Review: WiiM Amp Pro

From a quiet corner of Linkplay Technologies headquarters in Newark, California, WiiM has rapidly become one of the real forces in affordable network audio streaming. If you foresaw a brand that’s not even four years old picking up the slack left in the wake of Sonos’ self-immolation last year, congratulations—your powers of prescience are considerably better than mine.

This Amp Pro is the company’s latest demonstration of its entry-level prowess. A mere $379 buys a compact (2.6 x 7.5 x 8.5in, HxWxD), tidily constructed aluminum box that’s equipped to power a single pair of passive loudspeakers and provide a gateway to network music streaming.

Photograph: Simon Lucas

It’s ready to become part of a multiroom and/or smart home system in conjunction with Amazon Echo, Google Nest, Linkplay and WiiM devices. And it can be controlled using voice assistants, a remote control handset or a control app. If you're after a simple box to plug speakers into and stream away your tunes, this is probably the perfect place to start.

Small and Mighty

Not much on the outside gives the game away. The Amp Pro is very nearly featureless; the fascia features a volume control and a few LEDs confirming its power status, the input you’ve selected, and the volume level. Around the back are posts for connecting speaker cable, an Ethernet socket, digital optical input, and HDMI ARC and stereo RCA line-level connections, along with outputs for a subwoofer and a USB-A slot.

On the inside, the WiiM is similarly focused. Amplification is via the well-regarded Texas Instruments TPA3255, and here it twists out 60 watts of power per channel into an 8-ohm load. It uses a correspondingly credible ESS ES9038 Q2M digital-to-analog converter to take care of the other most critical business. Wi-Fi 6 (with a promised upgrade to 6E) gets you a wireless network connection, and there’s also Bluetooth 5.3 connectivity with LE Audio codec compatibility—pretty much every worthwhile audio format is supported.

Photograph: Simon Lucas

The Amp Pro also plays nicely with Alexa Cast, Google Cast, Spotify Connect, and TIDAL Connect, in addition to being Roon Ready and DLNA-compliant. It can access an absolute stack of music streaming services, internet radio providers, and what-have-you accessible via the WiiM Home app that’s free for iOS and Android.

The app itself can take a moment or two to catch up with itself if the device that’s hosting it goes to sleep, and it’s not absolutely the last word in logic where navigation is concerned, but otherwise it’s among the most thorough and useful examples of its type around. As well as allowing access to Amazon Music, Deezer, Qobuz, vTuner, and plenty of other services, it features a room-correction routine, a 10-band EQ (with a staggering 24 presets), space for a dozen “favorites,” a balance control, and even an alarm clock.

Easy Listening

The device ships with a fairly comprehensive remote control handset if you prefer operating your devices that way, and if you’re interested in simply issuing your demands vocally, the Amp Pro is compatible with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant.

Photograph: Simon Lucas

No matter how you prefer to control it, the WiiM Amp Pro is a friendly and easy-to-operate device. Provided you keep things sensible and proportionate when it comes to the speakers it’s driving and the source equipment it’s supporting, it’s no kind of hardship to listen to, either.

Play to its strengths with a 24-bit/48-kHz FLAC file of “Common Land” by James Holden via TIDAL Connect, and the Amp Pro proves to be hugely accomplished in any number of ways. It strikes a lovely tonal balance, for instance—there’s just a tiny hint of heat at the bottom of the frequency range, but nothing problematic. In every other area it’s as neutral and as natural as can be. And aside from a slight (and probably quite sensible) rolling off of the highest frequencies, the top-to-bottom frequency response is even and smooth too.

At the bottom of the frequency range the Amp Pro hits with real determination. It controls the attack of bass sounds with the sort of authority that allows rhythms to be expressed with proper confidence. There’s authentic variation to the low-end stuff, plenty of detail regarding tone and texture revealed, and all of it put into convincing context.

The same is true throughout the frequency range. The WiiM pays close attention to transient information and the finest details, and is able to position it all in relation to the broad strokes of the recording in a satisfyingly coherent way. The midrange, though, is where the Amp Pro really shines. As well as the generous levels of detail it reveals, the tonal balance allows the character and the essence of a vocalist to shine. When it comes to understanding the emotion and the motivation of a singer as well as their ability and technique, the WiiM is as good as anything this sort of money can buy.

Photograph: Simon Lucas

Recordings are presented on a fairly large, nicely defined soundstage that has enough extension in both the left/right and front/back axes to give even quite complex tunes plenty of breathing space. “Mas Que Nada” by Sergio Mendes and Brasil ’66 has more than enough elbow room for every element to express itself free from interference, but the Amp Pro’s facility with timing and integration means it’s presented as a unified whole rather than as a series of discrete occurrences.

The only way the WiiM Amp Pro comes up short (aside from its slight top-end reticence) is where the broad strokes of dynamic response are concerned. Both of the recordings I’ve mentioned offer a fair bit of variation where intensity, attack, and moment-to-moment volume are concerned, but this amplifier doesn’t quite have what it takes to make these shifts absolutely explicit. It sounds a little less assertive than larger, more expensive amps might.

But this, I think it’s safe to say, is nit-picking on my part. What’s most relevant here is the fact that the WiiM Amp Pro is among the very best integrated stereo amplifiers you can buy for anything like this sort of money. When you add in its wider networking and multiroom functionality, it’s extremely compelling. Thank the good people of Linkplay Technologies for filling the hole opened by Sonos last year.