<p><em>It’s tough to get this voluminous a sound from a device the size of a lunchbox. But Bang & Olufsen does it with the Beolit 15<br><br><strong>by Mala Bhargava</strong></em><br><br>Bang & olufsen's Play Beolit 15 Bluetooth speaker is about the size of a really large lunchbox, but much heavier than anything you’ll be able to eat at one meal and certainly much heavier than it looks. It comes in three colours — rose, blue and champagne — and people either love or hate the squat boxy look. There is a beautiful leather strap to add a real touch of class though. Personally, I’m ambivalent and think the look’s way secondary to the sound it produces.<br><br>The B&O Beolit 15 is supposed to be portable and if you just take it from room to room, that works fine. If you’re thinking of toting it around on a trek, forget it, because it’s too heavy for walking around with for more than a really short distance. The speaker is similar to B&O’s Beolit 12 and BeoPlay A2, both portable Bluetooth speakers. The Beolit 15 is the heftiest of the three.<br><br>It’s a simple device in terms of usage. Open the flap at the back to plug into power and charge the speaker with its thickish cable. That’s the only accessory in the box. The controls, what little there are of them, are on the top of the lunchbox. There are just a few buttons — power, Bluetooth, and volume up and down. And that’s it.<br><br>And now for the sound. It’s massive and deep and comes from two amplifiers putting out 240 watts. For years now we’ve been unsurprised at the full sound you get from really small speakers — with a subwoofer tucked away somewhere. But this is just a lone speaker and it’s Bluetooth on top of that.<br><br>It’s not easy to get as powerful a sound as you get from a speaker this size. The high frequencies are sharp and clear with a whisper or a tinkle travelling well across a room with the full voluminous bass rolling out deeply. Basically, your neighbours will hear this bass.<br><br>A unique feature of this and several other speakers from B&O is that it’s got 360-degree sound. You can get room filling sound because of this and how it’ll sound depends quite a bit on where you place the speaker. All the same, I found something wanting in the overall experience. Perhaps finesse of some sort.<br><br>I happen to own the smaller BeoPlay A2 and it often raises eyebrows when people hear the quality of the sound. People have often asked me if it is attached to something external. But the BeoLit 15 has a little bit of closedness about it. Something wanting for its hefty price tag of Rs 35,000. All the same, you will be able to use it for a party where you want the music to be really loud while for intimate and personal listening, especially one-person listening, I would recommend the BeoPlay A2 if you’re interested in a Bang & Olufsen product.<br><br>What I can’t comment on is the amount of time it takes to charge the battery and how long it lasts because the review unit seems to have been an old one or perhaps one that had its battery die out cold. The device took a few days to recover enough to finally give me a green charged light. When it finally signalled a complete charge, I played it nonstop at a good loud volume — maybe just short of objectionable. The battery lasted about four and a half hours before it pinged a warning and dipped volume to low — meaning, charge me, please. Plugging in the power should have brought the sound back up (as it does in the BeoPlay unit I own) but this wasn’t the case.<br><br>I fully expect a new unit not to have this problem, but on the other hand, if this is what happens to an older speaker on which the battery has been allowed to die out completely, that’s something to watch out for.<br><br>The Beolit 15 competes with several other powerful speakers such as the SoundLink 3 from Bose, a Marshal Stanmore speaker, and Harman Kordon Aura, all available in India. <br><br>(This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 05-10-2015)</p>