WiiM Amp adds affordable streaming skills to your old speakers

Amplifiers with built-in streaming skills will often set you back the best part of a grand or more, which is just one of the things that makes WiiM’s new offering very enticing indeed.

For just £299, this compact box needs nothing more than a pair of passive speakers and it’s good to go – perfect if you’ve got some hi-fi separates that are looking decidedly old-fashioned but there’s nothing wrong with your existing speakers. With its Mac Mini-esque dimensions – the WiiM Amp is a bit taller but has almost exactly the same footprint as Apple’s diminutive desktop – it’ll significantly reduce how much space your setup hogs, too.

Despite its size the WiiM Amp isn’t lacking in the oomph department. Inside there’s a Class D amp that outputs 60W per channel (or 120W if you hook up a pair of 4-Ohm speakers), with a 32-bit ESS Sabre DAC that’s happy handling hi-res files at up to 24-bit/192kHz.

Connect it to your Wi-Fi (or plug in an ethernet cable) and you’re not short of ways to play music through this thing – Spotify Connect, Google Chromecast, Tidal Connect, Apple AirPlay 2 and Alexa Cast are all onboard; it can access files stored elsewhere on your network; or you can use good old Bluetooth. There’s no headphone socket on the WiiM Amp but the Bluetooth works both ways, so you can hook up a pair of wireless cans if you need to keep the volume down.

With just speakers attached the WiiM Amp makes a simple and streamlined hi-fi setup, but you can also team it up with a CD player or turntable (providing it has a built-in phono stage) for those days when you feel like keeping things physical.

There’s HDMI ARC and an optical input as well, so you can hook it up to your TV, in which case the subwoofer connectors might come in handy, and if you don’t always want to use the WiiM Home app to control it there’s a remote in the box that also supports voice control. Alexa, could this be the hi-fi bargain of the year?

Related: Best music streaming services 2023 – Spotify, Amazon, Apple, Tidal and more reviewed and rated

About

Stuff's other Tom has been writing for the magazine and website since 2006, when smartphones were only for massive nerds and you could say “Alexa” out loud without a robot answering. Over the years he’s written about everything from MP3s to NFTs, played FIFA with Trent Alexander-Arnold, and amassed a really quite impressive collection of USB sticks.