Look out Sonos, Vizio's coming for you with its Google Cast-ready speakers
Vizio wants to do for audio what it has done with TVs: Make it dead easy to stream music from any service using Google Cast and look good doing it.
The company's new $299.99 SmartCast Crave Pro and $249.99 Crave 360 speakers are competitively priced with Sonos' Play:1 and Play:3 speakers.
With metal high-quality aluminum designs and fabric-wrapped mesh, both speakers are quite handsome and minimalist.
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The Crave Pro is the more powerful of the two. It has a 2.1 audio system with two integrated subwoofers to deliver loud, bass-heavy sound.
There are no physical playback controls on the Crave Pro. Instead, you twist the top portion of the speaker to adjust volume, tap to play and pause, and swipe left and right to skip tracks. It works really well.
Just as Vizio has used the Google Cast protocol to make discovering and beaming content from iPhones and iPads and Android phones and tablets to TVs via the SmartCast app simple, it's doing the same for music.
Whether you use your phone or tablet or a touchscreen remote (sold separately or from your Vizio SmartCast-enabled TV), it's super easy to access all of your music through any number of music streaming sources and have them organized in one place, ready to stream to a Crave speaker.
The Crave 360 is a portable speaker that can deliver 360-degree sound. It charges via a magnetic dock (like the Amazon Tap) and can last up to eight hours off a single charge.
Controls are basically the same on the Crave 360 as on the Crave Pro.
Both speakers support Bluetooth and Wi-Fi audio streaming for high-fidelity sound.
As impressive-sounding as both speakers are, they're even better when connected to multiple Vizio SmartCast speakers and sound bars for multi-room audio.
Do they sound better than Sonos speakers? Hard to say since I wasn't able to compare the two side-by-side, but I will say I was impressed with the audio quality from both Crave speakers.
The Crave 360 is available immediately on Vizio's online store and on SamsClub.com and the the Crave Pro will be available on Vizio's online store "soon."
Topics Vizio
Raymond Wong is Mashable's Senior Tech Correspondent. He reviews gadgets and tech toys and analyzes the tech industry. Raymond's also a bit of a camera geek, gamer, and fine chocolate lover. Before arriving at Mashable, he was the Deputy Editor of NBC Universal's tech publication DVICE. His writing has appeared on G4TV, BGR, Yahoo and Ubergizmo, to name a few. You can follow Raymond on Twitter @raywongy or Instagram @sourlemons.
