- Pro-Ject announces two wireless upgrades for classic WiiM OS-based hi-fi equipment
- Stream Box E upgrades your amp with streaming skills
- The Wireless Box E transforms all passive speakers wirelessly by connecting to the binding posts
Beloved hi-fi brand Pro-Ject hasn’t slowed down at all in 2026. After announcing a high-end turntable in January and a record cleaner last month, it will soon offer two more pieces of equipment.
The brand announced the Stream Box E and Wireless Box E, as part of its growing hi-fi ecosystem. They cost £159 (around $200, AU$300) and £199 (around $270, AU$400) respectively.
The Stream Box E is a wireless network streamer and digital preamp that can upgrade your wired audio system to enable Spotify Connect, Tidal Connect and Qobuz. It can be connected to an amplifier, or directly to active speakers.
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Then there’s the Wireless Box E, which also offers a neat technological upgrade to existing equipment. This time it upgrades your passive speakers, acting as a wireless receiver for them, meaning you can position them anywhere without having to worry about running a cable to them, giving you more flexibility as to where you place them, or perhaps where you place the rest of your hi-fi setup.
You will of course need one per speaker, and each must be connected to a power outlet.
A WiiMsical choice
Perhaps the most intriguing part of the news is that both the Stream Box E and Wireless Box E will run on WiiM OS. It’s a platform primarily designed for the brand’s own technologies, like WiiM Sound, but it’s also available to other brands, bringing their technology into the growing WiiM ecosystem.
We’ve compared Sonos to WiiM in the past to help you understand the differences, but the move is clear: this is part of a growing alternative to Sonos, and one that clearly wants to be as flexible as possible based on these launches.
However, there’s a big problem here for Apple users, who aren’t exactly a small part of the world. WiiM has something of an ongoing problem with Apple, meaning that many of its products don’t include Apple AirPlay 2 as a simple streaming option, and it’s the same with these.
While support for Spotify Connect and Tidal Connect might mean this is right for you, it also means that these boxes are basically not useful if you’re an Apple Music user or want to be able to use AirPlay’s platform-neutral multi-room capabilities.
In this case, Sonos still has the advantage: not only does it fully support AirPlay, but it’s the only brand with a streaming receiver that natively supports Apple Music in its app for lossless listening.
The rapid pace at which Pro-Ject is releasing gear shows that it’s only getting bigger and bigger in the home hi-fi game, especially with affordable options like these. Perhaps it has found an ideal partner in the equally ambitious WiiM – we can’t wait to see how well they work in practice.
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