Ruark Audio R610

The Ruark R610 is a music system rather than a component: amplifier, streamer and radio in one wooden cabinet, designed to be furniture as much as equipment.

Ruark is British, and its house style is deliberately domestic. Where most hi-fi is black metal and hidden away, a Ruark is meant to sit in a living room and be looked at, with a real veneer cabinet and a tactile control on top.

What Apple Home actually does with it

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

• It shows up 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.

It is not an accessory you switch on or set the volume of from the Home app. Power, input selection and volume stay with the unit, its remote and its own app.

Before you buy

Ruark systems are usually bought for a room where a rack of separates would be unwelcome: a kitchen, a bedroom, a snug or a well-furnished sitting room.

Radio is treated as a first-class source, not an afterthought, which is worth something if you actually listen to it.

The R410 and R810 sit either side of it in the same range.

Specifications