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We’ve added the OC Acoustic Newport to Other good home Bluetooth speakers, and added a section on the sustainability and environmental impact of our picks.
Using a Bluetooth tabletop speaker is the simplest way to get satisfying sound in the home, and we think Klipsch’s The One II is the best all-around choice. It has a full, clear, robust sound that made it the favorite of our panelists in a blind listening test, and its operation couldn’t be simpler. Plus, the Klipsch speaker’s handsome, retro design should make it a welcome addition to practically any room.
Unlike Wi-Fi speakers, the speakers in this guide require no complicated setup—just pair them with your mobile device and enjoy.
We conceal the identities of the speakers to eliminate bias, then play them at matched levels for a panel of experts.
We’ve tested every speaker we can find in this category, from big-bass powerhouses to softball-sized minis.
We put our top picks (and many other models) through hundreds of hours of testing to make sure they hold up under normal use.
The One II is small and simple, it sounds better than its competitors, and its tasteful styling should please everyone.
*At the time of publishing, the price was $171.
With Klipsch’s The One II, you get good sound in a small, stylish package. In our blind listening tests, it produced clearer, more natural-sounding vocals than the other Bluetooth speakers we tested, and it delivered plenty of bass, too. The One II’s retro look is handsome and tasteful, so it suits practically any decor. Bluetooth pairing is simple, and the One II, with nothing but an on/off switch, a volume control, and an input selector, is one of the simplest audio systems you can buy. The One II is great for getting good sound in your home without the complexities that Wi-Fi speakers bring.
The Högtalare has a big, full sound and a minimalist but stylish design.
May be out of stock
The Morel Högtalare looks like a collaboration between a skilled acoustical engineer and a modern furniture designer—and perhaps it was. The simple fabric grille, available in four colors, conceals a big (for a Bluetooth speaker) 6-inch woofer that puts out room-filling bass, plus two fabric dome tweeters of the same type found in many high-end speakers. It produces an even, natural sound that works with everything from R&B to country to classical, and it doesn’t require (or even offer) an app for adjustments. It can sit on a shelf, hang on a wall, or fit perfectly into IKEA’s Kallax and Expedit shelving systems. But it’s roughly twice the size of Klipsch’s The One II and costs more.
The Woburn II plays much louder and produces more bass than the smaller tabletop speakers we tested, but it costs a lot more.
*At the time of publishing, the price was $500.
The Marshall Woburn II is the muscle car of Bluetooth speakers, with dual woofers that produce powerful bass and a sound that’s robust enough to get a dozen people dancing. It also has convenient, top-mounted volume, bass, and treble controls that make it easy to adjust the sound to your liking. The Woburn II is much pricier and about three times the size of Klipsch’s The One II, but if you want sound that’s powerful enough to fill an entire loft space, this is the Bluetooth speaker to get.
The One II is small and simple, it sounds better than its competitors, and its tasteful styling should please everyone.
*At the time of publishing, the price was $171.
The Högtalare has a big, full sound and a minimalist but stylish design.
May be out of stock
The Woburn II plays much louder and produces more bass than the smaller tabletop speakers we tested, but it costs a lot more.
*At the time of publishing, the price was $500.
I’ve been reviewing audio gear professionally since 1990, having worked as an editor or writer for SoundStage, Sound & Vision, Home Theater Review, Home Theater Magazine, and numerous other publications. In that time, I’ve conducted and published more blind tests of audio products than any other journalist in the world. I’ve tested somewhere around 400 wireless speakers. I’m also an active musician, playing double bass with several jazz groups in the Los Angeles area, so I have a pretty good idea of what musical instruments are supposed to sound like.
Three additional listeners helped me with this guide. One was Lauren Dragan, Wirecutter senior staff writer and headphones editor, who has served as a panelist on most of the wireless-speaker tests we’ve done. The others were LeRena Major, a saxophonist who’s held several jobs in the music industry and is a voting member of the Recording Academy (formerly the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, or NARAS), and Dan Gonda, who plays saxophone, clarinet, and flute in my group Tonic Trio and many other Los Angeles–based jazz and R&B ensembles.
