Best AirPlay speakers for iPhones and Apple Music

Macworld

Apple sells two speakers–the HomePod and HomePod mini–but there are lots of different types of speakers that work with iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple TV out there to choose from that could offer better value for money.

There’s a lot of choice with the speakers in this round up offering a wide variety of features, specs, designs and price tags. But we’re here to guide you through the complexity and help you find the best speaker for optimal performance with your Mac and iOS devices whether you are playing music from your library or from Apple Music or another music streaming service.

We look at a variety of speakers including multi-room speaker systems, which are more popular than ever–especially as mobile devices like the iPhone and iPad allow us to carry our entire music library from room to room, or connect to music streaming services such as Spotify, Apple Music or Amazon Prime Music with a quick tap.

Apple users are best off getting a speaker with AirPlay support, and all the speakers in this test offer AirPlay 2 support. AirPlay is useful if you want to stream music from your iPhone to a speaker. We explain what AirPlay is and the features it brings later on in this article.

We’ve tested out some of the best speakers you can buy to use with your Apple products below, so read on to find out which AirPlay speakers are best.

Best speakers for iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple TV






HomePod mini


















Price When Reviewed:

99 €




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€109



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€109 at Apple





We’re putting the HomePod mini in the top spot on the basis of its low price tag, excellent sound quality and deep integration with Apple’s software ecosystem – as long as you don’t mind being tied to Siri.

The HomePod mini can’t match the bass punch of the full-size HomePod, but the output is still far better than we have any right to expect at this size and price. (Just to reiterate, it’s a third of the price and a seventh of the weight of its larger sibling.)

For jazz, rock and classical we were blown away by its clear, rich sound. And while it’s not quite got the welly to deafen your neighbors with house music at 3 am, and you won’t fill a village hall with sound, but it does fill a room beautifully – especially when teamed with a second model as a stereo pair.

Read our full

Apple HomePod mini review





HomePod (2ème génération, 2023)


















Price When Reviewed:

349 €




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€349



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€349



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€349



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€349



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Macway FR




€349



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HomePod (2ème génération, 2023)







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€349



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€349



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€349



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€349



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Macway FR




€349



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If you’re deep in the Apple ecosystem and you appreciate quality audio, this is the smart speaker for you: it will play your music beautifully and make TV watching a delight.

As with the HomePod mini, ease of setup is one of its strongest features–plug in the HomePod and wave an iPhone vaguely in its direction and an onscreen popup (on the phone) will invite you to set it up. If there’s another HomePod of the same model in the selected room, you’ll be given the option to join them as a stereo pair.

It sounds great whether used as a single unit, or as a stereo pair, and it’s a great accompaniment to your Apple TV as it supports Dolby Atmos and Spatial Audio (the HomePod mini doesn’t). To find out more, read more about how the HomePod compares to the HomePod mini.

The main disadvantages of the 2023 HomePod are the high price (three times that of the HomePod mini) and the frustrations associated with being reliant on Siri to control it. We really want a HomePod with a screen.

Read our full

HomePod (2ème génération, 2023) review





Bowers & Wilkins Zeppelin Pro Edition


























Bowers & Wilkins Zeppelin range of speakers first appeared back in 2007. The  Zeppelin Pro Edition launched at the end of 2024 and looks almost identical to the Zeppelin introduced, so be careful to check which model you are considering buying. 

At $799/£699, it’s one of the more expensive AirPlay speakers currently available, but it really does deliver the goods in terms of sound quality.

The Zeppelin Pro Edition measures 210 x 650 x 194mm and weighs 6.6kg. It’s available in a dark ‘space grey’ or ‘solar gold’. 

Unlike many one-piece speaker systems – including Apple’s HomePod – the Zeppelin Pro Edition provides a full stereo system, with separate left and right audio channels, as well as a dedicated sub-woofer for handling lower frequencies. That’s a similar set-up to previous Zeppelin models, but Bowers & Wilkins says the woofers and tweeters have been redesigned for the Zeppelin Pro Edition for even better sound quality.

