VARO Portable WiFi + Bluetooth Multi-Room Speaker, Cube, Black (iOS Only)

Your browser does not support HTML5 video.  This is a good price for an Airplay speaker, even though it’s just Airplay 1. That said I wish it didn’t turn off—I’d like to be able to Airplay to this speaker without first having to basically boot it up. I understand a battery-powered device shutting down but this is not necessary when it’s plugged in. It takes a very long time to boot up as the attached video illustrates.

With one small caveat, I love this product. I bought three of them to sync together and use together for my small outdoor wedding in October. The cost for all three equaled what I would spend to rent (delivered, set-up, return) a couple of speakers and then I get to keep them. The app is very intuitive and I was able to sync all three without opening the instructions. I had a couple of questions after a day or so (get to that in a sec) so I called the company to chat. I was first helped by the woman that answered the phone. She was helpful and knowledgeable and when my questions got too detailed for her, she put me in touch with a guy that had helped with the app design. He was awesome. Helpful, knowledgeable, open to suggestion. The sound is robust and I just have the cubes. So far, the only downside that I see with these speakers is that if I don't play them for 30 minutes, they shut themselves off and they all have to be physically turned back on, on each unit to use again. You can link up to 8 ( I have three) so this can be a pretty big drawback. I discussed this with the gentleman on the phone and he admitted that he also had these in his house and it really was an issue. Hopefully an update will be made to the app soon to allow you to turn these back on through the app. Hey guys, if you could do that by the end of October, that would be awesome because I plan on putting one of these speakers up in a tree for the evening. Thanks!

When using the app there are only four services you can use (as of 16 Sept 17): TuneIn, iHeartRadio, Spotify, and TIDAL. The product description lists 8 services and then says "and more". I was planning on using Pandora and GooglePlay. Neither are supported but Pandora was explicitly listed in the product description. I thought it would at least be able to capture native audio and output that to the speaker. You can only do that with bluetooth or line-in. So what i really bought was an expensive portable bluetooth speaker. It's nice. It sounds nice. Construction quality is good. But the main feature of using wifi and app to play music is misleading. You simply cannot unless you use one of the four services i mentioned or you download all your music locally to your phone.

I originally bought two Varo SIDEKICK speakers for Travel, and they are spectacular for that. I have rocked hotel rooms from Bangor to Honolulu with these. They would also make good home speakers for small rooms. I have since purchase multiple sets of all of the Varo WiFi Speakers, and i personally have nothing but praise for them.I really love the Varo line of WiFi speakers. They are much less expensive than the "other" high priced brand, yet they perform well. I don't bother with Bluetooth on these, only WiFi. I laugh when I see bad reviews because that only means people are NOT reading the specs well enough on how these are designed to work. YOU NEED A WIFI NETWORK AND AN iPHONE or iPAD for these to really PERFORM! Yes, they can work with an Droid with the App, but that limits the variety of music streams you can use these with. With an iPhone or iPad, you can stream via AIRPLAY ANYTHING FROM YOUR PHONE TO THESE AS LONG AS YOU HAVE A WIFI NETWORK.When I travel, I can't always rely on the Hotel Network because some require you to go to a LOGIN page and put in credentials to get on the WiFi Network. These kind of networks will NOT work with these because the speakers themselves have to be on the network to work. The App walks you through putting each speaker on the network. You need the kind of WiFi network where there is simply a password and not an additional login page, then you are set. If I get to a hotel that has that funky extra login page, I just use a Droid phone I have with Hotspot and that becomes the WiFi network and then I use my iPhone to control them on the Hotspot network. At home, no problem. You just put in your WiFi Password in the App and off you go.The sound of these is fantastic for their size, and I really like the fact that you can have TWO stream in TRUE STEREO. Love that.The Varo Vibe and Cube sound a bit better, but you really can't travel with these, so I have the Cube and Vibe at home. And I have the Varo Subwoofer Towers on my Cubes at home for amazing streaming.You can use Bluetooth if WiFi is not available, but that defeats the purpose of lossless streaming in stereo. I have sets of Varo all through my home and stream (up to 8 at once) all through my home.I love these speakers.

On the positive side: The set up was pretty easy and it is really nice to have the same source playing on multiple speakers in different rooms.The negatives: Mediocre sound, I have the vibe and water resistant speaker and neither one performs as well as my Sony X5 bluetooth speaker. The sound isn't bad, just not great. They take awhile to connect to your wifi network which is annoying because as others have said they disconnect after 30 minutes of no output. Watching video with these is a no go, there is a major audio sync issue due to the wifi connection, it might work over bluetooth though. I have had occasional connection interruptions but not excessive.The biggest disappointment though was that they can't play directly from Apple Music, Amazon Music, Pandora, Google Play, or even Soundcloud; it has to go through AirPlay on your phone/computer. That means that you can't take calls, watch YouTube videos, or even browse the internet (thanks to the ads with audio that a lot of sites are using now) without interrupting your music. That was the major reason I bought these and I'm still left using multiple devices. :(It looks like you can stream directly from Spotify, Tidal, TuneIn, iHeartRadio, and Napster but I don't use any of those and I'm not willing to pay for another subscription service and start over on my customized stations just to use these speakers.