A Bluetooth tabletop speaker is perfect for someone who wants to enjoy higher-quality audio in their home in the simplest way possible, and for someone who doesn’t intend to move the speaker around often or use it outdoors. Since Bluetooth is included in all smartphones and tablets and in most newer laptops, you don’t have to worry about compatibility issues between these sources and your chosen speaker, and you don’t have to load any additional apps onto your phone, as you do with Sonos, Alexa, and other Wi-Fi–based speakers. Because you don’t need to connect the speaker to a Wi-Fi network, you’ll have no problem getting one of these speakers to work in places where network access is tightly controlled, such as in an office or a college dorm. Your guests can easily pair their phones with your speaker to play their favorite tunes, too. (Whether that’s an advantage or a disadvantage is your call.)
The pairing process is usually simple and intuitive; I’ve tested more than 500 Bluetooth devices, and I’ve found only four or five for which I needed to consult the manual to pair them with my phone. This ease of use is why I do most of my home listening with Bluetooth speakers, even though I have many Wi-Fi–based wireless speakers on hand.
Because the speakers featured here are all-in-one designs, they don’t deliver the big, enveloping sound of separate stereo bookshelf speakers or computer speakers (though two of our picks can be paired with a second speaker to work that way). But they also don’t require complicated, unsightly speaker cables or additional components.
The Q Acoustics 3020i is our favorite pair of passive bookshelf speakers, while the Edifier S1000MKII is a great choice if you need a powered speaker set.
The big downside of Bluetooth is that it was originally designed to work at close range, in only one room. You can find a few Bluetooth speakers that let you play sound from one phone on two speakers in adjacent rooms, but, judging from our experience, that feature is rarely useful. Although most Bluetooth speakers require you to keep the source device within about 30 feet of the speaker, our picks have enough range that the sound probably won’t drop out if you walk around an average-size suburban house with the phone in your pocket.
Another downside of Bluetooth is that in most cases it slightly degrades sound quality. (The only exception is when your streaming service, your phone/tablet, and your speaker all support the same Bluetooth audio codec, in which case Bluetooth shouldn’t affect the sound quality.) However, to hear that degradation, you’d probably need a good set of stereo speakers or headphones, and even then you might not notice it.
One final caveat: Bluetooth creates latency, typically delaying audio by about one-fifth of a second. This could be enough to create lip-sync errors when you’re watching TV or playing video games, although that depends on how much latency your video display has. If you do experience lip-sync errors, all of the speakers featured in this guide include an analog audio input, which can be used to bypass Bluetooth and effectively eliminate the latency.
If you want to create a speaker system that covers more than one room, check out our guides to Wi-Fi–based speakers, including the best multiroom wireless speaker system, the best Alexa speaker, and the best Google Home speaker. Note that many Wi-Fi–based speakers also include Bluetooth, and that the benefits of Wi-Fi speakers (including multiroom operation and, often, voice-command functions) may come at little or no extra cost, versus a Bluetooth-only speaker. Even if you don’t want to deal with Wi-Fi setup, you can ignore the Wi-Fi functions and simply use these models as Bluetooth speakers. So you may find them to be more appealing purchases than the Bluetooth-only models we feature here.
The choice between a smart speaker and a Bluetooth speaker depends on your lifestyle and your listening habits.
Another option worth considering is a Bluetooth-equipped soundbar. Although soundbars are long and thin, designed to sit under TV sets, many of them sound good with music. Their internal speakers are spread farther apart, so the stereo effect is better than with a single tabletop Bluetooth speaker. And many soundbars include a subwoofer, which may deliver louder and deeper bass than most home Bluetooth speakers can produce.
