Wren V5PF Play-Fi Speaker Review

Introduction

When most people think about serious mobile oriented portable home entertainment speaker solutions, brand names like Bose, Beats, JBL, Sonos and Klipsch come to mind right away. Another name you’ll want to include is Wren, a company based out of Phoenixville, PA that’s focused on blending cutting-edge technology with premium style and design. One of their current offerings, the Wren V5PF Play-Fi Speaker, is an interesting take at the segment since it’s a Wi-Fi connected speaker that supports a medley of music services for Android devices.

The package contains:

• Wall charger

Design

Exciting, bold, and daring. Wren’s meticulous approach is seen from every facet of the speaker’s design.

In a world of stale, rectangular, and cookie cutter speaker designs, the Wren V5PF Play-Fi Speaker is a refreshing change of scenery, as it majestically differentiates itself from the crop. For starters, it’s not like those speaker dock designs we’ve become accustomed to seeing time-after-time. Rather, Wren’s design is bold, daring, and unequivocally striking with its tilde-like shape – and it helps too that it’s constructed from materials that emphasize its premium nature.

Specifically, the majority of the housing is comprised out of rosewood, which is further strengthened by half-inch thick MDF board. Slowly caressing our hand over it, there’s no denying the meticulous effort on Wren’s part to deliver a speaker that has a solid construction. Indeed, there’s certainly a fair amount of weight with this speaker, but it’s an expected result from having such design.

Looking at it from the front, the façade is dominated by the unique internal diamond matrix-grille from edge-to-edge. At first glance, it appears to be solid, but in fact, it has a fabric-like feel to it. All of its physical controls are located towards the right most edge of the speaker – they include the power, volume, and source controls. Potentially a bummer for some, this particular unit lacks a dedicated remote, but it’s something available with the Bluetooth enabled Wren V5AP speaker. There’s a recessed cutout in the rear that accommodates its tiny setup button, aux-in port, power port, and a full-sized USB port to charge our devices. Finally, the underside of the Wren V5PF Play-Fi Speaker is fully reinforced by a 4mm low-durometer silicone pad to keep the unit firmly in place even when its volume is cranked to the max!

There’s no kidding that the design is elegant, but it also extends well into its internals as well. Being the heart of it all, the Wren V5PF Play-Fi Speaker is housing two custom designed 3-inch long throw drivers with four layer voice coils. They are accompanied by a pair of edge-driven, wide dispersion 19mm soft done tweeters, and Intersil’s D2 50-watt DSP-controlled class D amplifier. Obviously, there’s a lot of jargon there that some folks might not be attuned to, but rest assure, we’ll keep you up to snuff about its quality later.

Wren app for Android

In order to reap all the benefits of the speaker, you’ll need to download the free Wren app for Android through the Google Play Store. By now, we’ve been spoiled by some fancy looking music players on several top-notch Android devices, but Wren’s app is a bit elementary in comparison – both in its functionality and presentation. Looking through the supported services, they include things like Pandora, Internet Radio, Media Server, QQMusic, KKBOX, and its own “Music” player.

Initially, we believed that selecting the “Music” player was nothing more than the default TouchWiz music player running on our Samsung Galaxy S4. However, that isn’t necessarily the case, since it’s a totally separate player. Unfortunately, the Google Play Music app isn’t something supported by the Wren Play-Fi speaker – albeit, we’re told that it’s in the pipelines, so there’s solace knowing that it’s coming eventually.

One noteworthy point to mention pertains to Pandora. From the looks of it, Wren’s app somehow bypasses all of those commercials that free accounts end up having to endure after a few songs. Therefore, you don’t need a paid Pandora account to skip those commercials.

Performance

If you’re all about audio, you won’t be disappointed at all by the pounding tones it delivers.

Fortunately, we didn’t come across any problems initially setting up the Wren Play-Fi speaker to our home network. With the faster connection and all, we didn’t notice any lag or delays between our Android device and the speaker. Songs simply loaded and played without skipping a beat!

Out of everything, the Wren V5PF Play-Fi speaker shines for its impressive audio quality. In comparison to another similar speaker we’ve reviewed, the Cambridge Audio Mix Air 100, the Wren Play-Fi speaker performs better at the loudest volume setting. In fact, it maintains its crisp and clear tones without exhibiting any sort of strain or crackling. It’s upbeat and thumping to tell you the truth, so there’s no shortage of heart pounding tones. Quite frankly, the commanding presence of its audio quality allows it to fill up large rooms and spaces – giving listeners a delightful experience in almost any room in the home.

Conclusion

Budget conscious audiophiles need not apply, seeing that the Wren Play-Fi speaker has a premium cost associated to it. At a whopping $399.00 for this specific version, there’s no denying that it’s an investment. Alternatively, Wren currently sells its V5AP AirPlay and V5BT Bluetooth speakers, which are also priced at $399.99 a pop.

When it comes down to it, the Wren Play-Fi speaker delivers the goods with its outstanding audio quality. It’s undoubtedly something we appreciate greatly, since at the end of the day, it all boils down to what our ears hear with its audio quality. Indeed, it might lack the extensive features that some other speakers offer, but the audio quality alone is enough to make it an option to consider when shopping for a high-end all-in-one speaker solution. In the meantime, Android users will have to live without support for the Google Play Music app, but rest assured, we’re told it’s coming at some point – so there’s light at the end of the tunnel for those who use Google’s service.