February 26, 2007

The Linksys WMB54G music bridge

Here is a nice little device from linksys that streams music from your computer to your stereo, wirelessly. It uses 80211.g so it has the speed to stream any digital audio you can throw at it and its very small form factor allows it to be tucked away just about anywhere.

One of the things we like about this product right off the bat is that it lets you play anything and we mean anything, since it is just passing music along to your stereo it doesn't have to worry about DRM or any of that nonsense. It doesn't actually deal with the content itself it just sends it over the air. The one major downside of this product seems to be the setup.

While looking at the customer reviews on newegg we saw a lot of people complaining about setting this device up. As we read further we came across this gem under the con section:

Cons: Yes, the setup is impossible. I worked as a software engineer for 5 years. A general IT consultant for 4 years. I'm now going through medical school. It took me 3 hours to set this up properly. ... I would give the unit less stars because of that but... like I said you have no alternative.

The funny thing is this guy still gave it 5 out of 5 stars so that is saying something about the quality of the product. We have found that a lot of these devices that have no interface and are just supposed to work out of the box, never seem to setup that easily. All in all it seems like a nice little device and for under $90 its hard to beat. If this product had been around when I was buying my Airport Express I would have definitely gone down this route. You can also pick one up at Amazon

We will have a more detailed review once we get our hands on one for an in house test.