Samsung is the latest company to try its hand at the wireless audio market, with the newly announced Shape wireless audio platform. The system consists of two products, the M7 speaker and the Hub, which Samsung demoed at a private press event in New York.
The M7 speaker ($399) has a sleek, wedgelike shape, with a textured speaker grille and a plastic cabinet that's available in either a white or black finish.
The speaker can be positioned horizontally or vertically using the included stand and in the vertical position you can pair two M7 speakers to act as a stereo pair.
Setting up the Hub and several M7 speakers is done using the Shape smartphone app, and in the demo it didn't take more than a few minutes to get up and running.
Each speaker supports Bluetooth, NFC, and dual-band Wi-Fi, and with a single-speaker system, you connect directly to the speaker over Wi-Fi using your smartphone.
There's also an Ethernet port on the back of each speaker for making a direct, wired connection. Note that while there is a USB port on the back, it's only used for firmware updates, so you can't directly connect a USB hard drive full of music.
The app looked simple to use during the demo, although visually it lacked some of the polish of Sonos' apps, such as integrated cover art, which I was told will be available on the official app.
The M7 speakers have one more trick up their sleeve, which is support for Samsung's SoundShare feature. It only works with compatible Samsung TVs, but SoundShare lets you wirelessly (via Bluetooth) use the M7 as a speaker for your TV. It's a neat feature and gets rid of one more pesky wire in your TV cabinet.
