Unmonday 4.3 VOL II Streaming Speaker Review

What a lovely Finnish!

by hodg100
MSRP: £465.00

What is the Unmonday 4.3 VOL II?

Well these wireless, Bluetooth and multiroom hi-fi speakers certainly have an unusual and not especially catchy name but that might be deliberate, on the manufacturers behalf, to make it stand out further in what is a massively competitive market. Speaking of the manufacturer, just who are Unmonday? They’re a Finnish company founded by a naval architect who was dissatisfied with the speaker options on the market and took the easy way out of creating his own with the brief of a stylish design, multi-use scenarios with wireless operation and great sound quality. In December 2013 the first speaker, the Unmonday Model 4.3, was launched and here we are now with the new, VOL II just making its way to market. At the time of publishing (March 2016), the base Unmonday 4.3 Vol II – without the rechargeable battery – is priced at 499 euro (approx £385) while the battery equipped version is 599 euro (approx £465).

Design & Connections

Other than the name, what really makes the Unmonday 4.3 Vol II different is how it looks and what it is, mostly, made from. Unless you happen to be a bee-keeper, you don’t see all that many hexagonal prisms on a day to day basis and certainly not ones made from vitro porcelain, as the VOL II is. The Unmonday bares a footprint of 230mm in depth and 210mm in width, with a height which matches the breadth.
Unmonday 4.3 VOL II
Unmonday 4.3 VOL II

Personally, I think it looks joyous although a wider audience – friends & family – gave it a more mixed reception but it’s definitely a grower on Mrs H so maybe some just need time to acclimatise to the striking looks. The cloth grille masking the speaker drivers is both removable and replaceable, with Unmonday offering a further six colour choices to the supplied white grille. According to the product sheet, you will also get a felt pad on which to place the speaker, although we can’t comment as there wasn’t one in the review pack.
Unmonday 4.3 VOL II
Unmonday 4.3 VOL II

The Unmonday isn’t really aimed at those looking to hooking up their audio devices with a wire but there is a 3.5mm stereo jack at the rear, along with a ‘figure of eight’ power connection – the power supply unit is built-in, along with the battery if you choose that model, and there’s also a small physical power/pairing button too which illuminate in red when not connected to another device or your home network and green when it is. We would have liked for there to have been some form of a manual volume control as it’s not always practical to have to do it on whatever you’re using for playback.

Setup & Use

There isn’t a great deal of set up advice contained in the supplied user manual but that’s the way of things, nowadays, where almost everything electronic is based on app installation. ‘The Unapp’ is available to both iOS and Android users with set up procedures more or less the same for both, only Apple owners will need to take the extra step of setting it up as a new Airplay speaker. Following that, and provided you’ve powered on the speaker, you should now see the speaker(s) as available to set up. The app will guide you through the necessary steps but it’s really just a case of getting the speakers on your home network using your security key. It’s really not difficult stuff and you should, all things equal, be up and running in less than five minutes. You can also simply pair the speaker(s) to your device using Bluetooth but this is definitely not a solution with any kind of multiroom aspirations as it has poor range.

Unmonday sent us two speakers for multiroom, more than mono testing and, unexpectedly, an Apple Airport Express which they recommend you use as a WiFi station. While we’re grateful for the generosity, we’re sure the majority of folks interested in this product will not possess an Airport Express; so while we’ll go as far as saying it definitely improved the performance over the network, it wasn’t used for the majority of the review and our router really should be up to the task – it can, after all, handle sending out two 4K Netflix streams simultaneously over Wi-Fi when necessary.
Unmonday 4.3 VOL II
Unmonday 4.3 VOL II

Adding a second speaker, or more, is much the same process as adding the first and you can name the speakers, within the app, to avoid potential confusion down the line. One very clever design aspect of the Unmonday 4.3 Vol II lies in its ability to detect on which of the six planes it is positioned in and then adjust output accordingly. If you are using them in more than one room, use the Mono position; if used as a pair, you can have them in Left/Right stereo formation or you can even go as far as 5.0 surround system but it’s not a massively practical home cinema solution. We really did like the automatic stereo configuration though as most systems require you to set that in the app.

Performance & Audio Quality

Let’s get the bad news out of the way first; the network performance of the Unmonday 4.3 Vol II was disappointing when we had more than one speaker active, with frequent drop outs from usually one, or sometimes both, speakers leaving the party for anything up to ten seconds; on some occasions a speaker would leave never to come back again. The issues were almost certainly down to network traffic, as when we stopped working for the day and listened at our leisure, stability was markedly better but it’s not like there was anything ‘heavy’ going on at the time with only the odd image up- and down-loaded and a few emails interspersed with regular web browsing. In other words, the system needs to be more robust and less affected by outside influences. For context, dual streaming of Netflix 4K/1080p was no issue over WiFi under the same conditions.

