Multi-room speakers are not the new craze at the moment, with most of the top brands jumping on the bandwagon and offering their skills and expertise in this domain. It’s all a part of the effort to win the connected home ecosystem battle.
Samsung boldly established itself in this domain by introducing the R6 and R7 wireless 360 speakers earlier this year. We recently go our hands on the smaller sibling of the two, the R6. Read on to find out what we think.
Design
The Samsung R6 Wireless Speaker definitely stands out in its design. Looking like an alien or dinosaur egg or some sort of space ship, it’s not your average looking speaker. Another factor contributing to its strangeness is that there’s barely any visible actual speakers on it. The build is almost entirely a smooth plastic cover that goes around most of the device.
What Samsung tells us though is that there’s more to it than just a pretty, unique, design. The whole thing is built with one primary function in mind, 360 sound. That is, the speaker sends out equal sound waves across the room in 360 fashion. Unlike the traditional speaker that pushes out sound in one general direction, if this speaker is placed in the middle of room, everyone sitting around it can hear the same thing, with equal strength and clarity.
Question comes to mind here, why would you place a speaker in the middle of the room and how/why are people seated around it! I ran multiple scenarios through my head and couldn’t come up with a practical function for this, except for a more public/open space like an office, gallery, museum, etc. In a traditional more personal environment like your living room or bedroom, people are usually facing one direction, i.e. the TV, PC, wall on the other side of the room, etc. Furniture is usually placed around the walls, not in the middle of the room. Which makes placing a speaker in the middle of the room on a permanent or semi-permanent basis quite an odd thing to do.
The R6 isn’t light, weighing 1.8 Kg, and isn’t small either, 157 x 232 x 157 mm (W,H,D). Which means this is not something you’ll moving or carrying around frequently. This is made to be placed and stay in one spot.
Despite being cylindrical in its shape, it does have a front and back. The front has Standby (touch), Volume, Source buttons, Play/Pause button and a battery button that communicates your battery status. While the back has the power jack slot, a standard micro-USB service slot and a physical power button. The front also has a narrow LED strip that lights up in different colors (mainly blue and red) depending on what’s happening (pairing mode, on, off, charging, full charge, playing, etc.)
Sound
Back to design implying function, the R6 and R7 are built in a way to maximize the ability to push out sound in a 360 fashion. The below illustration provided by Samsung best displays how this is achieved.
With the subwoofer facing downward and the tweeter facing upward, both enhanced by acoustic lenses that create a ripple effect, the result is that the sound appears to come from all around the room rather than where the speaker itself is and we also found there was minimal vibrating. This was observed first hand by us when testing the product.
The speaker sounds great on every level. Deep sounding bass, crisp sounds and powerful amplification were all observed.
I placed the speaker in the middle of the living room, which is connected to the kitchen, and sound could be heard in equal quality and strength at any location within the living room and the kitchen. It was literally as if the speaker is facing all directions at the same time, which is the exact intended result here.
Connectivity
The Samsung R6/R7 Wireless Speaker is as proclaimed, wireless! There are multiple ways you can connect to it and its app provides enhanced functionality on that front.
The most basic way to connect to the R6 is directly through your phone or device’s bluetooth. Just have the R6 on pairing mode (by pressing the power + source button simultaneously for 5 sec), look for it on your music device and pair. Simple, straight forward.
The other way is by downloading Samsung’s Multiroom app, available on both Android and iPhone. More details on this later.
There is no way the speakers can be connected via cable. The only cable that comes with the speaker is the power cable, which is quite sizable and looks more like a small notebook charging cable.
The App
There is no dedicated app for the R6/R7. Instead, Samsung has an app called Multiroom that works across its full range of wireless products, including the R6/R7.
Once fired up, the app prompts you to connect the speaker(s). This is done as mentioned above by pairing. The app provides a few extended functions once connected though.
- Acts like a bridge between the speaker and other devices connected to the same wifi
- Provides volume boost that is higher than what you get if you pair your phone directly
- Can play media files from different connected devices through the app directly
- Organizes which speaker is playing from which source (or all from the same source) across the connected home
All of this sounds very practical and great. Except for one thing, the app is horrible! We’ve mostly tested the app on an iPhone and found it to be quite annoying to navigate and use. We preferred the native Music player to the one provided within the app for many mostly obvious reasons and we weren’t happy with the fact that the only way to get access to that enhanced amplified sound was to either use the app or by manually pressing the volume controller on the R6 itself.
The app crashed a couple of times when searching for specific titles within the library, and the overall music player experience within it wasn’t very intuitive and came with its own learning curve. I’d assume that most people would find this annoying if they’re used to using they’re preferred player/app.
The app isn’t all bad though. It does provide direct wireless connectivity to your TV, enables you to manage the various Samsung wireless speakers scattered around the house (if available and as long as they’re on the same network), and helps you set your preferred equalizer mode/toggles.
The app also comes with a wide range of built in players for online music services like TuneIn, Spotify, Deezer, 7digital, Rdio and many more. Just sign into your preferred service and play directly from the app. While this is quite handy and welcomed, it again messes around with what people are used to using, applying a learning curve for a new app.
Conclusion
This is a fantastic product ruined by an integral part of its ecosystem, the app. The R6 itself performs beautifully. The sound is powerful, bass is strong and deep and the quality is notable.
The R6 and its sibling are also brilliantly designed, standing out from the competition and making it a nice addition to any living room, office or space.
The Multiroom app is great to manage multiple speakers across your home/office, but falls short in terms of managing your music library and in usability. The good news is that this is fixable with an update/upgrade, if Samsung listens to what people have to say about it.
