Bang & Olufsen has announced a new Bluetooth speaker that looks to be both highly portable and highly accomplished – and it won’t break the bank either.
The BeoPlay A1 is a new entry to the B&O Play range, and it’s verging on the affordable. That’s quite a thing from the luxury Danish audio brand.
At £199, the A1 is £100 cheaper than its big brother, the BeoPlay A2. It’s still not what you’d call cheap, but it should at least give Bose something to think about.
B&O has made its new speaker considerably more compact than the popular A2, which launched towards the end of 2014. The A1 measures 133mm x 48mm, and is round rather than rectangular. It also weighs 600g, which is almost half the weight of the A2.
It’s not lacking in oomph, though, with a 140W peak output and a 30W continuous output produced by its aluminium cone mid-woofer and silk dome tweeter. Naturally, you can pair two for a bigger stereo punch.
You’ll get 24 hours out of a single charge of the A1’s 2200mAh battery, and it takes just 2.5 hours for a complete charge over USB Type-C.
Related: Best portable speakers 2016
Another nifty feature makes the BeoPlay into the ideal portable conference call tool. The A1’s hamburger-like shell is said to funnel sound to B&O’s patented mic, so that it can pick up voices accurately from anywhere within three metres of the speaker.
All that and it comes with a stylish leather strap to lug it around by – though you should keep it away from pools and puddles. The A1 isn’t waterproof.
The Beoplay A1 is available to buy now in green or silver.
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
