The Samsung Shape M7 ($399.99) isn't your everyday wireless speaker. When connected to a hub on your Wi-Fi network it can communicate with other Shapes in your house to play songs perfectly in sync.
The speaker itself has five drivers: a woofer, two midrange drivers and a pair of tweeters.
Since the Shape can function as a normal wireless speaker, the hub is sold separately for $49.99.
An app available on iOS, Android and the web controls the multiple speakers in your house. You can fee different or the same song to various speakers, changing the volume of each independently if you wish.
The top of the speaker has controls for wireless connections, outputting sound from a TV and circular touch volume control. There's also an NFC chip on the left for instant pairing with a smartphone.
When the speaker is vertical, it can be used as either a left or right stereo speaker.
The Shape has an Ethernet jack if you prefer a hard-wire connection and a USB port for manual firmware updates (although those can come in wirelessly, too).
Wall-mounting hardware is sold separately.
Looking for a simple way to stream music to every room in your house, all controlled from your phone? Samsung's new Shape M7 is a wireless speaker that becomes a smart networked device once you hook it up to your home network.
The Shape functions like any wireless speaker; it's equipped with both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. But once you put together two or more of the device, something special happens. They all communicate with a special hub (sold separately) that connects to your Wi-Fi access point. That hub has the ability to make multiple Shapes act as one, all playing the same song in unison.
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Of course, if you only want certain Shapes to play a song — or want each to play a different song at various volumes — you can do that, too. Just download the free Shape app on your smartphone, tablet or laptop, and you can mix and match to your heart's content: easy listening in the living room, jazz in the bedroom and hard rock in the garage. Simply drag and drop various songs to corresponding room icons, and you're instantly a master DJ.
If all this sounds a lot like what Sonos has been doing for years, you're dead on. Syncing multiple streams of music perfectly is challenging to get right and Sonos has established itself as the standard-bearer in the space, so few others have put up a direct challenge.
Samsung, however, has such a simple solution and powerful brand that it might be capable of doing so. In a demo of the system, I listened to three Shape speakers flawlessly play the same tune in multiple rooms and just as easily switch to different tracks with a simple flick on a smartphone. Sound quality was very sharp; the speakers played loudly with no distortion.
The design hints at how the Shape produces such great sound. Samsung built the Shape M7 with five drivers, including a foam-core woofer, two pulp-cone midrange drivers and a pair of silk-dome tweeters. The design is very chic and the triangular shape allows for multiple placement options. The supplied stand lets you place it vertically, which also enables left/right stereo playback when used with two speakers in the same room.
Even better, the app integrates music services such as Pandora, Rhapsody, TuneIn Radio and anything stored in your Amazon Cloud Player.
This amounts to a carefully designed way to get whole-house audio in the simplest way possible. It's not the cheapest, though; each Shape M7 speaker costs $399.99, and the hub sells for $49.99. They will be available for purchase on Oct. 13.
What do you think of the Samsung Shape? Would you opt for one instead of a Sonos system? Tell us why in the comments.
Images: Mashable, Christina Ascani