We use the following criteria to help us decide which home Bluetooth speakers to call in for testing:
The UE Wonderboom 2 is the all-around best portable Bluetooth speaker because it sounds good and looks cool, and it’s the most rugged model we’ve ever tested.
We began our research by surveying online retailers, reviews, and product announcements to see what new models were available. We also looked through the comments on the previous version of this guide to see whether Wirecutter readers had requested any models we hadn’t tested before. Dedicated Bluetooth-only tabletop speakers are becoming increasingly less common as Wi-Fi speakers grow in popularity, so for our most recent update in fall 2021, we’ve added only a couple of new products that fit this category (although just barely).
In the course of testing for the original version of this article and five updates, we’ve tested 37 different speakers in total.
I started by putting the speakers through a few days of casual use, just to make sure they had no annoying operational flaws that would prevent us from recommending them. I then spent several hours comparing them—first at matched levels, then by cranking them way up, turning them down, messing with their controls, and getting the full picture of what they could do.
Next, I conducted separate brand-concealed tests for each of our panelists. I concealed all the speakers behind thin black fabric, then matched the playback levels using the Dolby-mandated test noise signal recorded from a Denon receiver. This is a “shaped” noise tone that focuses mostly on midrange, and it does a great job of making speakers sound comparably loud even when some have more bass than others. I streamed the music of each panelists’ choice from Qobuz, using my Samsung Galaxy S9 smartphone. The music ranged from light pop, such as James Taylor’s “Shower the People,” to the woofer-punishing hip-hop of Kanye West’s “Love Lockdown.” At the end of the tests, I polled the panelists to get their preferences, and then I revealed the speakers’ identities so that the panelists could opine on the models’ design and controls.
During these tests, we paid particular attention to:
Finally, I ran a few more tests to get an idea of each speaker’s Bluetooth range and maximum volume, although all of these speakers should deliver enough of both for most listeners.
The One II is small and simple, it sounds better than its competitors, and its tasteful styling should please everyone.
*At the time of publishing, the price was $171.
In many ways, Klipsch’s The One II is the audio system most people want—one that sounds good and looks good, and that’s super-simple to use. The One II plays loud enough to fill a medium-size room, and it sounds clear and natural both with voices and with musical instruments. Once you’ve mated it with a phone or tablet through Bluetooth, which takes only a few seconds, there’s nothing to adjust but the volume. It also looks much more stylish and refined than any other Bluetooth speaker we’ve tried (except, perhaps, for Klipsch’s larger The Three II).
In our blind listening tests, the One II emerged as the panelists’ overall favorite. “This one made me sit up and take notice,” panelist LeRena Major said. “The voices sounded the clearest, and the bass sounded punchy and well-defined, not boomy.” Dan Gonda agreed, describing the sound as “crisp and balanced,” and my listening notes said much the same. Lauren Dragan was less enthusiastic; she thought the sound was good overall, but she wanted more bass. The One II has no tone controls, and Klipsch provides no app for adjusting the sound, but you can use the equalizer in your phone or tablet to get a little extra bass if you want it.
Because the One II has so few controls—just an on/off switch, a volume knob, and a source selector knob—it’s extremely simple to operate. There’s a 3.5 mm analog input jack on the back, so you can connect an outboard source device, such as a laptop, a TV, or an Amazon Echo Dot.
At 6.7 by 12.6 by 5.8 inches, the One II is small enough to fit on most bookshelves and nightstands. We measured Bluetooth range through one wall at 60 feet, using a Samsung Galaxy S9 phone. This falls short of our other picks’ range, but it’s still very good performance, enough to let you wander from room to room in a modestly sized house with your phone in your pocket. I found that the One II stayed on and paired to my phone after an hour of not playing audio.
One of the best things about the One II is its styling, which we think will work for just about anyone. The retro look, which harks back to Klipsch speakers of the 1950s, gives it both a hipster vibe and a handsome, classic appeal. It’s available in black with a gold and black woven grille, as shown here, or in walnut with a gray woven grille.