Like previous models, the Zeppelin Pro Edition supports Bluetooth with AAC for Apple devices, and aptX Adaptive for Android. There’s also Wi-Fi with support for AirPlay 2, which allows you to stream wireless audio (and Apple Music) over your home network from your Apple device. Using AirPlay with Apple devices provides more bandwidth for high-quality audio files. The Zeppelin Pro also supports Spotify Connect, and Tidal and Amazon Music via an app. 

Our only complaint is that the Zeppelin Pro doesn’t offer wired inputs, so you can’t connect it to a CD player or Hi-Fi.

The Zeppelin Pro Edition is one of the larger and more expensive AirPlay speakers. If you want a powerful, high-quality stereo speaker that supports AirPlay 2 this is a great option. 

Read our full

Bowers & Wilkins Zeppelin Pro Edition review





Roku Streambar


























Roku is well-known for its range of streaming media devices, which offer an affordable alternative to Apple’s own Apple TV box. However, the Roku Streambar goes a step further by combining streaming features with a compact soundbar speaker and support for Apple’s AirPlay 2 – and all for a highly competitive $129.99/£129.99.

The AirPlay support and built-in dual-band Wi-Fi mean that you can simply use the Streambar as a conventional AirPlay speaker, using AirPlay to stream music via Wi-Fi from any Apple device. It’s surprisingly powerful for such a compact speaker, and more than loud enough for playing music at home or watching a few Hollywood blockbusters. It even provides pretty good bass too, landing the bass guitar and crashing drums on Kate Bush’s The Big Sky with real impact (and Roku has recently announced a new range of wireless speakers that also support AirPlay 2, although we’ve not had the chance to test these yet).

Going beyond basic speaker mode, you can also use the HDMI port on the back of the Streambar to connect it to a TV or computer display, and this allows you to stream video at up to 4K resolution from your Apple devices as well. You can even get rid of your Apple devices altogether, and just use the Streambar’s built-in streaming features to connect your TV or computer monitor to a wide range of video services–including Apple TV+, Netflix, Disney+ and so on. It also supports a number of music streaming services too, such as Apple Music and Spotify.

Admittedly, the low cost of the Streambar means that it does lack a few advanced features, such as support for Dolby Atmos, which you can get from Apple’s HomePod and also the Apple TV 4K. But, of course, the Apple TV box doesn’t include a speaker, and the Streambar’s low-cost combination of AirPlay speaker and music and video streaming features makes it an absolute bargain at this price.

In 2024 Roku introduced the Streambar SE, which is a cheaper version of the Streambar reviewed here. The larger Streambar Pro has been discontinued, but for now Roku seems to be continuing to sell the Streambar.






Sonos Era 100


















Price When Reviewed:

279 €




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Price










€197.99



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€219.99



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Macway FR




€255.99



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€278.99



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Sonos




€279



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Sonos Era 100







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€197.99



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€219.99



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Macway FR




€255.99



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€278.99



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Sonos




€279



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When Sonos first introduced the Era 100 it was positioned as a mid-range option that sat between the entry-level Sonos One and the imposing Era 300 with Dolby Atmos at the top of the range. However, the veteran Sonos One quietly faded away a few months ago and the Era 100 has taken over as the new entry point for the Sonos range of multi-room speakers, with a $249/£249 price tag that makes it a good alternative to the Apple HomePod at £299/$299.

At first glance, the Era 100 does look very similar to the original Sonos One, with an upright cylindrical design that is available in black or white. It’s slightly larger than the Sonos One, though, standing 182.5mm high, 120mm wide and 130mm deep. This allows the Era 100 to squeeze in an additional high-frequency tweeter, so that it now houses two tweeters that are angled out to the right and left to spread sound more widely than the Sonos One. It also includes a larger woofer than the Sonos One, to handle the mid-range and bass and add a little extra power as well.

This new design works a treat and the Era 100 provides very good sound quality for a relatively compact speaker. The atmospheric harmonies of Enya’s Orinoco Flow have a light, shimmering sound, but the compact speaker has got some muscle too, and is easily able to fill the room around me with Enya’s swirling cloud of sound. The twin tweeters provide a crisp, clear sound for the electronic loops that fly through the air, but that larger woofer can also reach down and embrace the slow bass pulse and rumbling drums that enter as Enya’s multi-tracked vocals chant – “turn it up, turn it up”.

