Philips Fidelio Airplay Speaker review

With the world slowly but surely being overtaken by apple products, Philips have seen the huge amount and also impending wave of Airplay enabled products and have decided to produce their very own Airplay enabled speaker.

The Fidelio DS8800 speaker is quite the looker with it’s stylish curves and symplistic design. The sound quality from this speaker really is impressive but did require a bit of audio tweaking in the settings of say your itunes or whatever device you are streaming your audio from.

Setting up the wifi on the device was a little bit tricky so the manual is essential. Once it’s connected though, all you need to do it just switch it on whenever you want to stream audio and it connects automatically. I used my itunes on my Macbook Pro and the music on my iPad to test the Airplay and can say it worked a treat. I did have a few cut out issues but that was more an issue with my wifi than the player itself.

Philips also have their very own apps for iOS devices with the DockStudio app for iPad being really handy. It works almost like a bedside alarm clock, weather and music playing app when connected to your Airplay speaker. It also lets you stream thousands of internet radio stations to your Airplay enabled speaker.

I have to say, I found this app really intuitive and well thought out, it evens lets you connect with your Facebook and twitter accounts to tell your friends what songs or stations you are listening to.

Having used the speaker for a few weeks now, I can say I’m really pleased with the overall performance and the design of this speaker would suit any room in the house. Here are some more detailed specs on the device:

• Width 17.9 in
• Depth 5.9 in
• Height 6.5 in
• Weight 5.5 lbs

• Speaker Type Active

• Woofer size (inches) 130 mm, 19 mm
• Nominal (RMS) Output Power 30 Watt
• Response Bandwidth 20 – 20000 Hz
• Signal-To-Noise Ratio 90 dB
• Audio Amplifier Integrated
• Connectivity Technology Wireless – AirPlay via Wi-Fi,
  Wired
• Additional Features Apple AirPlay technology,
  USB charging
• Features Speaker – 2-way – 30 Watt – 20 – 20000 Hz – 8 Ohm
• Driver Details Speaker : 2 x Woofer driver – 130 mm,
  Speaker : 2 x Tweeter driver – 19 mm

Connections

• Connector Type 1 x USB,
  1 x Audio line-in ( Mini-phone stereo 3.5 mm )

Miscellaneous

• MP3 Player Compatibility iPod touch (4G),
  iPod touch (2G),
  iPhone 3GS,
  iPhone 4,
  iPod touch,
  iPod touch (3G),
  iPad,
  iPhone 3G,
  iPhone
• Remote Control Remote control