LG WK7: Smart speaker with Meridian audio quality

That of home vocal assistants is certainly one of the trends of recent years. The historical audio brands, as recently done by Bowers&Wilkins with Formation Flex, and the OTT of voice services, such as Google with Home and Amazon with Echo, but also all the technology brands that have a dealing with the house in some way.

This is also the case for LG, which populates the homes of Italians with TVs, washing machines, microwave ovens and refrigerators and which with its LG XBOOM Go / WK7 LG ThinQ places a device at the center of the house that wants to act as a hub for control of the smart home.

In collaboration with Meridian

LG has a good experience in the world of Bluetooth speakers, where it has already collaborated with the historic British digital audio brand Meridian. WK7 adopts the most popular design on quality smart speakers, based on a two-way system with midwoofer and tweeter in mono configuration. The power is 30 watts in total. The external design is also very similar to products of the same configuration, such as Sonos One and Sonos Move.

Google Assistant at your fingertips

As soon as it is taken out of the box, it must be connected to the mains via the adapter included in the package, which to tell the truth has a somewhat short cable, so it is necessary to foresee a positioning not too far from the wall socket or the use of a extension cord.

The second step is to download the Google Home app from Google Play or from the App Store necessary for configuring the product. Actually, just for listening to music, without using access to voice assistant functions, WK7 can be used via Bluetooth connection, like a classic wireless speaker.

To take advantage of the potential of Google Assistant, it is necessary to connect it to the home network. Once the operation is complete, it is then possible to manage the system as part of the home multiroom audio.

The physical interface with the device is reduced to the bone: we have 5 touch buttons on the top shell, which allow you to access the voice assistant, to start and stop music playback and to adjust the volume. The F button located in the center allows you to manage the mode of use, switching between Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

Lossless audio up to 24/96

From such a device, you are expected to do two things well: play music with good sound quality and be ready to respond to voice commands. LG XBOOM Go performs well in both situations.

Hi-Res certified can play compressed and lossless audio formats, such as m4a, FLAC and Vorbis, with resolutions up to 96 kHz and 24 bit. Available in black or white livery, it manages to integrate very well in different types of furniture, finding a place easily in any living room.

The presence of two microphones allows a very good detection of the voice to activate Google Assistant and to issue commands. The lack of flexibility to respond to commands given in a non-standard way is attributable to Google and the still poor intelligence.

On the side, there is a physical button that allows you to disable the microphone.

The LG Wi-Fi Speaker app, which provides management tools, is also reduced to the essentials, such as the physical key interface. It allows you to send music stored on your terminal directly to the speaker or to connect streaming services, such as Spotify.

It also gives access to the activation of the two Clear Bass and Clear Voice functions, to emphasize the bass tones and the voices, both in dialogues (or podcasts) and in music tracks. The two functions are not implemented at best and although they give a certain impression of a more effective sound to less-experienced ears, they do not satisfy the most audiophiles, who will probably always keep them off.

Now the price is right

Starting with a list price of $199, in line with a product like Sonos One. Perhaps the competition from Sonos One does not stand up to the original price (which with the TruePlay optimization manages to sound good in any environment), while at the current price, it can represent an interesting upgrade for those who want something more than traditional smart speakers.

Among the features that I would have liked to see on such a device is the built-in battery, for use in other rooms of the house without having to move the power supply too, such as for a relaxing bath with classical music, or for dinner in the garden, since the presence of the Bluetooth connection would also be suitable for this purpose.

In that case, probably the price would have risen significantly, as is the case for Sonos Move, which with characteristics similar to One costs twice as much.

In that case, you can always fold over a traditional Bluetooth-connected speaker, perhaps those protected against water infiltrations, since in the bathroom, in the garden and on the terrace, you never know what can happen.

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