Logitech Doesn't Let Us Down: Squeezebox Duet Announced
Logitech recently acquired one of our favorite companies,
SlimDevices, and we weren't sure what their fate would be. We actually like Logitech a lot, just when a small company that is committed to making top of the line
audio streaming gear gets bought by a big company we tend to fear the worst. We waited the better part of year, waiting for Slimdevices to release their first new product under the Logitech umbrella. Well man were we pleasantly surprised when we saw the
Squeezebox Duet.
We had wondered where SlimDevices would go after the
Squeezebox 3,a near flawless audio streamer. Well they didn't let us down with the announcement of the Duet. This product seems squarely aimed at competing with the
Sonos products. We always felt that Sonos had the leg up in the overall wizbang look and feel. The Sonos remote is very cool and the fact that you can see album art and song information on a nice PDA like remote is very cool. We assumed that Logitech would just release another Harmony remote that added some of this functionality, we never guessed they would build a direct competitor to Sonos.
The Duet has a very simple and yet elegant design. There is the cool looking remote sporting a 2.4 inch color screen to display album art along with song information. A scroll wheel to move through your music collection and a myriad of other buttons for other functionality like jumping to the home screen or adding a song to a playlist. The base unit is a very low profile black rectangle that hooks into your stereo via the standard digital or analog ports. Everything communicates over a 802.11g wireless network. Even the remote uses WiFi allowing you to control your music from anywhere and removing the notion that your remote has to be able to 'see' your base unit.
You can purchase additional base units and hook them up around your house and they can also stream music from the same source. You can configure them to play different songs or all sync up and play the same song. Another new feature that they have rolled into this release is the concept of not needing your computer to be on and running the server software in order to listen to your music. You can either hook directly up to the SqueezeNetwork and listen to Internet Radio stations like Pandora or Rhapsody or you can store music online in a "MP3Tune music locker".
We can't wait to get our geeky hands on this sweet little product. No actual release date has been announced, but they have said that it is going to retail for $399. We will keep you posted when this is actually available and also expect a more in depth review once we get one in house.
Read More in: Audio Streaming | CES 2008 | Internet Radio | News | Squeezebox
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Posted by David Ficocello at January 9, 2008 6:00 AM
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