At this point, slightly begrudgingly, we did introduce the Airport Express to the party; the device can do a few, related things but its purpose here is to use it as a single, wireless access point for both speakers as its wireless hardware is clearly a lot better than that of the speakers. Did it work? Yes it did and we could happily multitask on the PC while listening to our tunes. Is it an acceptable workaround? Yes but only if you already own one, although we’re at pains to point out that there are an enormous amount of variables on a given network so it could have been any number of things causing it. In terms of the performance everyone else is likely to get in-home, we really can’t say but we’ve fed-back our set up information to Unmonday who are closely looking in to it and they also tell us it’s very unusual in their experience.
Great sounds but we had some networking woes with multi-speaker set-ups
So that’s a lot of potential setup for a speaker but how did it sound? Well, rather good actually with a very full and vibrant soundstage that could be pushed really quite loud without any audible distortion. The bottom end is particularly satisfying and very well defined, with a similar clarity in the mids. There wasn’t quite so much life in the Unmonday Vol II as we got up the scale, although you can improve the high-end by simply removing the grille. You also need to sit ‘not too close’ to the speakers else you don’t get the same full image – probably around 75-100cm and beyond is prudent.

Testing was primarily carried out using a Windows 10 mini PC with Bluetooth v4.2 and an Android Tablet with v3.0, although we endeavoured to use the network connection most of the time. As we had a pair, it seemed foolish not to hook them up a stereo pair and, in that configuration, especially, the Unmondays definitely sounded more HiFi than they did ‘lifestyle,’ although for the kinds of sums we’re talking, you could equip yourself with a pair of extremely nice bookshelves so it’s probably the mono performance that is key. Despite the cold exterior surfaces, the 4.3 Vol II’s have rather a warm tuning which you may or may not like so it does lack a little of the clinical touch you want for your hi-hats or searing vocals; we found it far more than just a serviceable listen for our habits – a bit of pretty much anything – although we can’t totally ignore those network issues which could, although rarely, occur when using a speaker on its own.

Video Review


Conclusion

Pros

  • Beautiful design
  • Easy set up
  • Rich sounding
  • Scalable

Cons

  • Some network issues
  • Can lack detail in the high end

Unmonday 4.3 VOL II Streaming Speaker Review

Should I buy the Unmonday 4.3 VOL II?

If your brief for a wireless speaker is something that looks beautiful, sounds great and you’re not overly constrained by budget, the Unmonday 4.3 Vol II is a very interesting proposition. The hexagonal design and porcelain finish are both truly striking design features and the built-in gyroscopes adjust the sound output – with choices of mono, stereo and surround – dependent on how you position the 4.3 Vol II, is a very clever touch. Set up is carried out via an easy to use app, where you can add a speaker, or speakers, to your home network, thus unlocking the multi-room capabilities of the Unmonday. We did encounter some network issues in that configuration which weren’t easily explicable, as our home network is usually very robust, so we can’t really vouch for the multi-room/multi-speaker performance but when it did work, it worked very well and the manufacturer ensures us our problems are an isolated example. All in all, the Unmonday 4.3 Vol II is a very nice wireless speaker which is well worthy of consideration if you’re looking for something just a little bit different.

What else could I consider?

Whilst arguably very slightly different kinds of products, we’ve three other networked speakers for you to ponder with perhaps our ultimate recommendations would be given to the Naim Mu-So Qb and the Bowers& Wilkins Zeppelin, with an honourable mention given to the Sony SRS-X99.

Scores

Build Quality

.
9

Connectivity

.
.
.
7

Sound Quality

.
.
8

Ease of Use

.
.
8

Features

.
.
8

Verdict

.
.
8
8
AVForumsSCORE
OUT OF
10

Our Review Ethos

Read about our review ethos and the meaning of our review badges.

To comment on what you've read here, click the Discussion tab and post a reply.

Related Content

JBL Authentics 300 Portable Wireless Speaker Review
  • By Ed Selley
  • Published
Q Acoustics M40 HD Wireless Audio System Review
  • By Simon Lucas
  • Published
Neat Mystique Classic Loudspeaker Review
  • By Ed Selley
  • Published
JBL Authentics 500 Wireless Speaker Review
  • By Ed Selley
  • Published
Majority D40X Bluetooth Bookshelf Speakers Review
  • By Martin Dew
  • Published

Latest Headlines

iFi Audio launches Go Bar Kensei portable DAC
  • By Ian Collen
  • Published
LG launches portable StanbyME Speaker
  • By Ian Collen
  • Published
Meze Audio launches Liric 2nd Generation headphones
  • By Ian Collen
  • Published
Q Acoustics set to launch flagship 5050 speaker
  • By Ian Collen
  • Published
Wharfedale formally announces the Super Denton speaker
  • By Ian Collen
  • Published
Back
Top Bottom