AIAIAI Unit-4 Wireless+

Verdict

These portable studio monitors sound sweet enough to be used for pure listening enjoyment, although their fairly high price limits how appealing they can be to a non-specialist audience.

Introduction

The AIAIAI Unit-4 Wireless+ are not like other speakers. They are wireless and have a battery, but also want to be seen as legit studio monitors. 

Who needs a studio on-the-go and wouldn’t be well served by studio monitor headphones? That’s a question, but perhaps we should just be grateful someone is trying something genuinely different.  

The AIAIAI Unit-4 Wireless+ are solid performers that, in AIAIAI style, have a confidently minimal aesthetic. But the cost will give most pause. At £700 you could pick up a pair of Adam A4V monitors for less, or a set of Genelec 8020a for a little more. 

Design 

• Sleek-looking plastic casing
• Optional magnetic grilles
• Has a carry handle

The AIAIAI Unit-4 Wireless+ are sold in as studio monitors. But they only look like them front-on. There’s the classic two-way driver arrangement, an all-black casing. So far, so studio monitor. 

From the side, though, the AIAIAI Unit-4 Wireless+ are revealed to be far slimmer than the average boxy studio speaker. These speakers have a classic rectangular design most of the time. Weight is rarely much of an issue either. But the AIAIAI need to be more portable-friendly than that to fulfil their brief. 

They are only 20cm deep and weigh 2.36kg a piece. The rear bass port can also double as a carry handle. 

One area AIAIAI might go a bit far, for some anyway, is the LED ring around the woofer. It’s a pure white ring, not the RGB style found on a lot of cheaper party speakers. But, well, while Kanye may like it, this might not be the ideal look for a studio. 

It’s not just for the look, though. The ring can indicate the volume level, the charge level while plugged in. And it will flash while in pairing mode. Still, it’s more the style of a classic Bluetooth speaker than a monitor. 

It points to the biggest question behind your potential AIAIAI Unit-4 Wireless+ ownership: do you really need wireless studio monitors? You could spend significantly less and get comparable results from a classic cabled design, and then use the remainder to get a pair of monitor headphones from Shure, Beyerdynamic — take your pick — for use on the road. 

But at this point I start to wonder, why am I kinda doing down a company trying something fresh? There are huge numbers of wireless speakers out there, but not many of them come in an actual stereo pair, or have aspirations for the kind of sonic neutrality required of a good studio monitor.

This is a serious effort from AIAIAI, and that is all the more laudable given AIAIAI is a small company. And there are lots of nice little touches here too.

Little rubber strips along both angled sides show you can place the AIAIAI Unit-4 Wireless+ on their sides as well as upright. AIAIAI makes official accessories too: protective casings, a custom carry bag and isolation pads. None are included as standard, but they aren’t exorbitantly priced either.

You do, however, get a pair of magnetic metal grilles, which slot into the slightly indented speaker front. One part I’m not sure was entirely necessary is the sheer size of the power adapters. They are chunky larger laptop-size bricks, contributing substantially to the transportation bulk if one charge’s runtime won’t do the trick.

It’s no wonder they’re so large — capable of supplying 120W a piece — but I can’t help but feel that’s overkill when their charging speed seems to stick at 50W for most of the cycle. Still, fast charging in a monitor speaker? It yet more evidence of AIAIAI ‘s smart combining of lifestyle and traditional speaker values.

Features

• Dual format wireless (Bluetooth and dongle)
• Dual cabled inputs
• Integrated battery

You can choose how to use the AIAIAI Unit-4 Wireless+. They have Bluetooth. They have 2.4GHz wireless. 

There are 3.5mm and balanced 6.3mm inputs. You can switch between the wireless modes using a button on the back, and alongside this is another button to switch between stereo and mono sound delivery. 

Non-bluetooth transmission uses a dongle that plugs into a USB-C port on your PC or laptop. There’s a 3.5mm input for other sources, and then you just need the USB for power. And it’s here with the single we get the crucial 16ms sound delay, which is rapid enough not to be noticeable (if higher than the fractional delay caused by DSP in cables studio monitors). 

It manages this using the “W+” standard, which transmits at CD quality (16-bit, 44.1KHz). We don’t get any advanced codec support on the Bluetooth side, though, just AAC and SBC. 

The speakers contain a 77Wh battery, a similar capacity to what you might see in a larger laptop. It’s rated for up to 20 hours of use, although that figure will naturally be lower at higher volumes.

One missing part: there’s no subwoofer output. AIAIAI does suggest using the Unit-4 with a sub, but from the other way around. 

“We recommend pairing UNIT-4 with any studio subwoofer, for a very full and capable sound,” says AIAIAI. 

“Most studio subwoofers have a pass-through function – run your device output into the subwoofer input, then run the subwoofer outputs either directly into UNIT-4 or into the X02 Wireless+ transmitter. Then you can tune the crossover frequency and phase to match your room.”

There’s a practical, no-nonsense sensibility to the AIAIAI Unit-4 Wireless+’s array of features. The button and dongle approach means there’s no need for secondary software. And I’m a fan of the matter-of-fact buttons up top, which still manage to look sleek in a sort-of Scandi vibes way There is an app, though. 

This connects your phone to the speaker when using Bluetooth. It lets you alter the intensity of the LED ring light around the speaker cones or switch the light off entirely (a highly thoughtful addition), update the speaker firmware and apply EQ. 

I was a little surprised to see the app doesn’t use a setting identified as flat by default, but a “bass tilt -9dB” mode intended for use when the speakers are in a smaller room and less than 1m from the wall. Listening to the other modes, Aiaiai is absolutely right to pick this as the default for the average room.  

Sound Quality

• Sober tuning but with great imaging
• Bass depth limited, but bass quality good
• Best used as a near field monitor

Many potential buyers will be able to tell the AIAIAI Unit-4 Wireless+’s key deficiency as soon as they see their vital statistics. These speakers do not have much in the way of low bass or sub bass. 

Their -2dB frequency floor is 50Hz, because while the main driver is a “long excursion” cone, it’s still just a 4-inch driver. 

Don’t let the LED ring fool you into thinking these are secretly mini PA-style party speakers either. The AIAIAI Unit-4 Wireless+ are, just as I hoped, primarily really sweet-sounding near-field monitors. 

I’ve spent hours listening to the Unit-4 with them not much further than 60cm from my head at times, and they hold up remarkably well to the closest listening. 

Forgetting the noticeable lack of lower bass power, these speakers sound more neutral and flat than most of the studio monitor headphones I’ve owned over the years. 

There’s no mid-bass bloat, the mids feel well textured, detailed, with no obvious frequency holes. The treble is nicely resolved and avoids sibilance even with content that can really bring it out. 

And while I’ve noted there’s a lack of sub-bass here, the rest of the bass range is remarkably well-represented for such a petite speaker housing that doesn’t use passive radiators. 

My favourite part, though, is how this isn’t just sound uncoloured enough to do some mixing work on. It’s that they also sound enjoyable. My first monitor headphones were the Beyerdynamic DT100, which are meant to be pretty flat but are also extremely boring. The AIAIAI Unit-4 Wireless+ are far more engaging, with a lovely sense of clear imaging, solid separation and a realistic, natural tonality to vocals when treated as moderate-volume near-field speakers. 

Sure, the AIAIAI aren’t going to have the scale of presentation you’d get with a great 8-inch driver monitor. But they can also go quite loud before sounding compromised, considering their size. And when you’re not deliberately throwing sub-bass packed tracks their way just to test their limits, the AIAIAI Unit-4 Wireless+ do sound full enough to avoid the sense your favourite tracks aren’t being recreated fully.

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