Bluesound Node Nano review: an affordable, audiophile-grade mini music streamer

Bluesound Node Nano

MSRP $299.00

Score Details

“The sleek, hi-res Node Nano streamer is perfectly priced to woo disaffected Sonos owners.”

Pros

• Elegant design
• Detailed and clear sound
• Fast and responsive app
• Useful touch controls
• Excellent support for hi-res audio
• AirPlay and two-way Bluetooth

Cons

• No Google Cast
• No universal search
• No native support for Apple Music

Network music streamers may not be the most thrilling devices to look at (OK, the Wiim Ultra is pretty sweet). But if you’ve got an older hi-fi system you love, they’re the best way to add modern wireless music streaming and even multiroom smarts.  Trouble is, the really good ones are notoriously expensive, running anywhere from $400 to $1,500 depending on features. That’s what makes the Bluesound Node Nano so enticing. At $299, it’s far more affordable than the company’s $549 Node — which until now was its most affordable streamer — and yet it still delivers the core multiroom, hi-res audio streaming capabilities that have earned Bluesound a loyal fan base.

To get to that $299 price, some features had to be sacrificed: There are no analog inputs on the Node Nano, so it’s strictly for playing digital music, and it can’t be used as a network bridge for your analog sources. On the other hand, as the name suggests, it has a much smaller footprint than its big brother.

The trade-offs are totally worth it. The Bluesound Node Nano will thrill audiophiles who simply want to upgrade their existing systems. It also comes at an interesting time. With Sonos owners still living through one of the worst app updates in recent memory — one that has rendered the company’s famously popular wireless speakers much less stable — the Bluesound Node Nano offers an easy introduction to Sonos’ closest competitor.

Physically, the Node Nano is a sleek and slender little 5.6-inch x 5.6-inch box that stands just 1.5 inches tall. The matte-black plastic housing will complement most hi-fi systems. The Node’s angled front touch panel is both more attractive and easier to use than the front-facing controls of the Wiim Pro Plus or the top-mounted controls of the more expensive Node. The Sonos Port, by contrast, doesn’t have any controls of its own. Behind that touch panel is an infrared receiver — a handy feature that neither Sonos nor Wiim supports.

Despite its size, the Nano is surprisingly hefty at 1.26 pounds. The bigger Wiim Pro Plus, which weighs just 14.1 ounces, is about 30% lighter. Intellectually, I know there’s no real connection between weight and quality, especially in a product that has no battery, no amplifier, and no internal power supply. My lizard brain begs to differ. It feels the solid mass in my hands and likes it a lot. Plus, when you place the Node Nano down on a smooth surface, it stays put, even with a bit of cable stress on the back.

Bluesound Nano specs

You’ll find the ports on the back. A set of stereo RCA jacks provide for analog output, and you get two flavors of digital (coax and optical) in case you want to use your existing external digital-to-analog converter (DAC). An Ethernet port gives you a wired network option, and the USB port lets you connect a mass storage device like a hard drive. Any music that’s saved to it can be indexed, searched, and shared across any other Bluesound devices in your home.

You also get an IR input (for hidden installations) and a 12-volt trigger output to wake up/turn on any connected amplifiers when you start playing music from the Nano. Power to the Nano comes via USB-C, which means you’ll need to use the included USB adapter (with one of several international plugs) and cable or an equivalent.

On the bottom are two removable rubber gaskets. The large square ring acts as a nonslip foot and hides the case screws, while the central oval can be pulled away to reveal two four-way mounting holes — a nice touch given that most streamers need accessory brackets for wall-mounting.

In the box, you get the Nano, a USB adapter with four plug types, a USB-C power cable, an Ethernet cable, and a stereo RCA patch cord. The absence of an optical or coax cable makes a pretty clear statement: Bluesound wants you to take advantage of the Node Nano’s DAC.

Getting the Node Nano set up using the Bluesound app (available on iOS, Android, Windows, and Mac) is simple. Plug the Nano into your sound system, plug the Nano into the wall, and then follow the instructions in the app. Less than 2 minutes later, you’re good to go.

If you’ve ever used Sonos (prior to its May 2024 app redesign), or Wiim, or Denon’s HEOS, you’ll find Bluesound’s BluOS app very familiar. It uses a tab-based interface with Home, Favourites, Music, Players, and Search tabs.

From the Music tab, you can add a variety of streaming music services to the app or access your personal music library if it’s located on a network share. Currently, BluOS supports dozens of major services like Tidal, Amazon Music, Spotify, Deezer, and Qobuz, while notable exceptions include Apple Music and YouTube Music.

Each can be browsed or searched, and if you’ve got saved tracks, albums, or playlists, those will be accessible within BluOS. One area where the software isn’t as sophisticated as that of Wiim, HEOS, or Sonos is the lack of a universal search — searching for music has to be done on a service-by-service basis.

Favourites work the same way: you can have as many as you want, but to access them, you need to pick the relevant service from a drop-down list first.

Presets are like favorites that you can assign to quick-access keys. The Node Nano lets you access your first two presets from the front controls, but you can store up to 40 within the app.

All of your Bluesound devices can be found in the Players tab, where they can be grouped, ungrouped, and modified via separate settings pages for each device.

