7 Great Speakers for People Who Hate How Speakers Look

May 02, 2024

Published July 5, 2023

Brent Butterworth

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Although most people love the idea of having access to music around the home, not everyone is excited by the thought of looking at traditional speakers scattered everywhere. At times it seems like the better speakers sound, the worse they look. People often choose to sacrifice sound quality to settle for something their eyes (and cohabitants) can live with.

It doesn’t have to be this way. As wireless technologies and manufacturing processes continue to evolve and improve, it has become possible to build a speaker into practically anything—and to make that speaker sound surprisingly good. Whether you want a speaker that’s completely hidden or one that simply departs from speaker-design norms, there are options.

We scanned the array of lifestyle speakers and called in some to test. Here are several that we recommend.

You can live without speakers, but it’s tough to get around your home without light. So why not hide speakers in your lights? Some companies have done just that, with surprisingly good results.

With a built-in Bluetooth speaker, the Nocturne Cricket solar floor lamp can turn the most pedestrian patio into a cozy outdoor den. With two downward-firing speakers mounted in a large, lampshade-style enclosure, the Cricket produces a loud and satisfyingly full sound—while providing light that’s bright enough to read by but soft enough to relax by.

A solar panel on top charges the internal battery. In our tests, after a partly cloudy day of charging, the Cricket ran for 9.5 hours at max volume with the lamp at full brightness. Plus, it should be safe to leave the weatherproof, sunproof Cricket outside.

Of the thousands of audio products I’ve tested, this is one of only two or three items that had my neighbors demanding to know where to buy it—without even asking the price.

For those who prefer to listen from a comfy couch indoors, IKEA’s Symfonisk lamp speaker is a better bet. The speaker inside the lamp body was designed by Sonos, and it works as part of a Sonos multiroom speaker system, but you can also stream music to it via Apple AirPlay 2 and Spotify Connect. The sound is clear and smooth, albeit a bit bass-y, and the light itself looks great. It’s available with a glass, fabric, or woven bamboo shade, with or without a floor stand.

For tabletops, Pablo Designs’ Uma Mini portable Bluetooth speaker looks (and works) like a designer lamp. Its soft, warm glow provides a comfortable ambience—enough light to locate your coffee cup but not enough to read by. Combining upward- and downward-firing speakers, it produces a full, enveloping, natural sound that I thoroughly enjoyed.

In our tests, the rechargeable battery ran for five hours, with the light at full brightness and the speaker playing at a level loud enough to fill a bedroom. The top picks in our portable Bluetooth speaker guide play louder and have more bass, but the Uma Mini’s elegant looks make it seem more at home than our top picks ever would.

IKEA also offers Sonos-designed sound in the Symfonisk picture frame—which isn’t really a picture frame. It’s a flat-panel speaker designed to look like a piece of art to hang on your wall, and it’s covered with a subtly patterned black or white fabric. (IKEA does offer a few options for artwork, though.)

Having listened to countless mediocre flat speakers during my decades of audio writing, I was shocked to find that the Symfonisk picture frame sounded as good as a well-designed, affordable bookshelf speaker. You can hang it on a wall or lean it against something, and all you have to connect is the power cord. You can also pair two of them to get stereo audio.

Sales of vinyl records keep climbing, but you might be surprised to learn that a lot of those records never get played. If more people were hip to the Andover Audio Spinbase, that could change. The Spinbase is a simple but surprisingly good-sounding audio system that sits under your turntable. So it doesn’t take up additional floor or shelf space, and it doesn’t really even look like a speaker.

Just put your turntable on top of the Spinbase, connect a short cable (supplied), spin the volume knob to turn it on, and lower the needle. The Spinbase has a built-in phono preamp, if you need one. And with speakers on three sides, it sounds almost as enveloping as a full stereo system. It also has Bluetooth to receive audio from other sources, so it might be the only audio system you need.

If you’re willing to pay more for a tabletop speaker that makes a design statement, consider the Zeppelin from Bowers & Wilkins. This high-end audio company is known for its huge tower speakers, which dominate a room and mark the owner as a serious audiophile. But the stylish Zeppelin tabletop speaker, which pairs a striking oval shape with advanced audio engineering, has also become a stalwart in the lineup.

When I fueled the Zeppelin with music streamed through Apple AirPlay 2 or Bluetooth, I was astounded to hear how effortlessly it filled a small living room with music, even on bass-intensive tunes like Audrey Nuna’s “damnRight” (video). With the best classical and jazz recordings, the Zeppelin offers a more-detailed, lifelike sound than I can ever recall hearing from an all-in-one wireless audio system. The downsides: Switching from Bluetooth to AirPlay and back is complicated, and the company’s control app accesses only eight streaming services.

Bang & Olufsen is another high-end, design-centric AV company, and its Beosound Emerge tabletop speaker looks so slim and discreet that visitors might mistake it for a bookend. But the 2.6-inch-wide, wood-wrapped speaker has far more sonic muscle than its stylish looks suggest.

Few speakers have caused my ears to argue with my eyes the way the Emerge did. I simply couldn’t believe that this tiny speaker could so effectively fill a room with such a full, natural, spacious sound. Part of that is due to its Automatic Room Compensation feature, which tunes the speaker’s sound to suit its surroundings.

The Emerge is no party speaker, though. Push the volume past 60%, and the bass starts to give out. But for an office, a bedroom, or a smaller living room, this speaker is great for getting high-quality sound from something that design aficionados will admire. You can stream through Google Chromecast or Bluetooth, and there’s also an analog audio input to physically connect a source.

The recommendations above have confirmed for us that it’s no longer necessary to eschew good sound for the sake of decor. Have you discovered a creative, lifestyle-oriented speaker that sounds surprisingly good? Let us know in the comments section.

This article was edited by Adrienne Maxwell and Grant Clauser.

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