The only minor disappointment is that the Era 100 doesn’t support Dolby Atmos or spatial audio. If you’re a home cinema fan who really wants Atmos then you’ll need to pay a little more for alternatives such as the Apple HomePod or the high-end Era 300. But, if you’re just looking for a compact, high-quality speaker with wi-fi and support for AirPlay, then the Era 100 delivers the goods at a lower price than most of its AirPlay rivals.






Sonos Roam 2


























Sonos’ Roam has to be the smallest and most portable AirPlay 2 speaker we’ve seen so far.

Sonos’s original Roam smart speaker was released back in 2021, and it was one of the best portable speakers we’ve ever seen, providing very good sound quality in a highly compact design that also managed to squeeze in useful features such as wireless charging and even support for Wi-Fi and AirPlay for Apple devices. The Roam 2 fine-tunes a number of features such as its set-up and tuning process, and provides more straightforward controls.

Available in a variety of colors–including red, green, blue and plain old black and white–the Roam 2 looks identical to its predecessor. It is 168mm tall, 62mm wide and 60mm deep, and weighs 0.43kg. It’s not pocket-size, but it will fit into a backpack. It has a IP67 rating water and dust resistance, so it’s suited to the outdoors.

There’s no room for a large battery in the compact design, but it should last for up to 10 hours with music at 50% volume. It needs to stand upright for wireless charging and the volume, playback and microphone controls sit on the top, but you can turn the speaker onto its side and lay it flat. A USB-C port on the back can be used for charging too. 

Roam 2 supports Bluetooth 5.2 and now has separate buttons for Power and Bluetooth pairing, which are easier to use than the fiddly multi-function button on the original Roam. You can press the Bluetooth button to pair via Bluetooth, but you need to download the Sonos app for iOS in order to set the speaker up properly. We encountered problems getting the speaker connected to our Wi-Fi network and had to spend time changing the Wi-Fi settings. But, once that was done, the Roam 2 worked really well. Lucky its support for AirPlay made connecting it to additional Apple devices straightforward.

The Roam 2 offers great sound quality for such a compact speaker, especially over a Wi-Fi connection. It did a good job with Sturgill Simpson’s Sing Along, laying down the grinding, fuzzy guitars that form the bedrock of the sound. On Billie Eilish’s Bad Guy it achieved a pretty respectable bass beat for such a small speaker.

Switching to Bluetooth caused the sound to lose a little clarity–but that’s a limitation of Bluetooth rather than the speaker itself, and the Roam 2 can go head-to-head with any portable speaker of this size and weight. The Roam 2 really punches above its weight when it comes to sound quality and its sturdy and lightweight design is great for outdoor use. 

Read our full

Sonos Roam 2 review





Sonos Era 300


















Price When Reviewed:

499 €




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Sonos




€499



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Apple has been banging the drum for spatial audio for a few years now, but Sonos really took a step forward with that technology when it launched the Era 300 in 2023. Appropriately enough, it also marked a new era for the Sonos range of multi-room speakers, with an entirely new design that was at least eye-catching even if it wasn’t perhaps as elegant as Sonos claimed.

Available in black or white, the bulky, hourglass design of the Era 300 is very much designed for spatial audio, housing no less than six separate speaker drivers, with support for Dolby Atmos when watching films and video, or listening to spatial audio on Apple Music. There’s one woofer and one tweeter on each side of the unit, which provide a wide stereo soundstage, while another tweeter on the front highlights vocals and dialogue, or lead instruments. There’s one more tweeter on the top, which is designed to fire sound off the ceiling to help create a sense of height and space when listening to music or video that uses Atmos.

Like most Sonos speakers, the Era 300 uses dual-band Wi-Fi (2.4GHz/5.0GHz) to connect to your home network, and also supports AirPlay 2 for use with Apple devices and other AirPlay-compatible speakers. But, unlike previous Sonos speakers, the Era now sup