Philips Spotify Connect speakers to offer multi-room beats on a budget

Philips has launched two new wireless speakers to let you start a multi-room audio set for under £100, significantly undercutting the entry-level Sonos price of the £170 Sonos Play:1.

The price of multi-room audio continues to tumble. The Philips SW700M and SW750M are two lounge-friendly wireless speakers that cost 99 Euro and 149 Euro respectively, offering some of the cheapest ways to ditch the cables in your audio setup.

For the UK, you're looking at similar figures in pounds, most likely.

Rather than relying on a proprietary infrastructure like Sonos or, to a lesser extent, Pure Jongo, The Philips speakers use Spotify Connect to make a direct connection over Wi-Fi with the most popular streaming service (Spotify, if you missed the link there).

The Philips SW700M and SW750M feature a Spotify Connect button, which lets you carry on your music from where you last left off, without needing to even touch your phone.

Aside from standardising how Spotify can interact with devices, this is what Connect is all about – taking out the middle man in audio streaming.

There is, however, a mobile app to let you group-up speakers in this range for the real multi-room experience.

Philips SW700M vs SW750M

The difference between the Philips SW700M and SW750M is more about sound quality than the hardware that keeps the music coming under the hood.

Where the cheaper SW700M uses two-full-range 2-inch drivers with bass ports to beef-up the bottom-end, the SW750M has a more impressive-sounding driver array.

It uses two 3-inch drivers and a pair of tweeters, providing the sort of setup seen in a pair of small bookshelf speakers.

The Philips SW700M and SW750M will go on sale from October.