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Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott, and I'm here today to do a review of a couple of different
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Bluetooth speakers from the company August. I've actually done a number of August product reviews
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headphones, speakers in the past, and I've been quite impressed with the combination of sound
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quality, functionality, and overall price for them. And so when they approach
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me about reviewing these, I did a little bit of research because it seemed like the price point
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was a little bit higher than what I'd seen in the past. But I noted that the reason for that
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is that these are far more than just Bluetooth speakers. These are Wi-Fi-enabled multi-room speakers
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And thus, the technology on these, the price is quite a bit higher for them. And so I agreed to
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do the review, and I've been spending time with them over the last four or five weeks. And I've really
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have been impressed with what I've discovered. So the two models, the smaller model is the WS-150
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and the large one is the WS-300. As you can see, they're really designed for two different
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purposes. The WS-150 is a more of a portable speaker. It's one that you can easily bring
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along with you. It's light, it's compact, but it still packs a pretty serious sound
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punch. It is rated at 10 watts and puts out a good amount of sound. It also, it also
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has a pretty fantastic battery life to it and the battery playback time is 22 hours
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on this which is amazing and and it takes a long long time to run that battery down
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in normal usage I found meanwhile the WS 300 is more of a room filling sound
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kind of speaker I've set it on it's found kind of a permanent home on the
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fireplace mantel and our living room and pumps out a lot of
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of sound. I love being able to just sit down during my kind of morning devotional time and
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get some music playing. And so just a great for that sense. It's got a 15 watt driver in it
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but cabinet design means that it puts out just a really rich sound. In fact, it's the first
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Bluetooth speaker that I used that has actually surpassed both the Bose sound length that I have and a Sony XR5 model that has kind of been my go for that
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And I was surprised at how much better the sound quality was on this than the Sony, considering the Sony is a 20 watt
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But I think that the deeper cabinet on this allows it to put out a bigger, richer, stronger sound
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Sound quality is really great on the WS300. It's the best sounding Bluetooth speaker that I've actually used so far, which surprised me
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And so it sounds really fantastic, and in a head-to-head, it was easily, easily noticeable as being superior to the Sony that I was using as a benchmark, the SRSX-5
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And so anyway, great sound quality overall. Beyond being able to connect through Bluetooth, and by the way, you can also, they both have an auxiliary end
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and so you can charge them through that means they use a micro USB type port for charging them
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and you know so very easy to find even if you lose your chord you've probably got a half dozen of them for other things already
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you can actually use a USB memory stick and plug it right into the back and have localized music without having to have a connection at all
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however you can control playlist and select what you want to play through the August A link app which is available for ios
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or Android. We'll talk a little bit more about that in a second. And the WS-150, instead of having
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the USB port, it actually has a micro-USD port, and so you can put a little tiny micro-USB card
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in there with local music on it. And so they actually have an incredible amount of ways to
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play music before you even get to the Wi-Fi portion. What the Wi-Fi allows you to do
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however, is to stream music to them from all kinds of different sources. You can stream music either
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from your actual playing device like you might do with, you know, if you're doing a Bluetooth
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connection. You can also connect to a home media server. But beyond that, you can connect to all
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kinds of different streaming audio sources. You know, for example, like title, Spotify, tune in
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Iheart radio. There's even other ones that are of different streaming audio. There's even other ones that are available on the app that I personally don even know about TTPOD Dubin FM XMalia Wing Ting FM and QQ music I don know but maybe that your thing and you able to connect to that
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The one thing that's not part of the mix that I wish was, and maybe hopefully will be in the future, is Apple Music
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which doesn't work right now, and that's the one streaming device that I'm actually
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or streaming service that I'm actually using of those. But anyway, a lot of different options of getting music there
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But beyond that, the August A-link app, which, by the way, is it's actually surprisingly user-friendly and deep, considering it's a third-party app for a smaller audio manufacturer
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But it allows you to do a lot of really cool stuff. You can have these set up in multiple rooms throughout the house, and you can independently control volume levels from the app
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And, of course, over Wi-Fi, you don't have to worry about being tethered in the house. same way as you do through Bluetooth. But beyond that, the feature that I like the most is you
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can connect up to four of these speakers and assign channels to them. And so, for example, you can assign
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one to be left and the other to be right. And if you have those spaced out in a room, the stereo
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separation that you can achieve because they'll sync up and do perfect one functions as left channel
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the other as right channel, or of course, even more than that if you're adding more speakers in
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sound is incredibly immersive. It's really quite amazing how immersive it is. And that's been my
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favorite thing about these, get them set up in the right situations in a single room. And not only can
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you fill the room with great sound, but it's amazing how immersive that sound becomes. And, you know
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it just makes you want to just sit back, close your eyes, and just kind of live in that sound stage
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And it's very cool, as you can tell. I'm very enthusiastic about it. And so overall, I've been
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really like the use of these. And of course, when you get into using Wi-Fi, some of you that are
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not overly techy, you know, you may find that you're going to need customer service a little bit
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more because it does, you know, there's a few steps of syncing these up and getting them set up
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on Wi-Fi. It's actually not hard, but if you're not kind of tech-savvy, it may take you
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a little bit. But once you get it set up, it's really just a matter of kind of turning them on
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turn getting the app powered on and kind of syncing everything up there are the the as I said the app is really well designed If I could offer up some suggestions of what I like to see in the future I would like
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to see a battery life indicator incorporated into the app because with Bluetooth connection
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of course, at the top of your device, you may have a little battery life indicator there
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But in Wi-Fi mode, you lose that functionality. And so I would like some feedback of when the battery is getting low through the app itself
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I would also like to see a little bit more robust music sorting system for when you're using a USB or SD card
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Right now, it's kind of like a long track list, whereas if you're using kind of local music from your device
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it's going to be sorted in a more traditional fashion where it's easier to find that
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Here in Canada, the WS150 runs at $120. Surprisingly, the WS300 is only a few dollars more
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There's often deals on Amazon. One that I noticed recently is that if you buy more than one of these speakers, which, you know, that's kind of the point, really
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You're going to want to use them either for the multi-room capacity or for the stereo capacity
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So if you're buying more than one, you can get 20% off. On Amazon.com in the U.S., the W.S.150 runs 9995
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The W.S. 300 is 119 or 120 bucks. And so I'll throw linkage to both places down below
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And look there, there's often deals to help you get even a little bit better price than that
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At the end of the day, though, these are both very impressive in terms of the sound quality
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This little guy has a tremendous amount of punch, whereas the WS1 are 300, it really is a room-filling speaker
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It has a beautiful sound from it. And so, you know, they're not like super cheap, but when you compare them to multi-room Wi-Fi speakers
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they actually still are very inexpensive. and so end up providing that to me now familiar August blend of having great sound quality
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good solid design, and also a very affordable price. I'm Dustin Abbott
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You can follow me on social media down below. And if you haven't already, please click that subscribe button
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Thanks for watching. Have a great day
