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Meet the Rocki Play, a tiny Wi-Fi music dongle that grants your regular speakers streaming powers, and it can easily fit in your pocket too. For ?49, is it a solid investment to make the most of your aging stereo systems, effectively giving you a Sonos on the cheap? We fired one up to find out.

The good

If you?ve ever wanted to use your old school speakers with more modern tricks like Spotify, the Rocki Play could be just what you?re after. It?s a small, lightweight and odd looking device that plugs into your speakers with a 3.5mm jack, and blesses it with wireless powers. It has a built-in battery too, and because it?s not tethered to the wall, you can take it out and about wherever you go, although it?s limited to four hours of battery. Still, better than nothing.

It comes with Spotify Connect support, so you can queue music on your speaker straight from the Spotify smartphone app. This is the main thing you?ll want to use it for, as while you can play back tracks from elsewhere over DLNA, it is a bit more of a hassle. The Rocki app itself is rather slick and well designed, and there?s also support for Deezer, SoundCloud and Last.FM although you?ll likely just be sticking with Spotify for simplicity - it?s still very easy to use.

It?s cheap too: at ?49, it?s brilliant value compared to a full-blown Sonos system, and it?s an easy and cost effective way of setting up a multi-room audio system, although you do need some speakers already. Previously, if you wanted Spotify in your living room easily at around the same price, your best bet was streaming it through your TV speakers with a Roku - and you?re given a bit more freedom with the Rocki too. The audio quality itself sounds great too, well, as good as Spotify puts out, which is decent enough to fuel your parties or casual listening. And as it uses Wi-Fi, it?s got better range than using something like a Bluetooth dongle too.

The bad

The Rocki manages to do a fair amount for the money, but it?s something that?s better off being tucked away behind your speaker, rather than sitting right at the front. It?s not the prettiest little device, and while Rocki advertises its many colours as a selling point, those different colours just come in the form of rubber cases, and they?re pretty vivid and ugly. The device itself is just a sharp lump of plastic, and those jagged lines aren?t fooling anyone as cutting edge design. Thankfully, it?s small enough to tuck away, meaning it can get on with the good stuff without being an eyesore.

The Rocki also doesn?t have the elegance of Sonos? always updated service, which feeds in everything from Deezer to 22 Tracks - or its rock solid wireless infrastructure. Rocki will sometime drop out or ignore track skip commands, no matter how close you are to your router - still, not too bad for ?49.

Crucially though, for Apple fans, it?s also not not an AirPlay device. That means you?ll need to use Spotify for your tunes, and you won?t be able to beam over any other songs easily from your iOS device. The app itself is also not as jampacked as its Android equivalent.

The bottom line

The Rocki Play is an excellent way to make your home speakers smart speakers, even if they?re from a bygone era. For ?49, it?s a great addition to your home if you love streaming Spotify tunes, and while it doesn?t look all that impressive, who cares if you can?t see it. Just enjoy the wireless music booming from your classic speakers.