When it comes to wireless music streaming, AirPlay, for the time being at least, remains our preferred technology. For us, DLNA is insultingly slow and limited, and Bluetooth, on top of being historically unstable, is limited by its operable range and (with certain exceptions) sound quality. A lot of the Bluetooth devices we’ve tried sound more like FM radio than, say, CD.
While AirPlay is not without its own quirks (and expense), it allows you to move about your space more freely, sounds great, and, best of all, puts control of your music right in the palm of your hand, or in front of you on your desktop. Unfortunately, we’ve yet to find an AirPlay speaker that we could really fall in love with. For that reason, we tend to get a little excited whenever a new AirPlay speaker option comes around.
Such was certainly the case when we first learned of the Klipsch Gallery G-17 Air. From afar, it appeared to have all the ingredients needed for a delicious audio experience and,
given Klipsch’s excellent speaker-dock offerings in the past, was likely to deliver. Well, it’s been a long wait, but the G-17 Air is finally available. When our review sample landed on our desk a couple of weeks ago, we wasted no time getting to work on our evaluation. In this review, we’ll talk about our experience with Klipsch’s G-17 Air AirPlay speaker, discuss its sound quality and lend our opinion on whether this device earns it’s $550 asking price.
Out of the box
Klipsch seems to be steering a lot more attention to its products’ out-of-box experience.
The Mode M4S0 headphones gave us our first glimpse at this move and cracking open the G-17 Air further reinforced that luxury feel. Klipsch recognizes it needs to deliver a premium experience if it intends to charge a premium price.Klipsch-gallery-g-17-review-airplay-speaker-front-controller
The first thing you’ll see upon opening the G-17 Air’s box is a pair of white gloves. We’ve seen these before and, while it may not be an original idea, it is definitely a smart one. We cast the accessories aside in order to get right to the main event, removing the top portion of Styrofoam to reveal the G-17 Air snug in a white cloth sack. After donning the gloves, we pulled the G-17 Air from its cocoon. As expected, its gloss piano black finish almost seemed to suck dust in toward itself- as if it were a black hole for fingerprints, smudges, and airborne particulate — an issue with which we’re all too familiar. Indeed, the white gloves are practical, not some sort of cheesy stunt.Klipsch-gallery-g-17-airplay-speaker-remote-verticalPacked with the G-17 Air we found a
tinted glass speaker stand and associated hardware, some wall-mount brackets, a brick-sized power supply, card-sized remote control, a rather interesting speaker grill, and an owner’s manual.
Getting the stand attached to the speaker was easy enough, and the rubber piece Klipsch
provides to conceal the screws popped right into place, giving the installation a pretty clean look. It was here that we first noticed that some of the G-17 Air’s connections were
now a little more difficult to reach than we’d like — more on that later. Getting the G-17 Air up and running through our office’s Wi-Fi network was a piece of cake.
Klipsch provides a free iPhone and iPad app that takes you through each step of the process. If you don’t want to use your iOS device, setup can also be taken care of via PC or Mac. If you get stuck, Klipsch has very detailed instructional videos online. After renaming our G-17 Air something clever, we were ready to rock out.
its really nice