The One II has a few flaws that are worth noting. The most significant is that its volume control works independently of the volume control on the source device. As a result, if the One II’s volume control is turned way down, there’s no way to get loud volume out of it, no matter how far the volume is turned up on your source device. If you leave the speaker’s volume set fairly loud, this will not be a concern.
We’ve gotten used to Bluetooth speakers with volume controls for which the maximum settings are conservative enough to prevent gross distortion. But if you crank the One II’s volume and your phone’s volume at full blast, the sound will distort, which makes the bass boomy and garbles the sound of voices. Fortunately, a moderate volume setting on the Klipsch will deliver clear sound with ample volume to fill a room and then some, although both the Morel Högtalare and the Marshall Woburn II will play a lot louder.
One more minor complaint: Instead of having a built-in power supply with a direct power cord connection to a wall AC socket, the One II uses a wall-wart power supply, which could get lost and wouldn’t be easy to replace because it’s an unusual voltage (20 volts). However, most people who buy this speaker will likely plug it in and leave it in one place for a long time.
The Högtalare has a big, full sound and a minimalist but stylish design.
May be out of stock
The Morel Högtalare is one of those exceptionally rare products that both an audio enthusiast and an interior designer can love without reservation. It is built much like a high-quality bookshelf speaker, and it delivers a smoother, more natural sound than most Bluetooth speakers can muster. It looks like minimalist Scandinavian furniture, and although it’s a good bit larger than the Klipsch One II, it fits perfectly into IKEA’s Kallax and Expedit (now discontinued) shelving systems. The grille is available in black, light gray, blue, or red to suit your taste and decor.
The Högtalare sounds pretty smooth in the high and middle frequencies—smoother than the One II, but not quite as vivid. Lauren was a little bit bothered by a peak in the treble that made voices sound a bit sibilant at times, but that’s the only flaw she found worth pointing out. I heard the same thing and wasn’t bothered by it, but my high-frequency hearing is nowhere near as good as hers (no surprise considering I’m male and almost two decades older).
“I’m impressed with the bass—it sounds clear, and it wasn’t at all boomy, even when I played Kanye West’s ‘Love Lockdown,’” Lauren said, referring to one of our favorite deep-bass torture tracks for small speakers. The bass level was just about right to her, but I found it to be a bit much; of course, you can use the controls in your smartphone’s music app to tame (or boost) the bass to your liking.
The Högtalare also plays louder than the Klipsch by about 5 dB, which means it can easily fill, say, a three-car garage—which the Klipsch might strain to do. Like the Klipsch, it sounds substantially clearer when it’s turned down one or two notches below max volume.
The Högtalare doesn’t offer much in the way of features. We did like its button panel, which lights up and shows through the grille, but there are no tone controls. You can pair two Högtalares to get stereo sound, but the only input is a single 3.5 mm analog jack, which you could use to connect an Amazon Echo Dot to access more music sources. There’s also a rear USB-charging output that you could use to power an Echo Dot or your phone. We saw a mention of an RCA subwoofer output on one merchant’s site, but that’s incorrect—the Högtalare does not include that feature.
One nice touch is that you can set it for manual or automatic power on/off, so if you want your Bluetooth speaker always at the ready (even after an hour or so of idle time), it can do that. The Bluetooth range is about 60 feet, tested through one wall with a Samsung Galaxy S10 phone. It incorporates the standard version of the aptX Bluetooth codec.
At 13 by 13 by 6 inches, the Högtalare is a little more than twice the size of the Klipsch, so it may not fit on some bookshelves and it’s probably too big to look okay sitting on a nightstand. But I did love the way it fit into my IKEA Kallax shelves with only about ⅛ inch of space on either side and 3/16 inch of space on top. Because the Högtalare’s woofer, tweeters, and bass port all face forward, the sound won’t echo around inside the shelving unit, as long as the speaker’s flush with the face of the shelving.
The Woburn II plays much louder and produces more bass than the smaller tabletop speakers we tested, but it costs a lot more.
