Today Vizio has announced a new selection of home speakers with integrated Google Cast, the SmartCast Crave 360 and the SmartCast Crave Pro. These new speakers are designed as potential competition to Sonos (and others), offering multi-room functionality and more…
The $249 SmartCast Crave 360 is a portable speaker with omni-directional 2.1 audio which can output up to 95db of sound. The speaker is portable with 8 hours of battery life, and can later be charged via a wireless charging base. The $299 Crave Pro is slightly louder, but also adds dual-subwoofers for better bass. Both speakers have a touch panel which can be turned to adjust volume levels or tapped/swiped for playback control.
To provide a step up over Sonos, both of these speakers can be used either with WiFi through Google Cast, or with Bluetooth. Vizio of course pushes WiFi as offering a better audio experience, which it does, but also makes a point that by using Google Cast, these new speakers skip over proprietary software and allow customers to cast music directly from their favorite music apps, including Spotify, Google Play Music, and anything else with Google Cast compatibility. Vizio will also be offering an app to control the speakers.
The SmartCast Crave 360 is available today from Vizio’s website as well as Sam’s Club. The SmartCast Crave Pro will be available “soon” only from the company’s website. Hopefully both speakers will be available from other retailers in time
