VQ Hepburn Voice Review

Introduction

Smart speakers don’t appear to be as popular as they once were, so it’s with some curiosity the VQ Hepburn Voice lands in our testing rooms.

At first, I thought the Hepburn Voice was a vintage radio given ViewQuest’s past, but it features Amazon Alexa voice control and Bluetooth streaming for the relatively low price of £89.99.

Amazon has dominated the market with its Echo speakers but VQ appears confident it can offer something different. The question is whether it has succeeded in doing so.

Design

• Five different designs
• Carry handle
• Physical inputs

Whatever angle you look at the Hepburn Voice from, it’s a handsome looking speaker. Recent smart speakers have occupied themselves with being smart and minimalist, but the Hepburn Voice flaunts its style with a range of options that brings colour to a home.

The sample I’ve received is the Joules version, which has a repeated pattern of a sausage dog. The other versions are the Cath Kidston, Emma Bridgewater, Laura Ashley designs along with a standard VQ edition.

It’ll surprise how heavy the Hepburn Voice is with a heft to it that suggests a premium product that could withstand a few bashes. Thankfully there’s a handle to carry it.

It’s attractively styled for the money. The rotary dials and buttons on the top surface all have a chrome finish and glint; and though the Hepburn Voice is mostly plastic, the use of PU leather feels sturdy and gives the impression of a higher quality than its price indicates. There’s a nice sense of feedback from the dials (with little clicks as they turn), while the buttons are tactile and avoid a spongy, cheap feel.

Those buttons include power, playback, track skipping, microphone and EQ adjustments (bass and treble, which oddly aren’t in the app). Either side of the buttons are the dials – one for source selection and another for volume control; while in the middle is an LED colour strip that shows the current source – Spotify is green, Bluetooth is blue, Alexa is cyan and so on.

Around the back are physical connections with a line out, aux input and USB port. There’s a power supply for connecting to the mains that has a reach of a metre or so.

Features

• Built-in battery
• Alexa integration
• MyVQ app support

There’s Wi-Fi and Bluetooth support, the former allows for Spotify Connect functionality and casting via the Amazon Music app. Sadly that’s all the Hepburn Voice has to offer on the Wi-Fi front as neither Tidal Connect nor Chromecast are available.

Amazon Alexa is built-in and to set it up you need to connect to the Wi-Fi through the MyVQ app. It took me a few attempts before the app recognised the speaker but eventually the two clicked together. The Hepburn Voice can take its time to connect to the Wi-Fi each time it’s powered on – I timed it at about 33 seconds, which feels longer than it sounds.

Alexa can hear over loud music and from a distance, the instances where I had to repeat a request or command were few, as were the number of times where I had to raise my voice. The microphones reliably honed onto my voice.

The MyVQ app is similar if you’ve used Triangle or Audio Pro products with the same layout and sections. Tucked inside are 10 presets with none on the speaker itself, a choice I think is sensible.

While there’s no Tidal Connect support, the app offers a selection of built-in streaming services, including Tidal, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, Napster, vTuner (Internet radio), and Amazon Music. That’s by no means a big selection though.

The app also offers source selection (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Line-in) access to settings (you can turn the Hepburn Voice into a personal hotspot), firmware updates, and alarm clock settings. You can view battery life and play music to multiple speakers – as long as they support the MyVQ app.

VQ rates the battery life as 8 hours, but streaming from Spotify at somewhere around 50% volume, I’d say you could eke out more. The built-in battery offers the convenience of placing the Hepburn Voice around a house or in the garden, and if it requires recharging there’s the mains power cable. You can also power another device (tablet, smartphone) through the USB port.

Sound Quality

• Stereo sound
• Bass is meagre
• Lacks detail and clarity

VQ bigs up the Hepburn Voice’s sound quality in its promotional materials, highlighting its Dual Ultra-Wide Full Range speakers, and its “innovative” digital sound processing. So it’s with some disappointment that the VQ Hepburn Voice’s audio is its weakest part.

It’s a speaker that sounds better at higher volumes than low though it’s best to avoid going full whack as the speaker trades detail for loudness. Regardless of its volume level, it’s a speaker short of detail, clarity and definition. The Hepburn Voice’s smooth output is the type of sound suited to background listening rather than anything more focused.

It features a good sense of dynamism in bounding between quiet and loud, and vocals come through clearly enough. The soundstage is as wide as the speaker itself, so there’s a decent stereo effect with songs that take advantage of it. Though it’s not the most detailed listen, as I mentioned, it’s fine for a casual session.

But given the pomp and ceremony VQ gives the Hepburn Voice, the audio quality is a missed opportunity. Bass is lacking on Rihanna’s Pon de Replay – low frequencies don’t provide much depth or power making for a tame performance. Altering the bass EQ doesn’t affect things greatly, nor does the treble button.

Treble notes sound tame in GoGo Penguin’s Raven, lacking brightness and sharpness which gives the top end of frequency range a clinical, lacklustre tone.

Vocals are given priority in tracks such as Vampire Weekend’s A-Punk or Chaka Khan’s Tell Me Something Good, but the smoothness of the Hepburn Voice’s sound results in a lack of definition, dynamism and clarity. There’s a lack of refinement here that smothers voices and instruments. Regardless of the genre, everything sounds similar.

Circumstances don’t change much on a Bluetooth connection, which sounds quieter than the Wi-Fi connection and requires raising the volume to full to get the best performance. I’d say there’s slightly more detail and definition on a Bluetooth connection, and a degree more composure about the Hepburn Voice’s sound but there’s no beating about the bush – this speaker’s sound is no more than ordinary.

Should you buy it?