After you cover technology for more than a decade, it’s quite easy to assume you’ve seen everything. Well a new speaker from Bang & Olufsen in collaboration with Saint Laurent Rive Droite, is called the Beosound Edge and is anything but conventional.
Resembling a contemporary art piece with a minimal design, the perfectly circular aluminum frame exterior surrounds the speaker, which is calibrated to detect the force of your touch when adjusting the volume as you roll the speaker back and forth.
As you approach Beosound Edge, it comes to life, lighting up the interface thanks to proximity sensors. The touch-sensitive aluminum surface allows you to start, stop and change tracks with a simple tap.
This speaker offers three-directional sound settings for different listening experiences, including the True360 omnidirectional mode which will fill the entire room with sound. The innovative Active Bass Port design allows Beosound Edge to deliver an outstandingly potent bass.
Tech Specs
The speaker weighs in at 13kg and is 50.2 x 13 cm. In terms of positioning this speaker in your home, you have the choice of a Floor base or you could wall mount it.
Inside you’ll find Power amplifiers: 2 x 200 Watt (woofer), 4 x 100 Watt (midranges/tweeters) and a series of speaker drivers including 1 x 10” dual coil woofer, 2 x 4” midrange, 2 x 3/4” tweeter which are housed in a closed box with open port.
In terms of connectivity, the speaker supports Wi-fi/WLAN 802.11 b/g/n/ac (2.4 GHz & 5 GHz) and Bluetooth 4.2, as well as
Line-in (analogue & digital combo) with sensing and 1 x Ethernet 10/100 Mbit/s (come on, no gigabit ?)
When it comes to format support, there’s quite a lot on offer here – we have Chromecast built-in, Apple AirPlay 2 support, Bluetooth Audio Streaming, support for DLNA – DMR and QPlay 2.0 (China specific).
Price and Availability
This limited edition speaker is customized in a marble print with a matt black aluminum finish. Naturally, anything this unique doesn’t come cheap, with the Saint Laurent Rive Droite x Bang & Olufsen Beosound Edge, priced at US$5,000 USD (A$6,597.05) or 4,550 EUR.
They are super limited are available only in LA and Paris, and you have a choice of 3 colours to choose from – Fabric Black, Warm Taupe or Parisian Night Blue and Aluminium shell colours of Natural (silver), Bronze and Brass).
This definitely won’t be for everyone, but it is a unique design with a premium price tag to match.
