Whyd – Voice Controlled Speaker with Robust Sound Quality
We all have met Amazon’s Echo, right? Well, still the memories of the first-ever voice-controlled speaker are reminiscent. But with that entire first ever elements, Echo really lacked quality sound and that was a big flop for the product.
Now came Whyd, a really breakthrough voice-controlled speaker claiming to deliver high-quality surround sound. In that way, it also lacks a thing. That is nothing but the smart home functionality of Amazon. But the speaker is louder with clean omnidirectional sound. That is what makes it lucrative in the first place.
Whyd is basically a French startup that is known for a niche social network dedicated to music lovers. Well, this new hardware can be assessed as an extension of the company’s commitment to making music sound better.
Fabulous Design
There are several elements that make this speaker stand out among the hundreds of speakers, but the design remains a big appeal for the product. The design is bold with a soft pill-like shape. The design is obvious to grab your eyes as soon as you enter the room. Whyd is being offered in five separate pastel colors. The speaker doesn’t ship with a battery so you’ll have to plug it your wall at all times.
The speaker has been designed and developed in Grand-Rapids, Michigan is made of very high-quality materials carefully picked up to ensure optimum sound quality. The soft cloth wrapped around the speaker is well crafted to spread the sound in all directions. It provides it both a soft feel and a beautiful evanescent look.
As for shape, Whyd bigger in both length and width than the Amazon Echo with an 11.5 x 7.5-inches dimension. It also weighs a little heavier with 8.38-pound weight compared to the lightweight Echo weighing just 2.3 pounds.
How does it work?
How does Whyd work as a speaker? Well, it comes loaded with all the state of the art features of a voice-controlled speaker and more. Whyd can work natural language processing by integrating with Google Cloud Speech. This allows the speaker to understand voice commands by cutting through the clutter of other sounds. Whyd comes with multiple microphones all of which are optimized to decipher long-range queries with the help of advanced noise canceling technology. This allows launching a playlist, play a particular song or select an artist of your choice, all through voice commands.
Whyd also allows commands through a curved and glass made touch panel on top of the speaker. You can tap over it to play or pause music, double-tap to select a favorite song, swipe on both sides to skip either previous or next track, and can control the speaker volume by pinching and zooming gesture with two fingers.
Sound Quality
The voice control features were already unleashed by Echo to the delight of music lovers. What then was added as a real value this time with this new speaker called Whyd? Well, apart from the design the real enhancement in the new speaker has been the robust, crystal clear 360-degree HiFi sound quality with deep and really dramatic bass effect. This highly optimized sound quality in Whyd is ensured by a dedicated 100mm subwoofer, four 40mm full range drivers, and ported high-pass enclosure producing the deep bass effect.
Do more with Whyd app
Whyd comes with a companion app available for both iOS and Android platform. This app besides allowing total control over the speaker also allows easy multi-room setup with several speakers.
Key Features and Specs
This new speaker is loaded with features to redefine listening experience and interaction by the listener. Let us have a look at the key features of Whyd.
- Voice control
- Integrated WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity
- Touch control panel
- LCD display screen
- 360 degree omnidirectional sound
- 20W@6Ω + 15W@4Ω power capacity
- 4 full range 40mm drivers + 1 dedicated 100mm subwoofer
- 11.5″ x 7.5″ and 134 oz dimension
The Price and the Final Verdict
Whyd is supposed to be unrolled for the market from early 2017 at a retail price of $499. But at present the speaker can be pre-ordered with a highly discounted price of $299
Rajiv Patil is the founder & Managing Director of Nimblechapps, an innovative iPhone app development company. He takes a keen interest in topics related to mobile app development and mobile game development and often like to share his knowledge through informative posts on leading blogging sites.