The latest wireless sound system from the Danish audio specialists, we asked how much the B&O Beolab 28 is, and now we wished we hadn’t.
The Danish designers at Bang & Olufsen are at it again, and this year, are ready with a high-end audio system for folks who have a reasonable amount of coin to spend, and want a big sound system built on grand looks and studio sound amidst mostly minimalism.
That’s roughly what’s coming together in the Beolab 28, a wireless speaker system built to stream pretty much anything, with support for the B&O app, AirPlay 2, Chromecast, Bluetooth, and Spotify Connect (working from within Spotify), and a whole heap of hardware in its tall design, which can be left standing or mounted to the wall.
The speakers are tall, measuring over a metre high — 1.37m on the floor standing version and 1.4m on the wall bracket — and the Beolab 28 including a custom 6.5 inch down-firing subwoofer working alongside B&O’s “Active Room Compensation” which adapts the bass sound to the part of the room it’s in, improving the bass for where it’s placed.
B&O is known for including room analysing sound technology in and of itself, and reads a little like something properly digital that appears in other speakers, such as the smaller B&O Balance.
Alongside that, B&O is using three full-range 3 inch drivers and one 1 inch for the rest of the range, with a controllable mode beam-forming the sound to shape how you hear the Beolab 28’s reproduction.
And the design bringing all of this together is a slim aluminium cylinder of sorts with fabric or wooden covers, with curtains that open when the speaker is switched on or when the sound beam is wide or narrow.
“Beolab 28 is our most advanced connected speaker to date, providing powerful sound and flexible placement options due to its slim shape and small footprint,” Christoffer Poulsen, Senior Vice President and Head of Product Management for Bang & Olufsen.
“Beolab 28 includes cutting-edge, wireless connectivity and streaming features that allow you to enjoy your music exactly the way you want.”
However the B&O Beolab 28 also comes with a pretty high price, which in Australia, starts from $18,300 for the two, though may be connected to others when it arrives in select retailers and B&O stores in Australia from mid-June.
