VITAL STATS
WiiM Amp £299 / wiimhome.com
WiiM’s new streaming amplifier might look like aknock-off Mac Mini, but it has big potential
Amplifiers with built-in streaming skills will often set you back the best part of agrand (or more), which is just one of the things that makes WiiM’s new offering very enticing indeed. For just £299, this compact box needs nothing more than apair of passive speakers and it’s good to go –perfect if you have hi-fi separates that are feeling old-fashioned but there’s nothing wrong with your speakers. With its diddy dimensions –the WiiM Amp is abit taller but has almost exactly the same footprint as an Apple Mac Mini –it’ll also significantly reduce how much space your setup hogs.
Despite its size, the WiiM Amp isn’t lacking in the oomph department. Inside there’s aClass Damp that outputs 60W per channel (or 120W if you hook up apair of 4-ohm speakers), with a 32-bit ESS Sabre DAC that’s happy handling hi-res files at up to 24-bit/192kHz. Connect it to your Wi-Fi (or plug in an Ethernet cable) and you’re not short of ways to play music through this thing: Spotify Connect, Chromecast, Tidal Connect, AirPlay 2and Alexa Cast are all on board; it can access files stored elsewhere on your network; or you can use good old Bluetooth.
With just speakers attached, the WiiM Amp makes asimple hi-fi setup, but you can also team it up with aCD player or turntable (providing it has aphono stage). There’s HDMI ARC and an optical input as well, so you can hook it up to your TV, in which case the subwoofer output might come in handy… and if you don’t like the control app, there’s aremote in the box that supports voice control.
THIS COMPACT STREAMING BOX NEEDS NOTHING MORE THAN A PAIR OF PASSIVE SPEAKERS
NOW TEAM IT WITH THESE…
PSB’s new Imagine Series includesthreesetsof(relatively) affordable speakers. These bookshelf ones, each with a 1in tweeter and a 5in woofer, are well suited to the WiiM Amp. £599 / psbspeakers.com
They might be the smallest speakers in Elipson’s old-school Heritage range but the XLS 7s aren’t lacking in grunt, with 6.5inmidrangedriversand0.9in silk-dome tweeters. £799 / en.elipson.com
You could buy 20 WiiM Amps for the same price as apair of these retro-lookin
