Bower & Wilkins A5 and A7 AirPlay music systems announced - perfect for your iPhone 5

Bower and Wilkins has become one of the first company's to announce new music systems that follow Apple's new post-iPhone 5 dockless stance on audio streaming.

The Bowers and Wilkins A5 and A7 don't feature any sort of dock, whether the old 30-pin style or the new Lightning connector as on the iPhone 5. Instead they are primarily designed to use Apple's Wi-Fi based AirPlay music streaming system.

The two systems can either be connected to your home network via Ethernet or Wi-Fi, and there are USB and 3.5mm jack inputs for connecting to a PC or other mp3 player too.

Taking full advantage of the dockless design, the two systems are styled to look as minimalist as possible with a simple curved cuboid shape and smooth lines throughout. The sides are wrapped with black cloth and bisected by a stylish aluminium strip while the top is finished with an etched aluminium plate.

As its name would suggest the A7 is a larger more powerful unit measuring 220 x 360 x 160mm and weighing 5.7kg, while the A5 comes in at 3.6kg and 180 x 300 x 120mm. Inside the A7 are 2 x 25mm Nautilus grade aluminium tweeters, 2 x 75mm mid-range drivers and a 6in (150mm) sub-woofer and it can pump out 100W, giving it Zeppelin Air levels or power. Meanwhile the A5 has 2 x 25mm Nautilus tweeters and 2 x 100mm mid/low-range drivers and 48W output, making it more of a Zeppelin Mini equivalent.

Available from early October the A7 and A5 are priced at £699.99 and £399.99 respectively.

More Audio News >