There are many Wi-Fi speakers on the market, but other than doing away with wires, they tend to work very much like old-fashioned wired speakers.
The China-based creators of the Sugr Cube Wi-Fi speaker have designed their product to directly stream online music, while also offering intuitive touch control functionality. The user just has to tap the speaker to play or pause a song, tilt it left or right for the next or prior song, double tap it to share the current song with those who have paired their own Sugr Cubes, and touch it and leave the hand there to share the current song with Facebook friends
The companion iOS app enables easy Wi-Fi setup, multi-room control, sleeping mode and alarm, and the ability to keep updating the speaker with new features. Android and other unspecified devices will be supported soon. Sugr Cube, which comes in wooden housing, currently supports iTunes music, Pandora and BBC radio. Other services may be added later. Backers who pledge $119 will get the speaker when it ships in June as part of an early bird Kickstarter discount. Its maker is looking to raise $50,000.
The speaker has a lot of promise. Although there are other Wi-Fi speakers that offer some degree of touch control, like the Aether Cone, Sugr Cube uses the feature more extensively. But it faces the same problem as any other speaker sold online by a new company: There is no way to gauge how good it sounds without hearing it in person.