Philips AD7000W/37 Fidelio SoundAvia Wireless Speaker with AirPlay

This should be your only review you read for this product and I will tell you why. I am a research nut. I research everything before I buy. I check prices, reviews, manufacture websites, I go into stores and try stuff out. I researched airplay speakers for over a year before I purchased this one. Let me tell you, for the price there is no better. I can't comment on this speaker versus the $500+ ones because I'm sure the high dollar speakers have better components but who the heck wants to buy a $500 speaker...really...really.First - Great sound.....some reviews talk about lack of sound quality, what the heck are these people, sound engineers. I have a large backyard and we can easily entertain 50 people. I put this speaker out there and people were amazed. Enough sound for all to hear. The quality is great. No hissing, pops, or loss of strength. The bass lacks a tiny tiny bit but I just made the music play with bass booster through iTunes and it makes up for it no problemSecond- connectivity ..... This speaker took me about 15 minutes to setup and add to my wifi network and since then there has been no issues. I can AirPlay music from my PC, IPAD and three different iPhones with no issues. I am actually streaming music from this iPad right now and typing this review with no issues what so ever.Third - price..... 114 dollars let me say it again 114 dollars one more time 114 dollars. Ok most of us are looking for is a speaker that sounds good and is affordable. I can't justify spending $250+ dollars on a speaker let alone $500 which are what some makers are asking for an airplay speaker. At this price you can't pass it up I am considering buying a second one just for the heck of it.So to sum it all buy this speaker now. Ya it's not perfect but it sure is close and nothing is perfect anyway

First, I admit that I had a little trouble setting this device up - the WPS (aka quick connect) didn't work after several tries, so I gave up in that. I attempted the manual setup next, and while the instructions made it seem complicated it really wasn't, once I figured out that I needed to hold the wireless setup button down closer to 8 second than the 5 suggested by the directions. Once the light goes blinking yellow-green though, it took just a minute to set it up.Once connected to the home wifi, this acts as a wireless speaker for either your iPhone or iPad, or for your home PC running iTunes. Multiple units can be added to the network - for instance one in each room, for having music play in every room at the same time, and Apple TV and Airport Express work with the same AirPlay system as well. In my particular setup, I had a PC upstairs, an Apple TV downstairs in the living room (hooked up to the home thater) and this Fidelio device in the kitchen. All devices could be set to play the same music using either the PC or using and iPhone with the Remote app to control all three devices, with the option to turn each one on or off and control the volume independently from the iPhone. Unlike higher end wireless home stereo systems, different music cannot be played independently through each unit though - for that I think you have to use something like theThe unit itself is physically pretty small - not much bigger than a hardcover Harry Potter book. The design is pretty sleek, and it has speakers behind the front grill and subwoofer outlets at the back to give it some nice bass. Around back there are also a few extras like a USB port to let you charge your device, and a 1/8th jack input for non-AirPlay enabled devices (i.e. older iPods, other mp3 players, phones, etc). There are four buttons; power, volume up/down, and the wifi connect button. The wifi connect button is probably only ever going to be used once, and the others are going to be used infrequently since the volume control can be handled from an iPhone/iPod via Remote app and AirPlay. On top of the unit is a brushed aluminum cap, which looks handsome but may contribute to wifi reception issues (details later).Overall my setup works pretty well. The music sounds good - not mind-blowing, but very good for a unit this size and its enough to fill a medium sized living room, bedroom or kitchen easily. It is a little heavy on the bass, which does make spoken word programming (radio, podcasts, etc) a little muddled, but it's not too bad. The volume is very loud - I turn it up to just about 1/3 the max on the phone is plenty loud for my living room. The best advantage of this system is realized when you have multiple speakers throughout the house because the sound is synchronized, so moving from room to room it all just sounds like one system, which is pretty amazing. The only fault I can point out with the Fidelio is that the WiFi isnt that strong, so it needs to be placed where it gets good signal. If its in a weak signal area, it will drop in and out, and in doing so cause other devices to also drop in and it as they try to stay synced. If you have good wifi coverage and are not placing this unit far away from your wifi router, it should be fine. If you don't have great wifi coverage, you might want to consider an AirPort Express which acts as a wifi repeater to amplify your signal, and can also be hooked up directly to speakers. But then of course you lose the all-in-one package that this device has, which is its primary selling point.UPDATE: Originally I had purchased this as a gift for my father who wanted music in both the living room and kitchen, and I set it up for that purpose and it worked well. Recently though I noticed that the price had gone down significantly (now around $115 vs $199) so I picked one up for myself as well. I couldn't be happier with the purchase. I might even pick up a couple more for other rooms in the house. At that price, it's hard to pass up.

Thought I had to do a quick review on this item since I posted a question before purchasing, and most people advised I stay away - I have to say I am glad I went through with the purchase, so far so good after two weeks of use - the only issue I have really is that it would not connect to my 5ghz network, which I had especially for streaming - however even on my 2.4 ghz network I have not had issues - I previously had a Airport express hooked up to a home theater which was bulky and annoying, this device sounds better and is much more portable and convenient, and takes up less space, while looking nice. I previously made tons of tweaks to my home network, I have a Cisco E4200 dual band router, before I had major streaming issues even with my airport, but with this new router and configuration I did not have any issues with the airport, and do not have any with this device. I usually have about 7-10 devices on the network at a time, and stream Spotify and Soundcloud with a program called Airfoil on my MacBook, so far I have rarely encountered any drops in sound, even on the 2.4 Ghz network. Connected effortlessly by using another reviewers suggestion of doing the WPS setup. So far I've had to reboot the device once since it lost its wireless connection. If you are on the fence about this device I would give it a try.6/22/13 - Guess I'm waiting for the "I told you so" - all of a sudden started getting some network hiccups, stutters every 5-10 seconds, too annoying, I switched back to my airport express and used the audio in to play the music, so now I guess I can use the built in Airplay at 2.4 ghz or my airport express at 5 ghz, best of both worlds I suppose.