Review: WiiM Amp

Sometimes products come along that we just have to surrender to. The small wireless streamers from WiiM are among those products. They give you streaming with a sound quality that far surpasses what we are used to in the budget class.

Now they have taken the successful streaming platform one step further and combined it with an amplifier. In a slightly larger cabinet, in aluminium, with the same form factor as the streaming boxes.

Wiim Amp, as it’s called, has a 60 W class D amplifier inside and inputs for analogue and digital audio sources, a separate output for a subwoofer and HDMI with eARC for the TV sound. As the amplifier is built on the Wiim streaming platform, it can be easily controlled with the Wiim app on your mobile phone or with the included remote control. Which, incidentally, connects to the amplifier via Bluetooth.

It looks like a Mac Mini with volume control, is four centimetres wider and deeper than a WiiM Pro Plus streamer and costs about half the price of a Sonos Amp.
With AirPlay 2, Chromecast and DLNA, you can stream from any device. Or connect it to your network with an Ethernet cable, which we recommend for the best possible sound. You can control the music yourself with an app that supports streaming services such as Spotify, Tidal, Qobuz, Deezer and more. If you like to give commands, you can control your music with voice control via Siri, Google or Alexa.

App

The volume button on the front can also be used to start and stop music at the touch of a button. In the absence of a display or LEDs showing which input is connected, you have to rely on the colour of an LED. Apart from a voice saying connected when you’ve selected Wi-Fi, it’s the only way you can tell which input is active.

The app is the same as the one used for Wiim’s streaming devices. You use it to control the music, but also to set the EQ and other parameters. Here you can choose between a 10-band graphic EQ and a four-band parametric EQ. If you connect a subwoofer, the amplifier will recognise it and switch on the output. Then use the app to adjust the crossover frequency (30-200 Hz) and the level of the subwoofer.

Powerful amplifier

Wiim’s streaming platform supports high-resolution audio up to 24-bit and 192 kHz, but Amp has a simpler DAC from ESS – ES9018K2M – than the AKM DAC found in Pro Plus.

The amplifier section in Amp is built around a class D chip from Texas Instruments, TI TPA 3255, which provides 2 x 60 W power in 8 Ohm. And a full 120 W in 4 ohms. With so much power in such a small enclosure, you’d think the amplifier would get very hot, but it doesn’t get hotter than you can put your hand on it.

The powerful amplifier section means you can connect a wide range of speakers. The excellent 606 S3 from Bowers & Wilkins, both Prodigy models from PMC or the brilliant KEF LS50 Meta will fit the Wiim Amp like a glove.

Brilliant sound quality

The same goes for the much more expensive Dynaudio Special Forty, which with a sensitivity of a moderate 86 dB requires an amplifier with some bottom end torque. I was therefore a little sceptical as to whether the small amplifier would be able to control the speaker if I turned it up too much.

My fears turned out to be unfounded.

The Wiim amplifier had no problems controlling the speaker. Reproducing Arild Andersen’s double bass on the album Fifth Winter is demanding enough, but the amp took hold of the bass and controlled the music with impeccable precision. Daniel Sommer’s drums on the same album sounded dynamic and well-defined, and Rob Luft’s guitar sound had both weight and substance.

The amplifier doesn’t have quite the same rich bottom end as the twice as expensive Yamaha R-N600A. But it had no problem making the rhythm of Zara Larsson’s More Than This Was sound engaging and captivating.

The dynamics from the amplifier are remarkably crisp and vibrant. In fact, on par with the Yamaha receiver, but perhaps not quite on the same level as a Hegel H95.
It should be noted that the Wiim amplifier is also not as resolved and airy as either the Yamaha receiver, the Hegel amplifier or a Rega Brio for that matter.
But you can’t get everything in this world for 359 euros.

Konklusion

This small amplifier from Wiim is one of the very best buys on the market at the moment. The price is as remarkably low as the performance is high. Usually amplifiers in this price range are too weak, too anaemic to play music with conviction. Not so with the Wiim Amp. It remarkably combines power and finesse with user-friendly streaming in high-resolution quality. If we were to be really critical, we could have pointed to too few inputs and the absence of any kind of indicator telling us which input is selected, but that doesn’t change the fact that the Wiim Amp is a sensational bargain.