LG’s ThinQ WK7 Review

LG’s ThinQ WK7 smart speaker offers good sound quality, functionality, and easy setup at an affordable price point.

As with other Google Home based smart speaker platforms, responses from the LG WK7 speaker feel like they’re worded in more natural language than its competitors Alexa, Siri and Cortana. Conversation with the speaker feels more like asking an assistant to help you than issuing commands to a robot. However, because Google Assistant goes to the internet for every request, basic commands like setting a timer can take longer than they would with Alexa.

Setting up the LG smart speaker couldn’t be easier – just plug it in, then use the Google Home app to connect it to your network. From there, the speaker mostly takes care of setting itself up. The speaker can connect to other Google devices on the home network, like Chromecast, allowing you to stream music, movies and livestreams by asking the speaker. Other devices can be added in the Google Home app.

Sound quality from the speaker is excellent – despite its size, it can pump out some pounding bass frequencies, smooth mids and rich highs, and it goes loud enough to annoy your neighbors without noticeable distortion. It also supports high resolution audio with 24 bits of sample depth at 96 kHz sample rate thanks to a partnership with Meridian Audio. Being a single speaker, you do lose any sort of stereo separation.

Whether or not you need a smart speaker in your life is up to you, but unless you have other connected devices like smart light bulbs, televisions, or other such niceties, it’s unlikely to be much more than a glorified bluetooth speaker that you can ask about the weather. When paired with other devices, smart speakers do offer a bit of convenience when turning on the lights or picking a movie, but they’re yet to be must-have devices by themselves.

Priced at AU$299, the LG WK7 speaker offers decent value against its competition. It’s more expensive than a basic Google Home Mini, but if you want to listen to music, the WK7 offers significantly better sound quality – comparable to a Sonos One setup, although slightly edging it out, at least to my ears. While LG has put a little of their own tech into the speaker, it hasn’t made a huge difference to the real-world functionality or usability. That said, the basic functionality of Google Assistant is already pretty good, so the lack of extras doesn’t really count against the WK7. If you’re after a nice sounding smart speaker to add to your Google Home setup, LG’s WK7 makes for a compelling choice.

LG WK7 speaker

AUD $299
9

Rating

9.0/10

Pros

  • Great sound quality
  • Great sound quality
  • Affordable price

Cons

  • Doesn’t offer much extra over its competitors
  • Google Assistant can be slightly slow to respond