Bang & Olufsen kills off B&O Play and moves products under main brand

Bang & Olufsen will no longer release products under its 'budget' B&O Play label, and instead will keep everything centralised within one brand.

However, aside from some name changes, it sounds like everything else is going to be business as usual for the AV brand. Bang & Olufsen doesn’t appear to be retiring any of its B&O Play products, and they’re now showing up on its main website.

It’s a simple change, but it’s one that makes sense for the company. When it announced the changes in a recent earnings call, it noted that the sub-brand now amounts for almost half of the company’s entire revenue.

That’s pretty impressive when B&O Play products tend to retail for hundreds, compared to the thousands you can spend on Bang & Olufsen products — including a 40-inch £4895 4K TV that can’t do HDR.

(Personally, I’m just happy that I won’t have to continuously research the differences between the two brands, and constantly fend off emails from the company reminding us which way round the brands should be referred to.)

An expanding lineup

The B&O Play lineup has been steadily expanding over the years as the company has moved into all areas of audio.

On the headphone side, the brand now produces everything from the high-end Beoplay H9i over-ear noise-cancelling headphones, right down to the true wireless Beoplay E8 earbuds.

Meanwhile, the brand also has a growing range of Bluetooth speakers starting with the Beoplay A1 and moving right through to the Beolit 17 and beyond.

Despite being the firm’s ‘budget’ sub-brand these products can get pretty expensive in their own right, but they tend to do a decent job at combining sleek designs with decent sound quality.

Do you think sub-brands like Beoplay make sense? Let us know @TrustedReviews.