Best Wireless Speakers for Your Office
Great-sounding models from Amazon, Apple, Audio Pro, Bose, Edifier, and Sonos provide music to work by
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Whether you’re working from home or traveling to the office, try adding music to your workday. Research studies suggest that listening to tunes while you work can brighten your mood while boosting your productivity and creativity. If all of that sounds good—or you simply want to listen to Meryl Streep’s cover of “The Winner Takes It All” while crafting your PowerPoint pitch—a good speaker can be a solid investment for your workspace.
The most important requirement for a work speaker is that it sound good. A grating, annoying midrange—the tones where you hear vocals and most instruments—might not be a deal breaker in a portable speaker that you take to the beach, but if you’re listening for hours at a stretch every day, any sonic flaw will annoy you.
On the other hand, while speakers designed for home use might need to fill a large family room or even a spacious patio, most offices are more modest in size. This means your desktop speaker probably doesn’t need to produce a lot of volume. Instead, you want to look for a model that sounds appealing when played quietly and from close range.
And last, styling matters. In many instances, the speaker will end up sitting on your desk, where real estate is precious, so consider a model that’s small. And because you’ll be staring at it all day, every day, it should be attractive, or at least unobtrusive.
“Many of today’s best wireless and smart speakers work well in an office or home office environment because they offer impressive sound in a small and simple package,” says Nish Suvarnakar, Consumer Reports’ analyst for the home audio market.
The roundup below—a collection of both wireless Bluetooth and smart speakers—includes stylish, good-sounding models that perform well in CR’s labs. Our testers have evaluated each one for ease of use, versatility, and, most of all, sound quality. The ratings for wireless speakers and smart speakers are slightly different, so you shouldn’t compare the Overall Scores between the two categories. And all our test samples are bought at full retail—no freebies for us.
If you like the idea of having Alexa as your workday companion, the latest version of the Amazon Echo is a solid option. The model’s orblike styling is attractive enough and, more important, the latest Amazon Echo also sounds significantly better than its predecessor. Our testers report that it has strong but slightly boomy bass and enough volume to fill a midsized room.
But if you can expand your budget a bit, the Amazon Echo Studio sounds significantly better, with powerful bass and a clean midrange. When playing Dolby Atmos and 3D audio content, our testers report, the Studio can throw a spacious sound field that can truly fill a room.
If your desk looks a little like an outpost of an Apple Store, with your iPhone, iPad, and AirPods charging next to your MacBook, the latest Apple HomePod smart speaker might make an ideal office companion.
Like the original HomePod, the second-generation model interfaces seamlessly with the rest of the Apple ecosystem and is a solid option for controlling Apple HomeKit smart home products and services such as Apple Music.
Sonically, the latest version is the best-performing HomePod ever. It sounds a bit like the original HomePod, with a warm, bassy flavor, but our testers find it to sound much clearer than earlier versions, and it can play spatial audio tracks on Apple Music. It also performs much better than the HomePod Mini, which testers find is best suited to podcasts and background music.
If you want great sound in a compact package that’s cool and maybe even cute, check out the Audio Pro T3+. It features attractive retro styling with a wooden enclosure, a slick leather handle, and a whimsical “face” that looks a little like a koala bear.
It also ranks among the finest-sounding truly portable speakers we’ve tested, with a clean midrange, extended high frequencies, and a decent amount of bass impact, given its relatively small size. Our testers find it to be very easy to use, with intuitive pairing and prominent physical controls.
The T3+ has the added bonus of being a portable speaker with a rechargeable battery. Audio Pro claims it can play 30 hours on a charge, which is a big plus if you want to take your work—and your music—with you. If the T3+ sounds intriguing but you’re willing to spend a little more for a larger, multiroom speaker that delivers even better sound quality, check out the model’s larger sibling, the Audio Pro C10Mk II.
With its steely, cylindrical styling, the Bose SoundLink Revolve II hits an aesthetic sweet spot, especially if space is tight. This Bluetooth-powered portable is quite attractive. It comes in two colors and will look right at home in most offices. More important, the Revolve II is only 3 inches in diameter, rendering it unobtrusive enough to blend in with most workspaces, home office or otherwise.
The SoundLink Revolve II features large and intuitive controls that are easily accessible on top of the speaker. That’s important when your boss pings you for an impromptu Zoom call and you want to mute the music without taking the time to dive into a smartphone menu.
Our testers reported that performance-wise, the SoundLink Revolve II is almost identical to its predecessor, the SoundLink Revolve. The sound is easy to live with, featuring a clear midrange, sparkling highs, and well-controlled bass. The Revolve II is also very similar to its larger sibling, the Soundlink Revolve+ II, which provides a bit more volume and bass for $100 more.
If you’re working at home in a spacious office, why not fill it with spectacular sound? That’s where the Edifier S1000W comes in. It simply sounds as good as any speaker we’ve ever tested.
The S1000W, which is sold in a stereo pair, features solid bass, clean extended highs, and, most of all, a gorgeous midrange that’s free of distortion and allows you to hear the instruments and voices in all their natural glory.
When properly placed, equidistant from side and back walls and preferably on stands some distance into the room, the two speakers (sold as a pair) also do an amazing job of creating the illusion that the musicians are right there in the room with you.
The S1000W is more versatile than Edifier’s sonically identical S1000MKII and S1000DB. It has WiFi capability, and you can now stream your music directly to the speakers through Edifier’s smartphone app. It still lacks the multiroom capability of, say, a Sonos system, but if you want to play music with audio equipment that lets you hear things in your favorite recordings that you never heard before, the Edifier excels.
The Sonos Era 100 smart speaker is a great work-at-home companion. The speaker’s small footprint won’t clutter your desk, and it features a clear, articulate reproduction of vocals and instruments alike. It provides solid stereo sound, unlike its predecessor Sonos One, which was a mono speaker. The Era 100 can play reasonably loudly, a nice bonus if you don’t have to worry about disturbing your office mates while you’re cranking Sleater-Kinney.
But best of all, the Sonos Era 100 integrates seamlessly with other Sonos models in your home, forming a flexible multiroom system for after-hours use. That means the speaker can sync the same song in different rooms and even on different floors, setting your whole house rocking to Martha and the Vandellas if you choose. Or you can create separate listening zones: Bill Evans around your workspace and Ariana Grande in a kid’s bedroom, all controlled by Sonos’ intuitive smartphone app.
If you’re on a tight budget, try the latest generation of the Ikea Symfonisk speaker, which is also Sonos-compatible. Or if you want to splurge, consider the Sonos Era 300, which sounds ever better, delivers the same multiroom capabilities, and can play spatial audio tracks on Apple Music and Amazon Music Unlimited.
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