Widios. Nuclear Wessels. John Gillooly reviews one of them.
Based around 802.11 networking, Widio is a transmitter/receiver pairing. The transmitter takes normal stereo RCA connections, converts the analog signal to digital and fires it out over the airwaves to the receiver, which converts it back to analog for listening via headphones (or indeed speakers) connected to its headphone jack.
Simple, config free and completely platform agnostic. All terms that can rarely be applied to IT products, and Albatron has certainly nailed it.
There are so many cool aspects to this product, from the simple fact that it uses a standard rechargeable (via a dock on the transmitter) Nokia 8xx series mobile phone battery to the ability to set up multiple transmitters, all with different inputs and different broadcast channels.
It is also truly plug and play, run the audio inputs from your PC, console, stereo, DVD player or any other sound producing device into the transmitter, plug some headphones into the receiver, turn it on and you are listening to the audio source.
Sound is crystal clear and because the data is sent digitally the signal doesn't get choppy when it's out of range, it just drops out. In our tests it worked flawlessly to a distance of about 15m. Widio simply sounds awesome.
With the flexibility to use your own headphones and the range and benefits of 802.11 wireless there is no better solution to unwire your audio. If this is what they mean by convergence bring it on.
Issue: 137 | June, 2012