*At the time of publishing, the price was $500.
The Marshall Woburn II is bigger and louder than our other picks, yet it still sounds as refined, and it’s easy and fun to use. It’s more than three times larger by volume than Klipsch’s The One II, and it’s a lot pricier. The Woburn II plays about 10 decibels louder, roughly the difference between normal speech and talking with a raised voice, and it plays about 5 dB louder than the Morel Högtalare. Most people won’t need so much volume, but if you have a large space to fill, or you really like playing your music loud, the Woburn II easily gets the job done.
Our listening panel liked the sound of the Woburn II. Lauren Dragan praised its strong bass and clear midrange and treble. I found that no matter how loud I played the Woburn II, the bass sounded punchy and precise, and voices and instruments sounded clear. However, for most listening, turning the bass control down to the 9 o’clock position makes the sound much more natural; Dan Gonda, LeRena Major, and I all thought the bass was excessive at its standard settings.
Besides its tone controls, the Woburn II doesn’t offer a lot of special features—just the top-mounted 3.5 mm analog input and an extra RCA analog input around back. That’ll come in handy if you want to connect an Amazon Echo Dot. Marshall offers an app that lets you pair two speakers for stereo, and provides a five-band equalizer and several tone presets.
We tested the Woburn II’s Bluetooth range with a Samsung Galaxy S9 at 90 feet, which is outstanding and especially useful with a big speaker like this one that might be used in large spaces. The speaker goes into idle mode after 20 minutes of not receiving a signal; by using any of the controls on the top panel, you restore the power and the sound.
At 12.1 by 15.6 by 8 inches, the Woburn II is too big for most bookshelves, and its powerful bass might rattle anything else off the shelf. It’s best to use it atop a table or to just place it on the floor. The speaker’s guitar-amp styling may turn off some people, but the fit and finish of the product are excellent, and it’s also available in black, brown, or white. The Woburn II is equipped with the aptX Bluetooth audio codec. (A Woburn II that includes Wi-Fi and Bluetooth is also available, typically at somewhere around the price of the Bluetooth-only version or even less.)
If you want a super-affordable, super-compact, super-simple home Bluetooth speaker: The softball-sized OC Acoustic Newport looks like an affordable portable Bluetooth speaker, but is designed solely for home use. It requires no charging and no power supply because it plugs straight into an AC outlet. The only buttons are for power and party mode. The latter lets you create a simple multiroom audio system; the speaker your phone is paired with broadcasts to other Newport speakers, so they all play in sync as long as they’re within Bluetooth range of the first speaker (in our tests, about 25 feet with no more than two walls in between). It sounds like a very good portable Bluetooth speaker, with clear voices, a surprising amount of bass for its size, and about 3 decibels more output (a small but noticeable difference) than the UE Wonderboom 2, our top in the best portable Bluetooth speaker guide.
Many readers are concerned about how the manufacturing, shipping, and normal use of the products we recommend impact the world we live in. We take that seriously too, which is why we’ve asked the manufacturers of all our picks to answer some basic questions about materials, life cycle, and other sustainability issues. While our product recommendations are based completely on the criteria outlined in How we picked and How we tested, we offer this information to supplement the decision of any reader who uses environmental impact as a deciding factor in their purchases. We also recognize that this may not paint a complete picture of a product’s supply chain and life cycle impact.
For home Bluetooth speakers, we asked manufacturers whether the packaging and/or the products use recycled materials, and whether the packaging and the products are recyclable. The former is a big plus. The latter should be a plus, ideally, because most electronics contain many recyclable materials, but the methods of recycling these products may have their own adverse impacts. We asked whether the product’s firmware can be updated by the consumer; updatable firmware also extends a product’s life because it can allow bugs to be fixed or new features to be added.
Klipsch’s The One II is firmware-updatable via USB, but the product and packaging are not recyclable and do not use recycled materials.
