Samsung adds three new dressed-up models to Radiant360 wireless speaker series

Samsung’s rather interesting take on a wireless multi-room speaker just turned into an entire family. Adding to the existing R7 model, Samsung has just introduced the R1, R3, and R5 to the Radiant360 lineup, priced at $199, $299, and $399 respectively.

The premise behind the Radiant360 line is that it better suits the needs of today’s modern music listener by providing a large sound presence without taking up a large amount of room. Samsung maintains that not many folks sit down in front of a pair of speakers to enjoy their music these days, but still desire a big, present sound that can’t be had from small, portable Bluetooth speakers. The Radiant360 line addresses this by using a conical-shaped speaker enclosure, with radiating elements that take the sound coming from a single up-firing and down-firing speaker, and spreading it around a room by shooting it in a 360-degree pattern.

Beyond the “sound everywhere” proposition, the Radiant360 promises to deliver the music you want to hear, where you want to hear it. As is to be expected from a Wi-Fi based multi-room speaker system, users can have different speakers playing different songs/streams, or unify them so they distribute the same music throughout the entire home. To control the speakers, Samsung points to the new Samsung Multiroom App 2.0 for Android and iOS smartphones and tablets, which looks and feels a lot like the company’s Milk Music service, except it also folds in songs stored on the device, those on a network, and Streaming music services.

In addition to music playback services, the Radiant360 speakers can be connected to a Samsung sound bar or TV and can act as surround speakers, if so desired.

The new speakers in the line-up got a bit of a makeover since we first saw the R7 model a few months ago. Gone is the exposed top driver and so-called “ring radiator” in favor of a design that hides everything beneath speaker cloth.

Aside from that one phyiscal distinction, most everything is the same, scaled down to increasingly smaller options, each one slightly less intrusive than the last. Touch-capacity controls remain present on each speaker for play/pause, and track advance/reverse, though those same controls can always be accessed via smartphone or tablet.

The new Radiant360 speakers are expected to be available nationwide at retailers by mid-October.

from Planet GS via John Jason Fallows on Inoreader http://ift.tt/1KMsuV9
Caleb Denison