HP Wireless Audio

Wireless and networked audio is becoming increasingly ubiquitous. Bluetooth and AirPlay allow you to play music on their smartphones, tablets, and computers through their speaker systems, and DLNA lets you play music that's stored on their computers through their Blu-ray players and HDTVs over their home network. There aren't many simple, out-of-the-box kits to enable wireless audio on both ends, though. The HP Wireless Audio kit changes that, by offering an all-in-one solution to stream music from your computer to your speakers. It's easy to set up, but at $99.99 (direct), it's expensive for a device that lets you do things you probably can already do via other methods.

The HP Wireless Audio kit has two parts: a transmitter and a receiver box. The transmitter is a basic USB device shaped like a large, wide flash drive. It's slightly wider than would be convenient, as it can block other ports close to the USB port it's plugged into. The receiver box is a 1.2- by 4.5- by 2.9-inch (HWD) rectangular device with a port for the power cable, RCA stereo outputs, a standard-size 3.5mm output, and an S/PDIF digital output. It also has a small pairing button and two lights to show it's plugged in and paired with the transmitter.

To sync the transmitter with the receiver, you need to install the HP Wireless Audio Manager software on your PC and plug in the transmitter. Once you install it, you can pair your computer (with the transmitter attached) to the receiver by pressing the pairing button on the receiver and running the software. The default audio driver will switch to the USB transmitter. From that point, anything you play on the computer will output through the receiver to whatever speakers or home theater system you hook up.

Despite the claims of the HP Wireless Audio product page on HP's web site, the audio driver only supports stereo sound, so you can't take full advantage of a surround sound system. In other words, it only sends two channels of audio to your speakers or receiver, meaning you can't use it to link your PC to your 5.1-channel system to make games like Bioshock more atmospheric.

HP claims the wireless audio device has a range of 100 feet, but I didn't see that in my tests. While it streamed audio flawlessly to a receiver placed 15 feet away, it couldn't keep a reliable connection to an HDTV across the Lab. Mixmaster Mike sounded clean through our test surround system near my desk, but the rest of the Beastie Boys popped and crackled and occasionally cut out through the screen 80 feet away. In fairness, the PCMag.com Labs have more wireless interference than most homes, but you should still be wary if you want to use the HP Wireless Audio across your house. Despite the reception issue, there didn't seem to be any noticeable latency between the computer and the receiver. If the signal stays strong, you won't have to wait between clicking play and hearing the music on your speakers.

HP Wireless Audio easily lets you connect your PC to your speaker system, but there are easier and better ways to do it. For example, if you have a big home theater system, it may already support AirPlay for Apple product users, and it almost certainly supports DLNA for accessing music shared on a network. If you have a recent Blu-ray player or HDTV, you can access your music through your home network. If you don't, you can get a good Blu-ray player for less than $150 like the Editors' Choice LG BP620 ($129.99, 4 stars) and add DLNA support and many other entertainment features to your sound system. If you don't have a full sound system but still want wireless music, the Editors' Choice Logitech Mini Boombox ($99.99, 4 stars) offers a self-contained Bluetooth speaker and speakerphone that will work with your computer and mobile devices for the same price as the HP Wireless Audio kit.

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