Morel said 30 percent of the Högtalare speaker cabinet is composed of recycled material, that the packaging is made from recycled materials, and that “essentially all” of the speaker itself can be recycled.
Marshall’s PR representatives did not provide answers to our questions.
Please note that we do not test Wi-Fi or portable speakers for this guide. For this reason, you won’t see products here from Bang & Olufsen, Bose, Bowers & Wilkins, Sonos, and other companies that don’t offer a Bluetooth-only home wireless speaker. If you’re interested in Wi-Fi speakers, please see our guides to the best multiroom wireless speaker system, the best Alexa speaker and the best Google Home speaker. For portable speakers, please see our guide to the best portable Bluetooth speaker.
The Aiwa Exos-9 plays loud and has an internal rechargeable battery, but our panel thought it sounded somewhat light in the bass and not very clear on vocals. Its equalizer is cumbersome to adjust.
Although the Audioengine B2 sounded nice, it didn’t play as loud as, or deliver as much bass as, our top picks.
Our former runner-up, the Harman Kardon Go + Play Mini, has officially been discontinued and is currently selling for a much higher price than when we reviewed it.
The Kanto SYD has a cool design, with a built-in phono preamp for use with turntables, but our listeners wanted more bass than it could deliver.
One panelist ranked Klipsch’s The Three II the best, but the rest of the panelists felt it sounded too tinny and bright compared with our top pick, the smaller One II.
We really liked the Marshall Acton II and strongly considered making it a top pick, but its availability seems inconsistent.
Our panelists weren’t as impressed with the Marshall Stanmore II as they were with its predecessor, the Stanmore, which was our former top pick. We think the new Acton II sounds smoother and plays plenty loud.
The Monoprice Soundstage3 is a former pick, which we replaced only because its availability was inconsistent. It was one of the favorites in our blind listening tests, and it includes many nice extras, such as a remote, bass and treble controls, and an optical digital audio input. If its styling appeals to you, and it’s available, we still recommend it.
We were curious about the Tribit BTS50, which combines a Bluetooth speaker with alarm-clock functions. While the speaker sounded OK for its size and price, the controls were very confusing; even after reading the instructions and checking the website, we couldn’t figure out how to set the clock.
The Sonos multiroom music platform offers the best-sounding speakers, supports the widest variety of streaming services, and is easy to set up and use.
The UE Wonderboom 2 is the all-around best portable Bluetooth speaker because it sounds good and looks cool, and it’s the most rugged model we’ve ever tested.
Stylish design and great sound make the Polk Signature Elite ES15 , ES10 , and ES30 combo our pick for the best surround-sound system.
The Q Acoustics 3020i is our favorite pair of passive bookshelf speakers, while the Edifier S1000MKII is a great choice if you need a powered speaker set.
For powerful, precise bass in stereo and home theater systems, the best subwoofer is the affordable and compact Rogersound Labs Speedwoofer 10S MKII .
The Dayton Audio SUB-1200 is the best way we’ve found to add awesome (and affordable) bass to a stereo or home-theater system.
The Samsung HW-Q900A is our favorite soundbar because of its excellent voice clarity, enveloping sound, and easy-to-accommodate design.
Roku’s new Wireless TV Speakers are impressively easy to set up, and they sound pretty good—but they’re not right for everyone.
Apple’s HomePod sounds excellent, but its Apple-centric design can feel limited next to other smart speakers.
The Google Home wireless speaker (powered by Google Assistant, a cousin to Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa) offers decent sound and promising smart-home control for Google users.
Brent Butterworth, A Bluetooth Blind Test, brentbutterworth.com, August 29, 2018
Brent Butterworth is a senior staff writer covering audio and musical instruments at Wirecutter. Since 1989, he has served as an editor or writer on audio-focused websites and magazines such as Home Theater, Sound & Vision, SoundStage, and JazzTimes. He regularly gigs on double bass (and occasionally ukulele) with Los Angeles–area jazz groups.
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