Samsung reveals 'affordable' Wi-Fi streaming speaker

Samsung takes on Sonos yet again with its smallest multi-room speaker, the $200 M3, set to compete with the Play:1.

Ty Pendlebury Editor

Ty Pendlebury is a journalism graduate of RMIT Melbourne, and has worked at CNET since 2006. He lives in New York City where he writes about streaming and home audio.

Expertise Ty has worked for radio, print, and online publications, and has been writing about home entertainment since 2004. He majored in Cinema Studies when studying at RMIT. He is an avid record collector and streaming music enthusiast. Credentials

Ty was nominated for Best New Journalist at the Australian IT Journalism awards, but he has only ever won one thing. As a youth, he was awarded a free session for the photography studio at a local supermarket.

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Ty Pendlebury

Sept. 1, 2014 2:34 a.m. PT

Streaming music kingpin Sonos last October delivered what could have been considered a killer blow to its nascent competitors: a relatively affordable, and great sounding Play:1 speaker at $199/AU$299. Until this, most wireless speakers hovered at the $400 mark.

Samsung Shape M3 speaker is a compact noise-maker (pictures)

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Well, it took Samsung a little while but the company will finally debut its own "affordably priced" offering, the $200/AU$269 M3, at IFA in Germany. While the Samsung press release will only say it's "compact," little else is known about its specs, although PR images show its gently curving face echoes the company's new Curved Soundbar .

Nevertheless, the speaker joins the larger M5 and M7 speakers as part of Samsung's Shape Wireless Audio-Multiroom ecosystem. Support for multi-room is also available on a number of Samsung home theater systems and coming soon (apparently) to the BD-H6500 Blu-ray player.

Armed with the Wireless Audio Multiroom App users can control a number of apps including Amazon Cloud Player, Pandora, Spotify, Rhapsody and TuneIn Radio.

Samsung is yet to announce in which countries the M3 will be available, or how much it will cost outside of the US. $200 converts to around £120 or AU$215. Look out for more information on the M3 coming soon.