Pure Jongo T6 review

The Pure Jongo T6 a wireless speaker that lets you stream music to it via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. Even better, if you buy two or more Jongo T6s you can connect network together and place them in different rooms. It comes in a choice of Piano White or Black and measures 370x175x190mm, so it’s fairly large, and we think that the Jongo T6’s design isn’t as eye-catching as that of the triangular Samsung Shape M5 or as attractive as that of the Sonos Play:1.

The design is rather plain, with just a black speaker grille dominating its front, but Pure says it’ll release grilles in a number of different colours so that users can add a bit of individual personality to their Jongo T6s. The speaker is designed to sit horizontally as standard, but you can mount it vertically with an optional stand (£40, www.amazon.co.uk).

The feel well constructed. There are controls on the side for power, volume adjustment and muting audio. On the rear of the unit is a 3.5mm auxiliary connection and a USB port, but you can only use the USB port for firmware updates. However, we found that we could use the USB port to charge our devices, which is handy.

Connecting the Jongo T6 to your Wi-Fi network is simple. Initially, you connect your laptop or mobile device to Jongo T6’s network, and from there you can enter the details of the wireless network to which you want the Jongo T6 to connect in future. You can also connect to the Jongo T6 via Bluetooth, but it doesn’t support the higher-quality aptX audio codec, which is disappointing.

To adjust speaker and EQ settings you’ll need to use the Pure Connect app for iOS or Android devices. The Pure Connect app also lets you subscribe to a music service that lets you access a catalogue of 15 million tracks, with subscriptions costing £5 per month or more.

Sound from the Pure Jongo T6 slightly emphasised the treble and mid-range. The vocals were clear, but curiously the vocals sometimes seemed as though they were detached from the other audio layers. It gave certain vocals an almost ethereal quality, and we didn’t think that was the intention in the original recordings.

Bass response was reasonable, and the low-end never sounded muddy. As the Jongo T6’s two 5in drivers are packed in close together, the sound stage is unsurprisingly narrow.

Pure Jongo T6 Multiroom Configuration

Pure’s multiroom speaker approach differs from Sonos and Samsung in quite a significant way. While the latter use a wireless mesh network in order to synchronise and distribute audio between speakers located around the home, Pure uses a synchronisation technology known as Caskeid (pronounced cascade) for its Jongo range. We’re happy to report that in our testing, with two speakers set up to play the same song across both speakers, the synchronisation felt spot on without any noticeable delay.

It uses a combination of both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth to distribute music between multiple speakers. Unlike some other speaker systems, such as the Samsung Shape M5, for example, you can connect a device to one speaker via Bluetooth and then play your music on multiple Jongo T6 speakers dotted around your house. You can play music from any app, too, whether it’s Spotify, Deezer or Google Play Music.

With the two speakers set to stereo mode, the channel separation was particularly impressive. The sound of drums, crash of cymbals and the pluck of guitars fleeted delicately between channels in our Jimi Hendrix test tracks, and the concerted build up during the intro of Purple Haze was particularly fantastic.

The addition of a second speaker made the overall sound quality much richer and expansive, as you would expect, and this is our preferred way to enjoy the Jongo T6. While the soundstage of a solitary speaker is relatively constrained, having two speakers opens the sound up considerably and there’s interplay between the two channels that was missing with a single speaker. We also liked that there’s no need to purchase a separate audio hub if you want a multiroom speaker configuration, as you would have to do with the Samsung Shape M5.

As it uses Bluetooth, you can use any device to stream music to other rooms, unlike Samsung and Sonos’s apps, which currently only support multiroom streaming through iOS and Android devices. This means that Windows Phone users can stream music to multiple Jongo T6 speakers. However, you will still need a compatible iOS or Android device initially in order to set each speaker up for Bluetooth Caskeid mode using the Pure Connect app. Caskeid does mean you’re limited to Bluetooth’s connection range, so you’ll need to keep your source device close to one of the speakers.

We liked the Pure Connect app, and we found that it made managing multiple speakers, delightfully easy. We also liked the way that renaming a speaker in the app also changed the Bluetooth broadcast name.

We really like the Jongo T6, whether used as single device or as multiple devices connected together, and the way multiple Jongo T6s are connected together makes its device and app support much more flexible than some rival systems such as the Samsung Shape M5. The Sonos Play:1 is more attractive and much smaller in size, but the Pure Jongo T6 is nevertheless an excellent choice if you need a wireless speaker for a multiroom setup.