Wren V5PF Play-Fi Wireless Speaker Review
The V5PF Play-Fi Wireless Speaker from Wren Sound Systems offers excellent sound quality and is an elegant wireless speaker solution for your home. The real wood veneer gives that classic yet modern minimalistic design suitable for your living room or home office.
Wren Sound Systems is led by Founder and President Mike Griffin, a former senior manager at Harman International for 22 years.
The V5PF wireless speaker is offered in with real Bamboo or Rosewood cabinet veneers. Underneath the wood veneer the unit is constructed of half-inch thick MDF board which offers a resonance free delivery of sound. The unit feels solid and well-constructed. More importantly delivers excellent sound for it’s price class.
You’ll appreciate the thick 4mm Durometer silicon pad that encompasses the entire base of the speaker for a solid footprint and to absorb any potential buzzing or vibration.
Set Up & Specs
Setting up the Wren V5PF is a snap. Download the free app for your Android smartphone or tablet then plug in the power to the unit. The power button light will begin to blink while the system initializes and will become solid in a moment when the system is ready. Use your Wren Android App to enter your password and connect to your WiFi network, that’s it. Or you can use the 3.5mm jack on the rear of the unit to put a line-in. The unit will operate on any 802.11g/n WiFi network. An 802.11B network can also be used however you can only stream to one device. Wren also offers the V5AP AirPlay version and V5BT Bluetooth version for those who need that versatility.
Driving the V5AP is a Intersil D2 Audio DSP controlled 50-watt stereo class D amplifier. Two 3-inch throw drivers with 4-layer voice coils dissipate heat while 19mm soft dome tweeters create a wide sound field. The DSP or Digital Signal Processing circuitry is responsible for ensuring accurate playback as well as to help control distortion at higher volumes.
On the right side of the unit you will find top to bottom; Power button, Volume Controls followed by a Source Selection Button and Status LEDs for Power, WiFi and Auxiliary. On the rear we find the Power input, 3.5mm aux jack and USB port. You are also supplied with a Remote with some basic controls; Power, Source, Skip Forward/Back, Play/Pause, Volume Up/Down, Shuffle, Repeat and Mute.
Sound Experience
The quality of sound is always highly dependent on your source file of course. That being said, if your network is unstable or has too much traffic you may experience disconnects, so large FLAC audio files may not always be the most practical for some. A 320kbps at 44.1khz mp3 file works well and you won’t notice too much difference in quality since it will use minimal compression.
I have had excellent experiences with both AirPlay as well as DTS Play-Fi protocol in both connectivity and sound quality. Both protocal are able to process lossless audio quality. I haven’t had too many disconnects using both AirPlay or Play-Fi. Play-Fi gives you the added benefit of utilizing additional Play-Fi enabled devices for true multi-room playback using your existing WiFi router! Very convenient and a great feature for your home. (You can multi-room over AirPlay, you will need an Airport Extreme Router in addition to endpoint wireless speakers.)
DTS Play-Fi like AirPlay (requires AirPort Express and AirPlay enabled speakers) can take full advantage and stream your lossless audio. You will of course lose some of your Bass sound being that this is such a small unit without a sub-woofer. But the sound quality is very good for such a compact device and delivers some nice volume, rounded sound with nice punchy bass. Vocal centric music will shine, talk radio and live performance recordings are detailed and clear, POP dance music and produced studio band music will sound great.
The bass is ample and thickens up the music quite well, however do not expect to turn bass heavy music to higher volumes as you will notice some distortion. This is not to say the V5AP is a bad system, it’s quite good. Most sub $400 speaker systems will exhibit some distortion at higher volumes.
On our test unit, we noticed a gap in the real wood Bamboo Veneer and the Plastic coping that holds the speaker grille. This does not affect the sound quality but I would be disappointed to find this when purchasing the unit. We are unable to distinguish if this is an anomaly or a design/production flaw since we have no other units to compare.
Cons
It would have been nice if you could simply use the native music app on the Android devices but it’s not a huge deal to download the free app from Wren. The device will not operate on the faster 5GHz WiFi network and will only function on the 2.4GHz network band. Online streaming media services can be hit or miss over Play-Fi and you may need to fall back on the 3.5mm aux jack. Pandora seems to function fine though. The USB port on the rear does not support audio playback like the V5AP AirPlay version does. I’d love to see an EQ of some sort on the Wren music app to help fine tune certain music during play.
In the End
The classic wood design offers the benefits of wood construction and is able to process lossless audio over DTS Play-Fi for playback without degradation, as well as native multi-room playback functionality with other Play-Fi enabled devices. The Wren V5PF Speaker system is compact enough for your home office and elegant enough for your living room. In the sub $400 wireless speaker dock category I would recommend this unit for any Android user concerned with decor as much as sound quality and price.
It comes with a 30-day money back guarantee and 3 year warranty
Available from Wrensound.com
for $399.00
