TechRadar Verdict
The Denon Home 150 is an unremarkable-looking speaker, it's true, but it offers a plethora of listening options along with respectable smart speaker credentials to present a compelling package – especially if space is tight.
Pros
- +
Good quality sound
- +
Alexa built-in
- +
Useful network connectivity
Cons
- -
You need two to get the best from it
- -
Too many features for some users
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Denon Home 150: Two-minute review
A familiar name in the realms of audio and home cinema, Denon is out to take aim at Sonos with its three-strong Home speaker range. The Denon Home 150 is the cheapest of the trio available right now, but it packs a decent punch for the price.
Before you get too excited, it's not exactly cheap for a smart speaker, but the Denon Home 150 offers you plenty of options while keeping things simple.
A mono speaker, it offers dual-band Wi-Fi connectivity along with a physical Ethernet socket, as well as a USB-A slot for plugging in your hard drive or USB stick. There's also a minijack analog input as well. The only useful extra missing here is optical digital input, but something has to go on a smart speaker priced at $249/£219.
Such variety continues with its app options. Via the HEOS app, you can connect quickly to Spotify, TuneIn Radio, Amazon Music, Deezer, Napster, Soundcloud, Tidal and other services, with the app adjusting according to your location.
Neat touches come from the ability to set up playlists across all sources, as well as to use Google Assistant or Alexa to control things using your voice. The app is a little simplistic looks-wise, but it has all the essentials and its aesthetic makes its features more easily accessible – including EQ settings and other customization tools.
Setup is pretty quick, barring one hiccup we had when updating the Denon Home 150, and in no time at all we’re ready to listen.
The Denon Home 150 sounds reasonably meaty too. The soundstage is pretty wide for such a device, although we did wonder what it would be like with two speakers. Besides punchy bass at higher volumes, you also get smooth mids and relaxed trebles. A bit of zing would have been nice here at the top end, but crank up the volume and you'll look past that.
This is a speaker that wants to merge subtly in with your lounge decor, but it’ll also work well in the kitchen. If you want a small speaker that doesn't steal focus yet offers decent playback, the Denon Home 150 is one to look into.
Some of its options will be overkill if you simply want something to stream music from your phone, but it's nice to have such flexibility. Being able to dip into your NAS drive's collection won't be necessary for all, but if you're one of those people, it's vital.
Through the HEOS app, you'll also be able to control multiroom playback with the idea being that you formulate your own ecosystem of Denon Home speakers across the house, leaving you in control wherever you are.
Ultimately, the Denon Home 150 is a lot more fun than your average smart speaker even if its sound quality doesn't match the likes of the Sonos One. For a tech fan, slightly weaker sound quality in exchange for so much tweaking and app potential means the Denon Home 150 is a great alternative.
Denon Home 150: Price and release date
- Available in the UK, USA and Australia
- Priced at $249/£219/AU$340
- Released in 2020
The Denon Home 150 was released back in 2020 but it's held steady with its price of $249/£219/AU$340. At the time of writing, you can buy it for £189 direct from Denon UK with similar third-party discounts, while the price is pretty steady in the US.
It's available in either black or white.
Denon Home 150: Design and features
- Requires plug-in power
- Proximity sensor based controls up top
- So many music options
For such a bijou unit (at 18.7cm high, it’s just 4.5cm taller than Apple’s original HomePod), there's a lot going on with the Denon Home 150. On the top of the speaker is its control panel. Charmingly, the surface goes dark when it's not in use, with a proximity sensor spotting when you're near. The buttons include play/pause, volume controls, and quick selection buttons which you can assign as needed.
On the back of the speaker is a manual Connect button, an Ethernet port, USB-A port, 3.5mm aux input, Bluetooth pairing button, and the socket for the power cable. You can wall mount it too.
A small status light resides at the bottom. Blue demonstrates it's ready for action, orange denotes an update and green is for Bluetooth pairing mode. Use the voice assistant and a blue streak appears up top to show you're being listened to.
The Denon Home 150’s features keep growing when you check out the in-app side of things, too. While the HEOS app isn't exactly stylish, it is full of functionality. It provides integrations to a string of music streaming services including Amazon Music, Spotify, Tidal, and many others. There's also multi-room control if you have multiple HEOS speakers in your home, so the app works as the remote you may have been surprised not to find in the box.
There's also AirPlay 2 and voice assistant support. The latter is just as responsive as you'd expect from a dedicated solution, so it's useful. Being able to set up your own playlists across multiple services as well as opting to import music from your home network or an external hard drive is also useful and pretty simple to do.
Ultimately, the Denon Home 150 does mostly everything you could want or need, even if the app could do with a few homely touches or even a tutorial or two.
- Features score: 4/5
Denon Home 150: Sound quality
- Mono speaker
- Good quality sound even at high volume
- Strong bass
The Denon Home 150 is a small speaker so in an ideal world, you'll need to pair it up with another or even a subwoofer and soundbar to get a truly room filling experience. Despite that, its small form works well in a living room, kitchen or even bathroom.
Starting out, the HEOS app asks where the speaker will be placed, adjusting its sound slightly whether you've placed it against a wall or if it's out in the open. Stick with it and you get a fairly rich and crisp experience.
Bass is powerful even at lower volumes during Foo Fighters' All My Life and Muse's Hysteria, which crashes through the room with aplomb.
Crank up the volume and you don't miss out on crispness either, with distortion simply not happening. While this isn't the loudest of speakers around, it beats much of the competition at this size. The downside? You may find the need to adjust the volume depending on what you're listening to.
Switching between a bass-heavy and vibrant track to something more zingy like Childish Gambino's Feels Like Summer leaves you wanting to adjust the volume to not be overwhelmed, but stick with the same genre throughout and this becomes less of an issue. Manic Street Preachers' Everything Must Go proves a perfect example of how exciting listening through the Denon Home 150 can be. Switching to something crisper like John Legend’s All of Me works just as well, while The Beach Boys’ God Only Knows is full of wistful contemplation, just as it should be.
- Sound quality score: 4/5
Denon Home 150: Value
- Plenty of features
- Ideal for home environment
The Denon Home 150 is both a good starting product for your home entertainment setup and an effective speaker in its own right. There are alternatives out there but the Denon Home 150 keeps things simple.
It has a straightforward app and plenty of ways to connect to other devices and services, all while looking the part in your home. Reliability feels like its focus here, although it doesn't always shine at one thing.
- Value score: 4/5
Denon Home 150: Should I buy it?
| Attributes | Notes | Rating |
|---|---|---|
| Design and features | A lot of perks for the money in a petite package | 4/5 |
| Sound quality | Not afraid to go low – because it won't distort easily | 4/5 |
| Value | More a jack of all trades than a master of one, but that's not necessarily a bad thing | 4/5 |
Buy it if…
Don't buy it if…
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- First reviewed: September 2022
- How we test: explore TechRadar's review guarantee
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