Bang & Olufsen is a Danish company best known for its high-end audio equipment, TV sets, and telephones. The company was renowned for its quirky, unconventional but oddly elegant-looking products. What they normally put forth are pretty pricey (in fact, they were name-dropped The Devil Wears Prada), but recently it has been killing it with its (relatively) affordable consumer audio products.
An example is the Beoplay A1 portable Bluetooth speaker, an effortlessly stylish portable speaker. The Beoplay A1 normally retails for $250, but Amazon has cut 24% off of it. Take home this incredibly good-looking speaker in Nordic black for $190. What’s more, you can get an additional $50 off instantly upon approval for the Amazon Rewards Visa card, which brings the price further down to $140.
The Beoplay A1 is tiny, dome-shaped and oozes class. Its top half is made of solid aluminum and it measures just 5.2-inches wide by 1.9-inches tall, weighing in at over 2 pounds. The bottom is a smooth rubbery polymer plastic. The combination of the polymer bottom and aluminum dome makes the Beoplay A1 dust and splash-proof. It also comes with a leather strap and a metal adjustment piece that makes the speaker super easy to hang anywhere, including your hand, a very practical feature.
Its disc shape allows for 360-degrees listening and it has touch-sensitive buttons found on the side for basic controls, including the multifunction button, Bluetooth pairing button, microphone button, volume control buttons, and power button. Beoplay A1 buttons are tiny but they’ve recently been updated to make them easier to operate.
When it comes to sound quality, the Beoplay A1 is top-notch. For such a small thing it can go incredibly loud without sacrificing audio quality. Bang & Olufsen has been around for decades for a reason, and the Beoplay A1 is a testament to the company’s expertise. The bass it emits is solid and punchy, the mids are clear and lush, and the highs are clear and smooth.
Bang & Olufsen claims that the Beoplay A1 can last a full 24 hours of playback thanks to the Adaptive Power Management technology incorporated into the speaker, which feeds the amplifier only as much as it needs at any given time. This is a bold claim, and during our test, it did last a respectable 18 hours at normal volume. However, when we tested it again while playing music at its loudest volume level, it only lasted for three hours. For its price range, that’s kind of unacceptable.
The Beoplay A1 portable Bluetooth speaker provides superb sound quality paired with its premium looks. The average battery life and can honestly be overlooked.
If you wish to see more options, check out these pages for our best Bluetooth speakers and best waterproof Bluetooth speakers for 2019.
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