Edifier ES300 review: retro delight with modern features

If you're making a laundry list of all the features you'd like in a home wireless speaker, it isn't too hard to think of some big entries – Wi-Fi connectivity to make Apple AirPlay 2 work; a great design that fits in with your decor; the option to disconnect from power and run off battery; and, above all, excellent sound.

Well, Edifier seems to have been paying attention to the last few years of reviews and customer surveys, because all of those boxes are well and truly ticked for its new premium home speaker, the ES300, which I've been using for a couple of weeks. I've been thoroughly impressed, so keep reading to find out what makes it such a solid new option.

Price & Availability

The ES300 was announced in mid-June along with a few other new launches from Edifier, and it's available to buy now for £299.99 in the UK, $399.99 in the US, and AU$399 in Australia.

That makes it a pricey home speaker, needless to say, but still relatively normal in price compared to bigger and more design-forward options like the Bowers & Wilkins Zeppelin Pro Edition.

Design

Edifier's range got a bit of a rewrite when it launched new speakers this summer, and the ES300 is a great encapsulation of the new direction. It's a speaker that looks every bit as good as its price tag suggests, and there's more than a little of the design language familiar to Marshall fans here.

The ES300 is wrapped in a leather-effect finish, making it soft to the touch, with a big grille of fabric on the front side. At the bottom of this, there's a small amount of perforated metal which draws attention to a gentle lighting fixture that runs around the base of the speaker.

The top of the speaker, meanwhile, houses a set of controls including a multifunction power button, track skip and play/pause options, then two touch-sensitive dials. One dials up or down the brightness of that built-in lighting, while the other controls your speaker's volume.

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The back of the ES300 houses a 3.5mm audio jack and a USB-A slot for input, along with the power connector, while the bottom has two large rubberised feet to keep it steady on whatever surface you choose for it.

This is, in short, a really mature-looking speaker that I think can fit into the vast majority of high-end aesthetics in either its black or white versions. I've liked Marshall's leather-effect speakers for a while, but their logo and styling can sometimes be a bit loud, and Edifier's work here honestly feels like a perfect middle ground, for which it deserves real kudos.

Features

As I mentioned in the introduction to this review, Edifier has jammed in quite a wide array of features to the ES300, which is great news for those who value different ways to connect. Along with those wired options on the back of the speaker, there are multiple wireless choices.

For one thing, it's got the Bluetooth 5.4 connectivity you'd expect, which makes it compatible with multipoint and stereo pairing if you pick up two. Crucially, though, it also offers Wi-Fi connectivity, making it perfect for those who use AirPlay regularly (although there's no mention of Spotify Connect capabilities, which I couldn't test as a non-subscriber).

Being able to leave the speaker plugged in and connected in the background for AirPlay use is a huge difference-maker when it comes to ease-of-use, with no reconnecting required, and it's great to see it on board.

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Speaking of plugging it in, though, the ES300 also has a built-in battery for when you want to move it around without changing its location permanently. It can last for up to 9 hours of playback on a single charge, which should be more than enough for hosting a party or gathering. That's a great bit of flexibility, for all that this isn't a particularly portable speaker at 3.7kg.

The Edifier app is a simple wrapper for some settings that you can change, including the speaker's equalisation (EQ) – and it also allows for firmware updates in case it's tweaked down the line. You can control its lighting feature, set up a scheduled power-off as a sleep timer of sorts, and control your multipoint connections, too.

Sound & Performance

Edifier hides its work behind that attractive fabric grille, but the heart of the ES300 is a 4-inch long-throw mid/bass driver plus two 1.25-inch silk dome tweeters, and they sound extremely impressive.

The temptation when you get a speaker like this in for a review period is always to immediately crank it to its loudest to see just how antisocial it can get... and the ES300 can indeed get deafening if desired. At more reasonable listening levels, though, I've found it a lovely companion through relaxed evenings and normal workdays.

Playing a wide range of playlists, I heard great levels of detail in familiar tracks, but with a good degree of oomph in the low-end that makes sure things feel properly beefy when they ought to. That meant Limit to Your Love by James Blake had its deep, almost unsettling wobble properly represented, which is always fun.

On more acoustic material like the classic Pet Sounds, the ES300 did just as well, giving me all the tonality that I crave and making for a delightful tribute to Brian Wilson.

From a codec standpoint, you get SBC, LDAC, and ALAC (the last of which is only over AirPlay). It's the inclusion of LDAC that's the key one for lossless playback, though. This all means that Hi-Res Audio is no problem, so everything can sound at its best

Performance isn't purely sound, though, and one of my few reservations about the ES300 has been its on-speaker controls, which are all touch buttons rather than physical ones. That's a misstep in my view, and while it's not a huge one, I'd much rather have the click of real feedback to work with – and, in particular, actual dials instead of the slightly weird touch ones used for volume and lighting.

They work surprisingly well, in fairness, but that doesn't mean they compete where the joy of tactile contact is concerned. Similarly, the Edifier app works most of the time, but I've had it crash a couple of times during testing, plus it could be more responsive and intuitive to use.

Edifier ES300 review: Verdict

Edifier wasn't on my radar before testing the ES300, and that was a disservice, it turns out. I've been really impressed by this home speaker, which feels like a pretty comprehensive one-stop solution for anyone with space on a bookshelf or cabinet in their lounge. It can basically do everything that most people will want from a speaker of this size, and it looks great as a bonus.

The fact that you can use it unplugged is a great little trick, but even if you never take advantage of that, the tremendous sound quality will no doubt keep you using it on the regular. A few tiny design tweaks would help even further, but I still have no reservations in recommending the ES300 heartily – it's a surprise winner and well worthy of it's 5-star badge.

Also consider

If you keep an extremely careful eye out for sales and discounts, you could sometimes find a Sonos Move 2 for only a bit more than the Edifier ES300, which would be a very interesting competition. Sonos has the advantage of easier multi-room support, but it's normally a chunk pricier.

For those who want more rugged reliability and portable prowess, the JBL Charge 5 Wi-Fi is a totally different sort of speaker, as is obvious from its looks, but it actually shares quite a few features. A good outdoorsy alternative.