Logitech Squeezebox Boom review

The Squeezebox Boom is a well-built audio streamer with front-panel controls and a small remote.

We liked the chunky rubberised dial, which made it easy to enter our wireless password and scroll through lists of content. The large mono display is big enough to read from a couple of metres away. The remote is well designed but rather small and easy to lose.

We were slightly disappointed by the Boom's audio quality. Its stereo speakers are adequate, but mid-range tones weren't clearly defined and the sound lacked power, especially compared with Philips' Streamium NP2900. The mini-jack line out can be configured to output to headphones or a subwoofer but we'd have preferred a wider selection of outputs.

While most of the streamers here use UPnP or SMB to play media stored elsewhere on your network, Logitech's receivers work only with its own SqueezeCenter software, which is free from www.squeezenetwork.com. Configuring the software and the Squeezebox itself is made reasonably hassle-free by a quick-start guide. The Boom has loads of menu options but they're easy to navigate after a few minutes of familiarising yourself with the layout. It prompted us to enter our network settings and gave us a PIN to register it on the SqueezeNetwork site. This isn't much more awkward than setting up your PC to serve media via SMB or UPnP for the first time.

The benefit of registration is that it allows you to manage and play content from a much wider range of streaming audio services than are available to most of the players here, including Last.fm, Live365 and Napster. The SqueezeCenter interface on your PC also lets you add internet radio streams and OPML podcast feeds. It can play a wide variety of file formats, including Ogg, FLAC and AAC.

Despite a great range of features, the Boom falls short of a Best Buy award. Its audio quality is adequate for a kitchen but can't hold a candle to the stunning sound produced by Philips' Streamium NP2900, which doesn't cost much more.