Bang & Olufsen BeoPlay A9 - Test
Danish designer Øivind Alexander Slaatto built this unique circular speaker, which has become a minor legend among premium speakers.
We've had our eye on the BeoPlay A9 speaker for quite some time, but we only recently had the opportunity to put it through its paces in the latest 4th generation.
It comes in a distinctive Nordic Ice color version that was only recently introduced to the market. As the name implies, it is influenced by the north.
The speaker's body is white, the front half, which covers the transducers, is gray with a touch of pink, and the legs are metal, again gray with a touch of pink. Overall, the speaker appears to be really dazzling.
Of course, different color options are available, including traditional white with light brown wooden legs, black with dark brown wooden legs, bronze, gold, and dark gray.
Bang & Olufsen solely employed high-quality materials such as toughened plastic, wood, aluminum, and cloth. The speaker looks like a diamond in practically any setting.
It is 90.8 cm tall (including the legs), 70.1 cm wide (including the diameter), and 41.1 cm deep (including the legs). The bracket will be 21.3 cm deep if you want to hang the speaker on the wall.
The design is timeless, as seen by the fact that it hasn't altered much since the initial iteration, original, and extremely seductive. The designer handled both the design and the controls, concealing the necessary cables and considering easy wall mounting.
The speaker can connect to the network via Ethernet (10/100 Mbit / s), but it also has a line-in / optically combined jack, Wi-Fi 802.11 a / b / g / n / ac, Bluetooth 4.2, Chromecast, Google Assistant, Apple Airplay 2, Beolink Multiroom (for pairing with other BeoPlay speakers), Spotify Connect, and DLNA-DMR support.
Deezer (including Deezer HiFi), TuneIn Internet Radio, and QPlay 2.0 all support music services. Normal consumption is 23 W, and standby consumption is 3.3 W.
The speaker includes 7 drivers (1 8 "bass with 400 W, 2 3" middle with 2 200 W, 2 1 1/2 "broad spectrum with 2 200 W, and 2 3/4" treble with 2 150 W), as well as 7 amplifiers dedicated to each of them.
The sound can convey absolute assurance, regardless of what you listen to. The sound is clean, and the performance is great; whether you're listening to your favorite popcorn or an audiobook, everything takes on a whole new depth, and you quickly forget about the headphones.
The speaker will never forgive the poor quality of the input file. So, if you want to hear premium audio from an outdated MP3, forget it. Every compression issue will be audible. As a result, we recommend only streaming from high-quality sources that the Bang & Olufsen BeoPlay A9 deserves.
Even at greater volumes, there is no distortion of the music; rather, the surround impression is kept, with the sound coming from the sides of the speaker rather than the front. It is a tough situation to express in words, and it is also impossible to document; you must simply experience it.
If you don't have enough speakers, you can use the Multiroom capability to combine it with other supported Bang & Olufsen products. However, you will almost certainly only allow this in very vast places.
