Belkin HD Bluetooth Music Receiver Review

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The Belkin HD Bluetooth Music Receiver offers a variety of connection methods for hooking up your existing speakers wirelessly to your smartphone, although range remains a concern.

Belkin HD Bluetooth Music Receiver: On the plus side

Belkin’s HD Bluetooth Music Receiver is, as the name suggests, a small audio receiver for Bluetooth capable devices to hook up to existing speaker systems. As I’ve noted before, Bluetooth speakers are a real growth category, but they’re limited by the actual audio output from what are generally quite small and simple speakers. If you’ve already got a good speaker system, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to buy yet another speaker.
The Belkin HD Bluetooth Music Receiver is a small rounded box, not entirely dissimilar to an Apple TV in size and even style, and with about as many indicators that it’s actually doing anything at all. You get a single blue function light on the front, and that’s it. Despite the name, it’s not just Bluetooth capable, but also NFC if your smartphone supports it.
I’ve been testing the Belkin HD Bluetooth Music Receiver alongside the functionally similar D-Link WiFi Audio Extender. In audio terms, where the two differ is in the breadth of the Belkin HD Bluetooth Music Receiver’s outputs. The D-Link WiFi Audio Extender only offers a single 3.5mm RCA type output, the Belkin HD Bluetooth Music Receiver covers RCA, Coaxial and Optical audio outputs, giving it a lot more flexibility and potential audio quality.

Outputs! Outputs! Getcha fresh hot outputs here!
Outputs! Outputs! Getcha fresh hot outputs here!

As an added bonus, Belkin supplies coaxial and RCA cables in the box with the Belkin HD Bluetooth Music Receiver, although if you want optical output you’ll have to provide that cable yourself.

Belkin HD Bluetooth Music Receiver: On the minus side

The biggest issue with the Belkin HD Bluetooth Music Receiver is one of Bluetooth fidelity, and that’s something that’s very hard to pin down to a specific device or sender. I’ve been testing the Belkin HD Bluetooth Music Receiver with a connected Samsung Galaxy S5 smartphone, and the range is decent, but not stellar.

The range isn't actually this bad, but it can be quite variable.
The range isn’t actually this bad, but it can be quite variable.

It certainly can’t hold a candle to the Wi-Fi connected D-Link WiFi Audio Extender, where I literally could not find a spot where it wouldn’t stream. Wander too far away from the Belkin HD Bluetooth Music Receiver with your phone in your pocket and you’ll notice the audio cut out quite quickly.

Belkin HD Bluetooth Music Receiver: Pricing

Belkin’s RRP for the Belkin HD Bluetooth Music Receiver is $79.95.

Belkin HD Bluetooth Music Receiver: Fat Duck Verdict

I’m quite torn between the Belkin HD Bluetooth Music Receiver and the D-Link WiFi Audio Extender, because while they both ostensibly serve the same purpose, namely streaming your phone, tablet or laptop audio out to existing speakers, they do so in quite different ways and with different overall results.
If you want absolute best-quality audio from your music sources, it’s hard to overlook the Belkin HD Bluetooth Music Receiver’s output potential — as long as you don’t wander too far away from it.
On the other hand, the range of the D-Link WiFi Audio Extender simply cannot be beat, and it acts as a repeater to boot. The downside there is that it’s trickier to get an app that will stream due to its UPnP/AirPlay limitations.
Ultimately that’s a matter of your usage scenario; if all you want is audio then buy the Belkin, but if the repeater function has utility for you, then the D-Link is a better bet.

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