Denon Home 150 NV Black

Since last week I have the Denon Home 150 in my possession. I've had a Sony SRS-ZR5 for some time now. These are no longer available, so it was not possible to expand with them. I was very curious about the latest Denon HEOS line and now have the Home 150.

My first impression: a lot nicer than the previous HEOS line, solidly built and a fantastic sound. But just step by step:

1. Connecting: It turned out that my router didn't have a WPS button, so setting it up was unfortunately not so easy. Setting via the HEOS app or autodiscover is not possible. Connect wired with an Ethernet cable to the router. Then search through the app. Still quickly arranged, but a pity that you cannot enter the SSID manually. The HEOS app is clear and the Quick Start Guide tells you just enough to get it up and running.

2. Spotiy Spotify is my primary music source via smartphone. Start Spotify, select a song, click on available devices and choose the Denon Home 150. Done. What a wonderful sound this thing produces. Tested with Pink Floyd, Metallica, Iron Maiden, Goldberg Variations by Bach, Four Seasons by Vivaldi, Dire Straits. All very nice sound.

3. The sound The sound is clear and well balanced. The HEOS app lets you easily control bass and treble, but I just have it in the neutral position. Even at low volume there is sufficient definition in the sound, subtle details remain clearly audible. And if you open it up just as well, you get the impression that there is more to howling than one speaker of barely 20 cm high. Too bad I only have 1, this really needs expansion.

4. Internet radio Take a look at how internet radio sounds. Select the country, search for the channel and put it in favourites. This speaker can store 3 of them. Turn it on via the app. Then press and hold the button 1, 2 or 3 on the speaker. If the blue light flashes, it is in the memory and the station can be recalled immediately. It's also nice that the display lights up immediately when you come close to your speaker. The keys also respond with a very light touch.

5. USB Just put a few flac files on a stick. You press this at the back of the speaker and scroll through the menu in the app. The USB folders are hidden a bit deeper, but are still easy to find. What is striking is that the speaker reacts very quickly to selecting a track, almost without delay. And here too: very good sound!

My conclusion after the first week: this Denon Home 150 is definitely worth it. What a fine speaker! He really asks for family expansion, I'm so curious about the multi-room functionality....

Final note: Coolblue thinks I should assess the battery life, but it is not in this speaker. I'm not going to give this a low score, that would detract from this speaker.

Beautiful sound! Much fuller and more natural than the Sonos One (put them side by side to test). Nice layered sound, sounds very natural. Found it a bit disappointing at first, but after some experimentation I found out that it sounds much better via Airplay than via Spotify itself (via connect). Controlling volume from your phone is also better this way, so totally great :)

Sonos app is a bit nicer than Heos's, but that does not outweigh the quality of the sound. Also very nice that it is possible to connect a 3.5mm cable to it: in this way 0 sound delay if I want to listen to movies via my laptop (at least that's what I assume, I'll test it tomorrow).

With Denon the sound fills the room (so also very nice in combination with watching movies: a mini cinema experience), with Sonos it comes clearly from that one speaker. I think the Sonos is really much more intended as part of several boxes for a surround sound. This Denon does it beautifully on his own.

And I think the design of the Denon is much nicer than that of Sonos, but that's very personal of course ;)

Connecting to Wifi is very easy on iOS, the sound is remarkably full and balanced for the size, the Heos app is now very usable. And that makes it so easy to connect two speakers to an even better-sounding stereo pair that also gives an already remarkably beautiful stereo image.

But unfortunately this also brings up a major disadvantage, which is nowhere to be found in the specs: if you do that, connect two speakers for stereo, you will immediately lose AirPlay support! So unfortunately it is either stereo or AirPlay with these speakers. Other brands, for example B&W with their Formation series, do this clearly better.

If the sound was not so fantastic and the possibilities for standalone use - without a computer, smartphone or tablet - for internet radio not so good (in stereo on two speakers) and easy to use, that was certainly a reason to return been.

Now I keep hoping that that irritating limitation - of course you don't buy two quite expensive speakers and then still have to listen in mono - will soon be solved in a firmware update. Those updates come quite frequently, so who knows...

Because that would make it an almost perfect set of speakers...