our main image take HEOS to the next
level of performance.
The smallest, the $599 HEOS Link, allows you
to easily add all the streaming and networking and
multiroom HEOS abilities to an existing system;
you just plug the outputs of this small box into
an input on your system, and that system then
becomes part of your HEOS home.
Or, if you have a pair of traditional box loud-
speakers sitting around unused, the $899 HEOS
Amp will turn those into an instant HEOS zone,
again connecting to your network to deliver all theHEOS 5 HS2 WIRELESS SPEAKER REVIEW: a sweetspot
This HEOS 5 (HS2 version) might be just the
thing for a medium-sized room, a study or
bedroom or attic. It is the second largest of the
four HEOS wireless speakers (see main article),
29cm wide, delivering stereo sound through
twin unspecified tweeters and mid-woofers that
are powered by individual channels of Class-D
power, and supported by a passive bass
radiator to augment the bass response.
Set-up done we were playing in moments,
starting with the HEOS 5 HS2 on a stand in a
room where it had quite a long throw to the lis-
tening position. It sounded powerful and solid,
and even more so in relatively close-up listening
where this balance delivered a real soundstage
with depth as much as width to be enjoyed.
From just a metre distance, in a desktop/studyor bedroom scenario, say, it delivered highly
enjoyable results.
We enjoyed Spotify streaming through the
HEOS 5, but streaming from CD-quality network
music shares improved things still further in
slightly unstodging the bass and clarifying treble;
we’re fully aware that most people will use Blue-
tooth and Spotify, but really, proper files played
via the network (or Tidal’s Hi-Fi-level subscrip-
tion if you can afford it) can sound significantly
better, which is in itself praise for the HEOS 5 in
that the difference can be easily discerned.
The HEOS app also allows access to tone
controls, bass and treble in this case (these
control vary with other HEOS models depending
on their abilities). They can be useful adjust-
ments for particular material or to compensate
for corner positioning, but on the whole we found
the HEOS 5’s default tuning to be the best avail-
able for accurate-sounding music.
We got Alexa working with HEOS easily
enough, though we found Google Assistant
easier still, and less of a chore in requiring
Alexa’s extended syntax (e.g. Alexa, play Pink
station from iHeartRadio on Lounge).
Back when we reviewed the earliest HEOS
systems, the HEOS 5 was our choice of
sweet-spot among its wireless speakers. We
remain delighted with the latest HS2 version
and the evolved abilities of both player and app.