“Beautiful, brimming with features, and priced within reach — it could only be the Wiim Ultra.”
- Gorgeous design
- Excellent sound quality
- Tons of inputs and outputs
- Integrated headphone jack
- Remote included
- Fun and useful touchscreen
- Supported by a great mobile app
- No Apple AirPlay
- No computer audio connection
- HDMI audio needs improvement
A network music streamer only needs to accomplish a few key tasks to be successful. It needs an app-based interface that’s easy to navigate. It needs direct compatibility with as many streaming services as possible, and the inclusion of Bluetooth, Google Cast, and Apple AirPlay for any services that can’t be directly included. It needs a decent digital-to-analog converter (DAC), and a choice of digital and analog outputs so you can connect it to a variety of hi-fi systems.
The Wiim Pro proved that a boring, $150 black box could do all of those tasks and more, while the Wiim Pro Plus catered to those who wanted a higher-performance DAC, and a handy remote, for $70 more.
These products are so good at delivering everything a streamer needs to do — at such reasonable prices — I questioned why anyone would want to spend $329 on Wiim’s newest flagship streamer, the Wiim Ultra. And yet, several days into my time with the Ultra, I’m now a convert.
Even though the Ultra doesn’t drastically change the quality of the audio you’d get from the Pro Plus, it opens up many more sources and throws in a headphone jack — and I’ll talk lots more about that screen in a moment. Overall, this new streamer feels like a big step up in the overall experience of playing my favorite music. After a week with the Wiim Ultra, I am deeply reluctant to return my review unit.
First, let’s get the basics out of the way.
Wiim 101
The Wiim Ultra is a network music streamer with no onboard amplification, unlike its sibling, the Wiim Amp. It’s for folks who already have a set of powered speakers or a hi-fi system. It’s nearest direct competitors are the $449 Sonos Port, the $349 Denon Heos Link, and the $549 Bluesound Node. In the box, you get a power cord, a stereo RCA patch cord, an optical cable, a high-speed HDMI cable, a phono ground adapter, and a voice-capable remote control (batteries not included).
It shares almost all of its core features with the extended Wiim family:
- Super-simple app-driven setup process.
- It works as a standalone device, or it can be managed and grouped with other Wiim players as part of a whole-home wireless (or wired) music system.
- Within the app, you can add your streaming music subscriptions, with the notable exceptions of Apple Music and YouTube Music.
- You can also access your personal library of digital music via DLNA from a computer or network-attached storage (NAS), and all of these sources can be searched simultaneously for songs, albums, artists, playlists, etc.
- You can save any of these as Wiim favorite presets for one-tap access from the app as well as from the Ultra itself.
- It’s compatible with every major digital music format with lossless, hi-res support up to 24-bit/192kHz, with the exception of MQA, DSD, and DXD.
- You can connect external digital and analog audio sources, like CD players or turntables. These will play through to the connected hi-fi system and/or they can be wirelessly shared with other Wiim players.
- A recently added room-correction feature within the Wiim app lets iPhone users automatically adjust their hi-fi system’s frequency curves to compensate for furniture or room shapes that might adversely affect audio quality.
- The Ultra is a Bluetooth receiver and transmitter, so you can stream to it from your phone or listen to whatever is playing using wireless headphones.
- It also offers Google Cast and Alexa Cast, plus Tidal Connect and Spotify Connect for streaming audio from a variety of third-party apps on your phone.
- The Wiim app provides a huge range of adjustments for those who want to exert maximum control over their sound, including EQ presets and two graphic equalizers.
- It’s compatible with both Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant for voice commands, and the included voice remote can turn the Ultra into a full-fledged Alexa device.
I’ve written before about the Wiim app in my reviews of the Wiim Pro and Wiim Amp. At the time, I marveled at how Wiim had managed to reproduce all of my favorite Sonos features — something no other company had accomplished. The May 2024 Sonos app update — the one that has affected customers’ loyalty so badly that CEO Patrick Spence felt compelled to offer a personal apology — only reinforced for me how critical it is for a streaming-first device to have great software. So far, the Wiim app has been flawless in its operation.
About the only change I’d like to see is a way to quickly jump back and forth between the deeper settings for Wiim devices and your available sources of music and playback. Right now, every menu that takes you deeper is a menu you need to back out of once you’ve made changes.
What makes it Ultra?
As the name suggests, the Wiim Ultra goes above and beyond a basic black box streamer.
It’s an evolution of the design that Wiim debuted with the Wiim Amp. Its case is made from aluminum, giving the Ultra a decidedly Apple-like appearance. Like the Amp, Wiim offers the Ultra in Apple’s two most popular aluminum colors: silver and space gray (seen here). Combined with its oversized volume/play/pause knob and gorgeous color touchscreen, the Ultra looks like a Mac Mini crossed with an iPod nano. Much like Apple’s industrial design, your eye is immediately drawn to the Ultra; it demands a prominent location in your sound setup.
