Philips Streams In With Wi-Fi Hi-Fi October 17, 2007

Read more Digital Audio , Entertainment , Gizmodo UK , Hi-fi , MP3 , Music , Wireless

Looking disarmingly like your typical mini hi-fi, the latest wireless music system from Philips is hoping to be nicer to your wallet than its big brother, the Streamium WACS7000.

The new WAC3500D Streamium Wireless Audio Center comes in at £300 and sports an 80GB hard disk drive that can handle up to 1500 CDs-worth of tunes. The tunes can be ripped at MP3 bit rates ranging from 128kbps to 320kbps, or as VBR and WMA audio files at 16-128kbps. These can then be streamed wirelessly to up to five Wi-Fi stations around the house or pumped out through the unit’s pair of 40W speakers.

It comes with a handy iPod dock for playing tunes while charging the player and there’s support for USB Direct and it has an Internet radio connection.

Not a bad little unit although it would have really earned its £300 asking price if it had bundled in a DAB radio. Or is that just being greedy?-Martin Lynch

UPDATE: Philips has admitted a slight error with the details sent to us for this product. There's no Internet radio functionality on the UK model. Now that is a shame.

[Philips]

MP3 music hi-fi wi-fi