Veho Mimi Qube Wifi Speaker

The Veho Mimi Qube Wi-Fi speaker is a simple solution for distributing audio from your computer to any part of your home or office. It ships with a wireless adapter that also acts as a sound card and transmits all audio from your computer to wherever the little Veho speaker lies. It's very easy to install — we tested on a Windows 7 system and didn't have to contend with any drivers at all.

The Veho Mimi Qube is small cube-shaped device that houses two 1.5W speakers and produces stereo sound. It has power and volume controls at the top, as well as a status light, and it has a built-in battery that can be recharged via USB. It also has a line-in port so that you can directly connect an audio device without using the supplied wireless adapter.

The 2.4GHz wireless adapter will show up as a 'SYNIC Wireless Audio' device when you plug it in (via USB) and it won't affect the configuration of your regular Wi-Fi network — it will only act as a connection between the Mimi speaker and your computer. The adapter's blue indicator light flashes when no audio is being transmitted, and stays on solidly when audio is being streamed to the speaker.

Its range will depend on your environment and what obstacles are in the way to affect the radio transmissions (such as fridges or other appliances), but we were able to stream music from about 10m away without any break-ups. We didn't experience any noticeable problems running the Mimi in the same environment as a 2.4GHz, 802.11n wireless network.

However, we did experience choppy audio when using the speaker in the kitchen. We remedied this by situating the speaker in the highest position we could find. The Wi-Fi channel of the adapter can be changed if re-positioning the speaker alone doesn't improve the signal quality or if you experience problems with your wireless network. Unfortunately, there is no simple way to know what channel the adapter is using.

The Veho Mimi is also a modular system, which means you can add many speakers and distribute sounds to more than one room at a time from the same Wi-Fi adapter — unfortunately, we only had one for our tests. You can only buy the Mimi with a Wi-Fi adapter though, for a cost of $149.

The sound quality of the Mimi Qube's speakers is a little too flat overall — in fact, we prefer the brighter sound of the single speaker-equipped Veho 360 Bluetooth speaker — but it's nevertheless very good for a little speaker and you can always run an equaliser to get the sound to suit your taste (we used it with WinAmp). It does a decent job of reproducing low frequencies considering how small it is, even at reasonably high volume levels. It supplied plenty of volume in our tests and we think it does a decent job of filling a single room or small living space with music. It's not a replacement for proper Hi-Fi, but instead a decent, portable alternative.

In our battery life test using the wireless adapter, the Mimi Qube lasted close to 11 hours. We ran the speaker at just over half volume and switched it off every few hours to mimic real-world usage. This is a good showing.

You should consider this speaker if you want a simple way to stream sound from your PC or notebook to another room — it's an especially convenient way of streaming Internet radio to various parts of your home. It's also a good option if you just want a better audio solution than what you're laptop's built-in speakers offer. It's well built, it looks good and, for the most part, it performs well. It's available at JB Hi-Fi.