The Mac Mini comparison goes beyond looks. Though it stands a little taller, the Ultra’s footprint is nearly identical to Apple’s smallest desktop. It’s also slightly larger than the Wiim Amp despite not having an integrated amplifier tucked inside that shell.
Speaking of the Wiim Amp, the Ultra fixes the only gripe I had about the Amp’s appearance. The tiny triangle that sits in the center of the volume knob no longer rotates with the knob itself. (Yes, that really bugged me.) The Ultra’s knob is now a ring that rotates around what is effectively a tiny circular screen that displays the triangle in a variety of colors depending on your activity. Its brightness level matches that of the adjacent touchscreen.
One small grumble: On my review unit, the volume ring didn’t turn smoothly. At a few points, it felt like it was rubbing ever so slightly against the center screen. I would also prefer a notched rotation like the Wiim Amp’s knob. Neither are deal-breakers, but they’re two small dents in an otherwise flawless build quality.
To the right of the knob is the first dedicated headphone jack on a Wiim product. It is admittedly a small thing, but it adds a lot of versatility. Even if you never connected the Ultra to a hi-fi system, you could still thoroughly enjoy using it with an attached set of wired cans. I tried a set of Beyerdynamic DT Pro 990 X and a set of Sennheiser HD 660S2 open-back headphones, and the Ultra drove them both effortlessly. (Your favorite high-impedance cans may not deliver similar results.)
I don’t profess to be a connoisseur of DACs — I’m fairly certain I can’t hear any difference between the Wiim Pro Plus’ AKM 4493SEQ and the Ultra’s ES9038 Q2M when listening to these two streamers via powered speakers. What I can say is that listening via headphones on the Ultra sounds as good to me as using dedicated external DAC/amps that cost as much as $350, like the Ifi Go Bar or the Questyle M15.
The streamer with a screen
The touchscreen is the biggest surprise to me. You don’t need it. There’s nothing it lets you do that you can’t do via the Wiim app. In fact, it does considerably less. And yet, glancing over at it and seeing the album art for the currently playing track colorfully rendered on the face of the Ultra makes me irrationally happy. So does the fun collection of background art it displays when in clock mode (any time the Ultra slips into standby).
The screen also is a lot of fun. It’s very responsive, and somehow it hasn’t become a greasy smear of fingerprints, even after repeated use. The Ultra’s various features are managed via screen pages. When playing audio, the default screen will be one of three types of now-playing pages — one with track streaming details, one with just album art and a progress bar, and a retro VU meter display.
Tapping any of them brings up control overlays for play/pause and track skipping. Alternatively, swipe to the left and you’re presented with your Wiim stored favorites (tracks, playlists, etc.), EQ presets, input selection, output selection, screen options, and a device info page. Each of these has a small home icon that brings you back to the main home page, with shortcuts to all of the pages.
For now, you can’t directly browse for content or conduct searches. The only way to initiate playback is via the Wiim favorites page. You can control the screen brightness manually, or set it to adapt to your room’s lighting conditions automatically. You can also shut it off entirely, though this option is only available from the touchscreen’s own settings page, not from the app or the included remote.
Wiim says changes to the display settings are coming with future updates. The clock will drop the 24-hour style leading zero when you switch to 12-hour time (the zero can still be seen in the accompanying photos), and you’ll be able to choose your own images for the clock background.
Mission control
The Wiim Ultra is absolutely packed with inputs and outputs. Where the Pro Plus has an analog in, analog out, one digital in and two digital outs, the Ultra’s back panel looks more like an AV receiver.
You get one analog in, plus a second analog in that’s pre-amped for a turntable connection, including an available ground terminal. Cleverly, that ground terminal is removable, keeping things much cleaner if you don’t need it. There’s an HDMI ARC input, an optical input, and a USB-A port for mass storage devices like SSDs or HDDs. If you connect one, it can be accessed by just the Ultra, or you can share access to all of your other Wiim players.
For outputs, you get analog, optical and coaxial digital, plus a dedicated subwoofer output — an unusual feature on a non-amplified streamer.
The Wiim app gives you granular control over all of these connections. If you’re using the digital outs, you can pass through LPCM audio at its native bit depth and sample rate, or you can resample that signal down to lower values if your connected gear can’t accommodate higher values.
Since the analog inputs are all converted to digital before being played via the outputs (or shared across a multiroom Wiim setup), you can choose the bit depth and sampling rate for that conversion. These aren’t likely to interest casual users, but audiophiles will appreciate them — especially those who believe standard CD quality is insufficient for capturing all of the nuances in their favorite records.
All of this means the Ultra is much more than a network music streamer. It ends up taking on a hybrid role, depending on your setup. For those of you with recent AV receivers, the Ultra is overkill. It’s unlikely you’d want to use the HDMI port, as this will reduce output from multichannel down to two channels. (And it will kill Dolby Atmos, if your TV is so-capable.) It’s also unlikely that you’d need the Ultra’s phono or analog inputs.
