Marantz MODEL M1, DENON HOME AMP

The Marantz MODEL M1 and the DENON HOME AMP are the same product in two liveries: a very compact streaming amplifier from the two brands that share an owner and an engineering team.

The size is the point. It is small enough to stand upright on a shelf or lie flat under a television, and it drives a proper pair of passive speakers, which no wireless speaker of the same footprint can.

What Apple Home actually does with it

This is an AirPlay 2 speaker rather than a HomeKit accessory.

• It appears in the Home app as a speaker you can play to, and as an AirPlay target in Control Centre.
• You can assign it to a room and group it with HomePods for synchronised multi-room audio.
• Siri can send music to it by room name.
• It can be the audio output in a scene or an automation.

You cannot switch it on or set its volume from the Home app the way you would a light. Those stay with the speaker itself and its own app.

Before you buy

An HDMI ARC socket lets it take sound from a television, which turns a pair of bookshelf speakers into a far better television sound system than most soundbars at the price.

HEOS is the multi-room platform on both versions, and it runs alongside AirPlay 2.

Choose the livery you prefer. The Marantz and Denon versions differ in finish and badge rather than in capability.

Specifications