KEF Muo Bluetooth Speaker: Portable Hi-Fi

KEF recommends giving the Muo at least a 10-hour runtime, in the same way you might invade the surroundings with a serious pair of Hi-Fi speakers. True to their word, after a night of running, the Muo started to sound less like a Bluetooth speaker, and more like a built-in hi-fi component.

Through some bombastic classical music, and my usual mix of MF Doom, Waxahatchee, and Neil Young using Quobuz and Spotify from iOS devices and a Windows laptop, Muo remains impressively composed. Selecting between bass, mids, and treble gives your music a chance to breathe, while the balance avoids the too-low tuning that tends to dominate Bluetooth speakers.

Turning the volume up loud, I didn’t hear any obvious distortion, and the volume remained more comfortable to listen to than cheaper competitors. This doesn’t mean I think the small speakers should be cranked up to 11 speakers, but if you insist on celebrating it, you won’t be dismayed.

Stereo pairing is also effective. Two Muo speakers widen the stage, sharpen the left and right placement, and make the whole thing sound more like a small hi-fi setup than I expected. It also highlighted how important a speaker’s operating period is to sound quality. I only tried pairing my review samples after about a week of listening to the single speaker, and the difference between it and the boxfresh speaker was strangely stark.

Stereo pairing is a nice addition here, but if you’re about to spend upwards of $500 on two portable devices for primarily home listening, you should ask yourself whether a dedicated two-speaker system will serve you better.

Fierce competition

Photography: Chris Haslam

You don’t need to spend $250 to get excellent portable audio today. The JBL Flip 7 is $100 cheaper and remains WIRED’s overall favorite, and the Bose SoundLink range has some deals these days. Many alternative designs come with large batteries, thunderous bass, party-starting volume, and extensive companion apps. But they may lack the same ingenuity.