The Ultra’s ideal home is with someone who owns a two-channel hi-fi system that lacks any kind of modern digital features. By adding the $329 Ultra, that system becomes part of a multiroom audio setup with access to most streaming services and personal digital collections. Plus it can now do for your TV audio what it has always done for your favorite music.
Glorious stereo sound
I’d also strongly recommend the Ultra for those who want to run a set of powered speakers. Klipsch loaned me a set of its Klipsch The Sevens for this review, and it made for a potent combo.
There’s some duplication, for sure: The Sevens also have HDMI ARC and a switchable line-in/phono input. But other than an available Bluetooth connection, they have no streaming smarts at all.
Using The Sevens also let me perform some fun A/B comparisons. I connected the Ultra’s analog and digital outputs to the speakers and then flipped back and forth between using the Ultra’s DAC and the one built into The Sevens. Honestly, it was hard to tell the difference. They both sounded amazing.
What followed was the best part of my job — hours of listening to some of my favorite albums via The Sevens and headphones, utterly lost in the experience.
It’s possible that my test setup wasn’t high-end enough to reveal any of the Ultra’s sonic deficiencies. I suspect that you would need some very fancy gear to start to discern those limitations. One of the only Ultra reviews I could find before I began writing is from Steve Huff, an audiophile with a dedicated listening room stacked with thousands of dollars of equipment. This one line from his YouTube video says it all: “I removed $15,000 worth of streaming/DAC/preamp/cable and I replaced it with $329 of the same thing and I’m getting 85% of the performance, but really, 100% of the music.”
I think the same math applies in thinking about the Ultra versus the Wiim Pro Plus. The extra $110 you’ll spend on the Ultra delivers an awesome return on extra features — an easy calculus should you need them.
Let’s talk very briefly about the new Room Correction feature. This is Wiim’s answer to Sonos’ handy TruePlay room tuning function. Like TruePlay, Room Correction uses the mic on your phone and (for now) that phone must be an iPhone. It takes an extremely fast measurement (less than 10 seconds) of your room’s acoustics and then creates a customized EQ curve to compensate.
I can’t say I noticed much of a difference post-correction. There was a slight drop in the low mids, but otherwise things remained the same. What dazzled me was the app’s set of extended settings for performing additional tweaks. Target curves, parametric fine-tuning — loads of toys well beyond my ken. I’m guessing it will be like catnip for folks fluent in this language.
Almost perfect
As much as I’ve become a big fan of the Wiim Ultra, it’s not perfect. Here are some drawbacks you should be aware of.
There’s no Apple AirPlay. This will come as a surprise to those who are already members of the Wiim ecosystem, since all of the company’s players to date support Apple’s wireless audio streaming protocol. And Wiim has already said it won’t (because it can’t) update this version of the Ultra with AirPlay.
In fairness, with Google Cast (which Wiim still refers to as Chromecast Audio), Alexa Cast, Tidal Connect, and Spotify Connect, plus all of the native support for streaming services, you might not miss AirPlay at all. But I also don’t want to downplay this issue — many in the r/audiophile subreddit and on the wiimhome.com forums consider this a deal-breaker.
There’s also no native support for Apple Music or YouTube Music. This is related to the AirPlay issue insofar as if you’re an iPhone user with an Apple Music subscription — it’s impossible to stream Apple Music to the Ultra at anywhere close to the quality that this service can support (up to 24-bit/192kHz lossless). Ironically, it may be possible to hear Apple Music tracks at substantially higher quality if you use the app on an Android device and then cast the music to the Ultra over Google Cast.
There’s no computer audio connection. This one pains me the most. I’d like nothing better than to stick the Ultra on my desk, pipe my computer’s audio into the back of the player digitally, and then use the built-in headphone jack to hear all of my audio — from YouTube to Tidal — through the Ultra’s fabulous DAC. Sadly, that’s not possible, and without AirPlay, I can’t even use a wireless connection from my Mac as an alternative.
Routing TV audio through the Ultra’s HDMI input sounds great in theory, but the implementation needs some work. When you first hit play on a movie or TV show, it takes a few seconds for the Ultra to recognize that there’s signal coming in. Once it switches itself to the HDMI input, there’s another 10 to 15 seconds where the audio drops in and out. After that, things run perfectly, but this sequence repeats itself every time you pause your program long enough for the Ultra to think it should put itself back into standby mode.
Is the Wiim Ultra for everyone? Nope. The company’s existing Wiim Pro and Pro Plus fulfill the network music streamer role perfectly for many (and for less money).
And yet, it’s hard not to fall for the Ultra’s stunning design, its dazzling screen, and its comprehensive set of digital and analog connections.
It outclasses the $449 Sonos Port in every measurable way (save for the absence of AirPlay). The $549 Bluesound Node, with its impressive hi-res audio specs, native MQA processing, and BluOS multiroom software, comes closest to the Ultra (without spending thousands). But the Node lacks the Ultra’s dedicated phono input, voice remote, color touchscreen, large volume knob, or room correction.
Bottom line: If you can overlook the unfortunate AirPlay omission, the Wiim Ultra is a stunning streaming value.
