The ever-changing landscape of home wireless speakers has seen the slow, near-demise of Apple's AirPlay, the surprising rise of Bluetooth, and the equally surprising ability of Sonos, the Wi-Fi-based multi-room speaker system, to remain relevant through it all. Heos, Denon's answer to Sonos, is a similar Wi-Fi-based multi-room system, and its entry-level speaker, the $199.99 Heos 1, delivers very solid audio performance for the price. Sonos' multi-room system feels better developed and more stable, though, with a much greater selection of supported music services. So if you're interested in building a multi-room sound system from the ground up, our Editors' Choice Sonos Play:1£159.95 at Amazon remains your best bet.
On its own, the Heos 1$199.00 at Amazon is a Wi-Fi and wired audio system that lacks Bluetooth audio streaming. If you want Bluetooth streaming capabilities you'll need to buy the Heos 1 Go Pack, which costs an additional $99.99 and comes with a Bluetooth adapter and a rechargeable battery base for the speaker. This review is for the Heos 1 speaker only.
Design
Available in white or black, the Heos 1 stands upright, with an angled, rounded hexagonal contour that measures approximately 7.4 by 5.1 by 5 inches and weighs 3.2 pounds. The front face is all speaker grille, and the top panel is home to volume and mute buttons. Beneath the speaker grille, two drivers—one midrange, one tweeter—are driven by Class D amplifiers. This means the Heos 1 only puts out mono sound on its own, though you can set up two speakers as a stereo pair.
The back panel houses a USB port (this is where the Bluetooth adapter accessory connects), as well as a connection for the included power adapter, a 3.5mm aux input (a cable is included, and is actually required for the app setup process), and an Ethernet port (a cable is included for direct connection to your router or networked home). This is also the location of the Connect button, which allows you to put the speaker in various modes in order to connect with the app over Wi-Fi, or pair via Bluetooth with the Heos 1 Go Pack. The speaker is also wall-mountable.
App Control
You need the free Denon Heos app for Android and iOS to connect the Heos 1 to your Wi-Fi network and use most of the speaker's features. Setup is a simple process that uses the included 3.5mm cable and the speaker's aux input to send the necessary information from your mobile device to the speaker. I connected the Heos 1 to our test network in just under a minute by following the prompts on the app.
Like most multi-room audio systems, you can configure multiple speakers together through the Heos app to correspond to different rooms. Every speaker you add to your network appears in the Rooms page of the Heos app, and you can create multi-speaker rooms just by dragging and dropping one speaker over another.
Heos supports several major streaming music services through its app, including Amazon Music, Pandora, Sirius XM, Spotify, and Tidal. You can also play music from your mobile device, networked storage, or even a USB drive plugged into the back of the speaker itself. Most services work directly through the app, but the Heos 1 works with Spotify Connect so you can play music directly from your Spotify app. Sonos speakers lack the USB port, but they integrate any networked storage or devices and offer many, many more music services, including major ones like Apple Music and Google Play.
The major flaw with the Heos 1's design is its reliance on an app that is often slow and adds annoying steps to simple processes like playing a track. The speaker doesn't show up as an AirPlay or similarly networked Wi-Fi speaker outside of Spotify, forcing you to go through the Heos app for most playback functions. There were significant delays when pressing Play, Pause, or adjusting volume through the app—and that gets old very quickly. True, there are volume buttons on the speaker itself (which work independently of, not in conjunction with, your mobile device's master volume), but outside of Spotify there's no way to play, pause, or navigate tracks without the app. The app also crashed occasionally during testing, and had to be restarted.
Performance
On tracks with powerful sub-bass content, like The Knife's "Silent Shout," the Heos 1 delivers a laudable amount of bass response. We've heard deeper bass before, but for its size and price, the Heos really thumps. At top volumes—on both the speaker and the sound source—the Heos 1 doesn't distort on this track, and the general balance of lows to highs is solid.
Related Story See How We Test Speakers
Bill Callahan's "Drover," a track with little in the way of deep bass, gives us a better understanding of the Heos 1's sound signature. On this track, the drums, which can sound unnaturally boosted in the lows, are relegated to the background of the mix, with very little bass presence at all. Callahan's baritone vocals command most of the bass presence—they get a smooth richness in the low-mids that is balanced out by a strong presence in the high-mids, giving his voice and the guitar strumming some treble edge.
On Jay-Z and Kanye West's "No Church in the Wild," the kick drum loop gets plenty of high-mid presence, allowing its attack to retain its sharp edge and slice through the dense mix. The sub-bass synth hits that punctuate the beat get a hefty presence, too—not quite so much that they sound like they're coming from a subwoofer, but there's definitely some added bass punch here. The vocals on this track get plenty of high-mid and high presence; they have a clean, clear presence with no real issues of sibilance or harshness.
Orchestral tracks, like the opening scene in John Adams' The Gospel According to the Other Mary, have a pleasant balance between the lows and highs. Higher register vocals, strings, and brass get plenty of crisp treble presence and maintain their place in the spotlight, while the lower register instrumentation gets a boosted presence in the low-mids. The boosting is not over the top, and serves to give the audio on instrumental tracks a bit more body. In general, the Heos 1 may not be able to dig down to the very deepest sub-bass frequencies, but it does a solid job of providing a strong low and low-mid presence to anchor the mix, without ever muddling things up.
