Bang & Olufsen BeoPlay A9
Priced at $2,699, the BeoPlay A9 sports a distinctive and unusual design for a speaker: a circle. It has touch controls and connects to your phone via AirPlay or DLNA.
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Bang & Olufsen unveiled a new speaker called the BeoPlay A9 that is aimed at younger, digital-savvy customers, but it might have an unexpected audience among Marvel Comics fans too.
That's because BeoPlay A9 has an extremely simple design: a circle. It's actually about the size and shape of Captain America's shield (if the recent Avengers movie is any guide). It's even thin enough to hang on a wall -- or presumably strap on your arm, if you were so inclined.
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It's not portable, though, so if you did that you'd lose its one superpower: creating room-filling sound. At an unveiling Wednesday night, Bang & Olufsen showed off the speaker to a crowd of press, using a couple of A9s as monitors for a performance from musician Jenny Bapst.
The perfomance did a good job showing the BeoPlay A9 could play loud (rated at 500 watts, yo), but it was when the evening switched over to pre-recorded tunes that the speaker excelled. Its stereo drivers nicely articulated Stevie Ray Vaughan's guitar in "Tin Pan Alley," delivering distortion-free sound even at high volume. The 8-inch bass driver in back of the speaker added some needed thump.
The resemblance to a certain super-hero's shield ends with the shape, though: The speaker grille is a plain white color, though it comes in silver, red, black, green and brown as well. Captain America fans could probably get a stars-and-stripes design custom painted.
The BeoPlay A9 is made for ease of use and installation. It connects wirelessly via Apple AirPlay or DLNA. Volume and play/pause are controlled via touch -- just slide your hand across the top to turn it up or down, and tap it to pause playback. Of course, when connecting wirelessly, you can do all that on your phone, too.
The new speaker is part of Bang & Olufsen's B&O Play sub-brand, which the company launched in January. Since then the brand has also debuted a portable speaker as well as an unusual iPad dock. The thrust of B&O Play is to create stand-alone products that bring newcomers to the Bang & Olufsen brand, and it appears to be working: Company reps said at the event that 60% of new customers in the brand's stores come to buy B&O Play products.
They'd better pay off their credit cards before coming to buy the BeoPlay A9, though; it costs $2,699. But how can you put a price on a sound system that doubles as a homage to your favorite super-hero?
What do you think of the BeoPlay A9? Sound off in the comments.
This story originally published on Mashable here.
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