<div>Not long ago, the premium audio brand from Denmark, Bang and Olufsen, set up shop in India, bringing their whole range into the country. There’s a reason it’s housed at the Emporio Mall in Delhi. This is expensive stuff. Although they have affordable headphones and Bluetooth speakers, it’s at the high-end that they really come into their own with surround sound, televisions, and snazzily shaped speakers that send music straight into your bones. I carried off one of their smaller items, a portable wireless speaker, to give it a try.<br /><br />And the BeoPlay A2 is easy to carry off. It has a lovely leather strap that gives it a huge touch of class. The speaker itself is encased in a hard plastic grill which comes in a few different colours, though it’s the army green that really looks the best. It looks rugged and cool and though it’s more masculine looking than neutral, I’d say few people will hesitate to take it around. The speaker is quite heavy for its size. I would definitely do some serious damage if I were to drop it on my foot. And yet it’s certainly thinner than War And Peace. The weight, however, becomes understandable when you switch it on and the sound flows out.<br /><br />The BeoPlay speaker sounds great. Although we’ve got somewhat used to hearing loud sound from small packages, what you hear on the BeoPlay still comes as a surprise. No distortion, no lack of clarity, just powerful clear sound. It delivers a deep bass but never pounding and unpleasant. The speaker is double-sided so you get a wider spread of sound. They like to call it 360 degree sound. There are two channels on either side of the speaker and an extra tweeter on the rear side of the driver for more high-frequency tones.<br /><br />I found the BeoPlay A2 connected via Bluetooth to devices really quickly and with no fuss at all. There was just nothing to fiddle with: just one button, which along with the volume up/down and the power button is all there is on one edge of the device. In the box, you get a set of different plugs and a big charging adaptor. There’s a USB slot and you can actually charge your phone in the unlikely event that you should need to. The battery of the speaker is a claimed 24 hours, but on Bluetooth and with loud volume, it will certainly not last that long.<br /><br />You need to shell out Rs 22,990 for the BeoPlay A2 and it really isn’t much for the quality of sound this speaker delivers. <br /><br />(This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 04-05-2015)</div>
BW Reporters
Mala Bhargava has been writing on technology well before the advent of internet in Indians and before CDs made their way into computers. Mala writes on technology, social media, startups and fitness. A trained psychologist, she claims that her understanding of psychology helps her understand the human side of technology.