From an audio standpoint, we really like the Denon Heos 1, but from an operational standpoint, it's not our favorite. As far as multi-room Wi-Fi speakers go, the Sonos Play:1 is our Editors' Choice in this price range, thanks to its excellent sound quality and a better app experience. The Bose SoundTouch 10$199.99 at Crutchfield, meanwhile, doesn't sound quite as impressive as either speaker, but it doesn't require a smartphone to play music, and offers built-in Bluetooth support. If it's simply a Bluetooth speaker you're after, the Marshall Kilburn£181.62 at Amazon and the Bose SoundLink Mini II£154.90 at Amazon both deliver very strong audio performance.
On its own, the Heos 1$199.00 at Amazon is a Wi-Fi and wired audio system that lacks Bluetooth audio streaming. If you want Bluetooth streaming capabilities you'll need to buy the Heos 1 Go Pack, which costs an additional $99.99 and comes with a Bluetooth adapter and a rechargeable battery base for the speaker. This review is for the Heos 1 speaker only.
Design
Available in white or black, the Heos 1 stands upright, with an angled, rounded hexagonal contour that measures approximately 7.4 by 5.1 by 5 inches and weighs 3.2 pounds. The front face is all speaker grille, and the top panel is home to volume and mute buttons. Beneath the speaker grille, two drivers—one midrange, one tweeter—are driven by Class D amplifiers. This means the Heos 1 only puts out mono sound on its own, though you can set up two speakers as a stereo pair.
The back panel houses a USB port (this is where the Bluetooth adapter accessory connects), as well as a connection for the included power adapter, a 3.5mm aux input (a cable is included, and is actually required for the app setup process), and an Ethernet port (a cable is included for direct connection to your router or networked home). This is also the location of the Connect button, which allows you to put the speaker in various modes in order to connect with the app over Wi-Fi, or pair via Bluetooth with the Heos 1 Go Pack. The speaker is also wall-mountable.
App Control
You need the free Denon Heos app for Android and iOS to connect the Heos 1 to your Wi-Fi network and use most of the speaker's features. Setup is a simple process that uses the included 3.5mm cable and the speaker's aux input to send the necessary information from your mobile device to the speaker. I connected the Heos 1 to our test network in just under a minute by following the prompts on the app.
Like most multi-room audio systems, you can configure multiple speakers together through the Heos app to correspond to different rooms. Every speaker you add to your network appears in the Rooms page of the Heos app, and you can create multi-speaker rooms just by dragging and dropping one speaker over another.
Heos supports several major streaming music services through its app, including Amazon Music, Pandora, Sirius XM, Spotify, and Tidal. You can also play music from your mobile device, networked storage, or even a USB drive plugged into the back of the speaker itself. Most services work directly through the app, but the Heos 1 works with Spotify Connect so you can play music directly from your Spotify app. Sonos speakers lack the USB port, but they integrate any networked storage or devices and offer many, many more music services, including major ones like Apple Music and Google Play.
The major flaw with the Heos 1's design is its reliance on an app that is often slow and adds annoying steps to simple processes like playing a track. The speaker doesn't show up as an AirPlay or similarly networked Wi-Fi speaker outside of Spotify, forcing you to go through the Heos app for most playback functions. There were significant delays when pressing Play, Pause, or adjusting volume through the app—and that gets old very quickly. True, there are volume buttons on the speaker itself (which work independently of, not in conjunction with, your mobile device's master volume), but outside of Spotify there's no way to play, pause, or navigate tracks without the app. The app also crashed occasionally during testing, and had to be restarted.
Performance
On tracks with powerful sub-bass content, like The Knife's "Silent Shout," the Heos 1 delivers a laudable amount of bass response. We've heard deeper bass before, but for its size and price, the Heos really thumps. At top volumes—on both the speaker and the sound source—the Heos 1 doesn't distort on this track, and the general balance of lows to highs is solid.
Related Story See How We Test Speakers
Bill Callahan's "Drover," a track with little in the way of deep bass, gives us a better understanding of the Heos 1's sound signature. On this track, the drums, which can sound unnaturally boosted in the lows, are relegated to the background of the mix, with very little bass presence at all. Callahan's baritone vocals command most of the bass presence—they get a smooth richness in the low-mids that is balanced out by a strong presence in the high-mids, giving his voice and the guitar strumming some treble edge.
On Jay-Z and Kanye West's "No Church in the Wild," the kick drum loop gets plenty of high-mid presence, allowing its attack to retain its sharp edge and slice through the dense mix. The sub-bass synth hits that punctuate the beat get a hefty presence, too—not quite so much that they sound like they're coming from a subwoofer, but there's definitely some added bass punch here. The vocals on this track get plenty of high-mid and high presence; they have a clean, clear presence with no real issues of sibilance or harshness.
Orchestral tracks, like the opening scene in John Adams' The Gospel According to the Other Mary, have a pleasant balance between the lows and highs. Higher register vocals, strings, and brass get plenty of crisp treble presence and maintain their place in the spotlight, while the lower register instrumentation gets a boosted presence in the low-mids. The boosting is not over the top, and serves to give the audio on instrumental tracks a bit more body. In general, the Heos 1 may not be able to dig down to the very deepest sub-bass frequencies, but it does a solid job of providing a strong low and low-mid presence to anchor the mix, without ever muddling things up.
From an audio standpoint, we really like the Denon Heos 1, but from an operational standpoint, it's not our favorite. As far as multi-room Wi-Fi speakers go, the Sonos Play:1 is our Editors' Choice in this price range, thanks to its excellent sound quality and a better app experience. The Bose SoundTouch 10$199.99 at Crutchfield, meanwhile, doesn't sound quite as impressive as either speaker, but it doesn't require a smartphone to play music, and offers built-in Bluetooth support. If it's simply a Bluetooth speaker you're after, the Marshall Kilburn£181.62 at Amazon and the Bose SoundLink Mini II£154.90 at Amazon both deliver very strong audio performance.
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