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The Bang & Olufsen companion app opens up even more options, such as instant access to a vast array of radio stations. Local stations in your country are listed first and foremost, but you are free to change the location, so you can easily stream radio from the likes of Africa, Asia or South America, should you be so inclined. The Beosound A5 is also set up to become part of a wider multi-room audio system. Not only can you group it with other AirPlay speakers, for example, but you can also add it to an existing Beolink multi-room system, if you already own other B&O products that support it. But the bar is also capable of remarkable mid-range clarity. That center-mounted coaxial driver is beautifully articulate, not just with movie dialogue, which is always easy to follow no matter how busy the soundstage, but also music. Two elegant glass doors automatically slide aside when a hand approaches the product. It is a construction based on an infrared reflection principle. Transmitters were sending the IR beam to the receivers through the reflection of the user's skin. if no CD is loaded when you press CD, the CD compartment raises automatically, ready to be loaded with your favourite CD
Control is also available from a touch-surface on the top of the Emerge – this interface, it’s fair to say, is a more qualified success. They’re overly sensitive and altogether too responsive, to the point they’ll make you trepidatious about operations that should be straightforward – adjusting the volume level, for example. The cool metallic bodywork is actually scratch-resistant (Image credit: TechRadar) B&O Beosound Explore review: value The Beosound Explore combines the looks of a speaker you’d happily display in your home with a practically indestructible design. If there’s a better-looking rugged and waterproof speaker on the market, I’ve yet to see it. It also boasts bumper battery life that will see you good for a long weekend away, and B&O’s Beosonic tool provides an interesting and effective take on audio customisation.The soundbar comes with a calibration microphone to help tune the sound for your room – and it's not limited to just one 'sweet spot', usefully. You can tune for a whole seating area, which is not something you tend to get from soundbars. You’re able to adjust characteristics of the sound with real precision, more than just increasing or decreasing bass and treble for example. You can save any presets you fancy and you can also toggle the Omni 360º sound on or off. Does it deliver a performance commensurate with its price? That’s more difficult to say. What you’re buying here is so much more than the noise it makes. I’d say the closest competition to the Beosound A5 would be the likes of the Sonos Era 300 or Apple HomePod 2 from a lifestyle speaker perspective, or the Devialet Mania from a cost perspective. The former two require mains power at all times, while the Devialet offers much in the same way when it comes to sound. It too is able to create a big, wide soundfield – perhaps more impressively since it’s a smaller speaker – and has a similar feature set. B&O also assures users the Explore is rated IP67 for dust- and water ingress, which means it can be submerged in freshwater at up to a meter deep for 30 minutes and live to tell the tale.
This serves a similar purpose to a graphic equaliser but takes the form of a circle filled with audio terms including “Bright”, “Low bass” and “Relaxed”. By moving a smaller circle around inside the Beosonic tool, you can tweak how prominent bass and treble are in a specific listening mode.
Timer facilities
The gentle notches and smooth turning of the dial are lovely to use, and while the touch capacitive controller doesn’t have any icons as on the Naim Mu-so (which is slightly more satisfying to use), it does have some nifty features. What you're presented with from the bar alone, though, is a masterful sonic canvas that looms before you for games and music. The Beosound Explore will take up about the same space in your bag as a travel coffee mug or coke can, but it's quite a bit heavier than these items. At 637g with the carabiner (and if there's a carabiner going, we're always going to attach it) it's about the same weight as a basketball –reassuringly weighty rather than heavy, but the similarly-sized Ultimate Ears Wonderboom 2 weighs just 420g. That metal bodywork and meaty battery (which offers a class-leading 27 hours) do make a difference. There’s no dedicated remote control supplied in the box with the Beosound Theatre. Instead, you’re directed to the accompanying app. Some people are bound to love the fact you don't need to mess about with a remote, others might feel shortchanged for the price – this is the same deal as you get with Sonos soundbars, and we have no issue with it. And should the worst happen and it become outdated or reach its performance limit, it can be swapped for the module that represents the state of the Bang & Olufsen art at that particular time. Sound Quality
Like its big brother, the key improvements with the new Beosound 2 are internal. Once again, B&O has implemented its Mozart modular software system, which can see its key internals swapped out at some point in the future when standards of performance and connectivity have sufficiently advanced. Attach it to a branch when camping by all means, it's IP67 water- and dust-proof. Just don't forget it when you leave… (Image credit: TechRadar) Look at the JBL Flip 6, then look at this beautiful creature: visually, there's no comparison. The B&O product is all brutalist angles, cool aluminium and one of the most high-end B&O-branded metal carabiners we've ever seen (and I'm an aerialist, so I know carabiners). The speaker features B&O’s Acoustic Lens Technology: a 4cm full-range driver housed in the top dial fires down into a precisely shaped guide to ensure the sound is spread out evenly in all directions. It’s compatible with Dolby Atmos, TrueHD and Dolby Digital Plus 7.1, and 7.1 PCM sources, but not DTS:X. It seems a little ridiculous to miss the latter off at this price, but here we are.
The app is a joy to use, with EQ customization and the option to corral your various streaming subscriptions into one place – although of course, you can still go into each respective app to handle your tunes. We particularly like the radio tab, though, which offers easy access to Linn Jazz, BBC Radio 4 and more –and it's something you may not expect at the level. A special welcome envelope containing a Special Edition Certificate will accompany each product, in addition to a special silver label indicating the individual production number of the product, such as 1/1000, 2/1000, 3/1000 and so on. Delivery upon market launch No matter how far afield you go, an achievable battery life of 12 hours means you can stay all day. Recharging is via USB-C - and there’s a Qi patch on the speaker’s top surface so you can charge your smartphone if you’re out and about. Obviously this will eat into the A5’s own battery life, though.
But, there is the fact that the realistic target audience for such a speaker is likely going to be those who are in the fortunate position of not needing to look after the pennies as much. Beoplay A9 was the first audio product that had both sources and both stereo speakers in one unit and one unit only. Beoplay A9 was launched in 2014 as the top-end version of the Beoplay portfolio. Based on the concept of - sound systems should not clutter the room. It should be simple to install and flexible in both placement options and colour. It provided an elegant and magic-like user interface and a fantastic sound performance from one single unit – so the concept of an audio master and stereo speakers was completely abandoned in this project. So far, so partially impressive and partially ordinary. As far as ‘unknown’ goes, we’re talking about the native resolution of the DAC (digital-to-analogue converter), the Bluetooth codecs with which the speaker is compatible, and the material from which the speaker drivers are made.The Beosound Explore was unveiled in May 2021 and, considering its support for Bluetooth 5.2, the USB-C charging port and fast pairing whatever your source device, it still stands up against the most up-to-the-minute products on the market right now. It has none of the speakerphone/power bank features of the aforementioned JBL Charge 5, mind, and it costs a little more, so you really do have to prioritize the aesthetic – and there's nothing wrong with that. You can do this from any side, too, as the speaker has a proximity sensor that orientates itself according to where you are standing – pretty clever stuff.
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