Once you get familiar with where everything is, you notice how fast and responsive BluOS is. Whether you’re jumping between tabs, searching for content, playing tracks, or making changes to volume levels, things happen very quickly. It’s faster than the Wiim app, and let’s not even talk about Sonos at the moment.

Alternatively, you could ignore the BluOS app entirely. The Node Nano works with Apple AirPlay 2, Tidal Connect, and Spotify Connect, plus Bluetooth. If you happen to own a compatible Android phone, it also works with the aptX Adaptive codec, which should give you considerably higher-quality streaming than with standard SBC/AAC codecs.

I’m not sure how crazy I am about how the Nano handles Bluetooth pairing. It’s always available to pair. On the good side, this means your guests can connect to it easily enough. On the bad side, anyone within Bluetooth range can connect to it easily enough. That could prove frustrating in condo living arrangements.

If you’re a true audiophile, the Nano is also Roon Ready, giving you yet another option for control and playback.

Unfortunately, Bluesound devices don’t support Google Cast, so if you don’t use Roon or Tidal Connect, the BluOS app is still your best bet for bit-perfect, hi-res audio.

Speaking of hi-res audio, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out one of the big reasons why audio purists tend to prefer Bluesound over Sonos: Bluesound’s players and speakers can process a wide variety of lossless audio formats at up to 24-bit/192kHz. For its part, Sonos maxes out at 24-bit/48kHz, which necessitates resampling of any content with a higher sampling rate.

Since Tidal moved away from the MQA format, the Nano’s native MQA decoding may not matter much right now. But from a future-proofing point of view, it’s still attractive. Bluesound’s parent, Lenbrook, said it’s partnering on a new streaming service with HDtracks that will have MQA as an option.

I set out to play as much hi-res content as I could, and the Node Nano sounded fantastic. Since I still had a set of Klipsch’s The Sevens powered speakers on hand from our Wiim Ultra review, they became my test system. In some ways, given the Nano’s price, size, and features, it’s the perfect companion to The Sevens. You can plug the Nano into the speakers’ auxiliary input and keep the speakers’ phono input for an actual turntable.

To put the Nano through its paces, I left all of the deeper settings alone except for changing the line-out to a fixed output level — no changes were made to bass or treble. I then took a deep dive through my usual favorites and test tracks on Qobuz, Tidal, and Amazon Music.

The detail and clarity were immediately noticeable. Even with The Sevens cranked right up, the Nano produced no audible distortion.

But The Sevens are great speakers, so to make sure I wasn’t just imagining how well the Node Nano performed, I did three sets of A/B comparisons with a Wiim Pro Plus ($219), a Wiim Ultra ($329), and a Sonos Port ($449). Again, I set all of the devices to their defaults, save for the line-out.

Without any point of comparison, the Pro Plus is more than adequate, as many reviewers have attested. But start bouncing back and forth between it and the Node Nano and that opinion may start to shift. I found the Nano to be smoother, with a slightly wider and better defined soundstage, and it had noticeably cleaner highs.

That advantage held true when comparing the Node Nano to the Sonos Port, but you had to pay close attention to highs to hear where the Nano avoided the Port’s slightly crunchy delivery — they were very close.

The Wiim Ultra comparison proved to be the hardest to judge. I threw a number of tracks at the Ultra and Node Nano that should have revealed any inherent differences, like Steely Dan’s Hey Nineteen, Tracy Chapman’s Fast Car, and Billie Eilish’s bad guy. I just couldn’t tell them apart.

Coincidentally, the Node Nano and the Ultra use different generations of the same ESS DAC chip. The Ultra houses the ES9038Q2M, which launched in 2016, while the Node Nano uses the 2023 ES9039Q2M.

The one area where Wiim holds an advantage is EQ. The Node Nano, like the rest of the Bluesound family (and Sonos) keeps tuning options very simple: you get a treble and bass slider. For most folks, this is likely ample. True audio nerds, however, might wish for Wiim’s astonishingly deep equalizer, with its traditional 10-band graphic mode and parametric controls.

Many of the things that have historically bugged me about Bluesound (no universal search, no Google Cast, no Universal Plug and Play, no native support for Apple Music) still bug me. And given that a company like Wiim has found solutions to all but the Apple Music issue (and for a lot less money), I’m even less willing to cut Bluesound slack for these omissions.

However, I’ve nonetheless fallen for the Node Nano. It’s still not as affordable as a Wiim Pro Plus, but at $299, I’m not complaining. It’s beautifully designed and built, and the speed and responsiveness of the BluOS app is superb. Unless you’re an Apple Music/YouTube Music subscriber, you’ll get top-notch audio quality from the Node into your hi-fi system.

Yes, you could spend the extra $30 for the Wiim Ultra and be rewarded with a lot of extras like analog and HDMI inputs, a touchscreen, a remote, and a headphone jack. But the Ultra is bigger, it needs a place of prominence among your other gear, and it doesn’t support Apple AirPlay, something that has proven to be a deal- breaker for some would-be Ultra buyers.

There’s something to be said for a device like the Node Nano, with its tight focus on streaming digital audio and crystal clear sound.