Great Speakers, but they have a fatal flaw.

Author's Rating:

Pros: The sound is acceptable, not great, but the convenience is wonderful.

Cons: The on/off switch can wear out after a relatively short period of time.

The Bottom Line: 
Until the Off/On switch problem is fixed, I cannot recommend these speakers.

Author's Review
I bought 2 sets of Acoustic Research AW-871 Wireless Stereo speakers (4 total) for our home on an island in BC, Canada. Because the island is rather remote we stream news and music on the computer and then redirect the sound to the speakers.

When they work, they produce relatively good sound and I love them, but the problem is that after a year or so of use (warranty had expired) 2 of the speakers sporadically would not "turn on"  and then after a few more months were completely dead. We are now having problems with the other two speakers as well. The on/off switch is a push button mechanism and apparently the switch just wears out after a certain amount of time.

After hours on the internet (unsuccessfully) searching for reviews of this product that would mention this problem I then searched for a way of contacting the Audiovox Corp. which manufactures this product. After many frustrating calls I finally connected with a very nice man who had some knowledge of the product (AW-871 and the product that has now replaced it, AW-877), but when asked if they had any knowledge of the on/off switch problem he said no. Then when I asked him if they could help me to fix it, he said that the company had no solutions for "out-of-warranty problems". When asked if the 877 speakers were compatible with the 871 speakers in terms of the frequency that they use, he was unable to tell me.

In using these speakers I became aware of another problem with wireless speakers: if a person somehow gets in the way (physically) of the signal, it interfers with the reception. Therefore it seems preferable to mount both the transmitter and the speakers above the 6' level, for example on a shelf.