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Bowers & Wilkins makes some of our favourite audio hardware. We also happen to love AirPlay—so the union of the two should be terrific, right? Sort of. The A7 speaker is tremendous—but it’s just so, so expensive.
A £699, AirPlay-enabled speaker.
Someone who wants to fill an entire room with one big honkin’ speaker, and beam music to it from their OS X or iOS device.
This is the best looking AirPlay speaker I’ve ever seen. It’s hard to add shiny metallic details to something without breaching tackiness, but the A7 does just that—starship chic.
AirPlay speakers’ appeal lies in their simplicity, and it’s the same deal here: after setup, you just select the speaker from your Apple gadget’s AirPlay menu, and stream away. Make sure it’s plugged in.
Fantastically loud while remaining fantastically clear—this thing holds its ground against a large, multi-speaker setup.
The price. A speaker that costs £699 is too much for almost everyone. The A7 sounds lovely, but you’re paying a premium for looks and brand here.
I had to manually reset the A7 several times before it would let me use its companion app and join my network, but it was fine after that.
Unless money is no object to you, probably not. If it is (and it probably is), you can afford to buy two AirPlay speakers for the price of this one. And it’s hard to justify not doing so.
Bowers & Wilkins A7
• Price: £699
• Speakers: Two one-inch tweeters, two three-inch mid-ranges, and a six-inch sub
• Power: 100 watts
• Size: Height 220mm, Width 360mm, Depth 160mm
• Weight: 7kg
• Giz Rank: 3.0 stars
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£699 whoa!
And there’s me thinking my Bose Soundlink air was expensive.
My uncle got one of these over christmas and I have to say it’s one of the most amazing speakers I’ve heard.. for the size it does an incredible job of creating a full wall of sound
How does it compare to the similarly priced Sonos Play:5 and SUB?
Sure the B&W is awesome, and I’m not really answering your question however the Sonos system is pretty good now. I bought the Play:5 and Play:3 for Christmas and I’m not disappointed. Great sound quality across a range of genres. I’ve coupled them with an airport express (Play:5 has a line-in) so I can use the speaker when I play movies on the Mac/PC (using Airfoil). Also the Sonos recognises your iTunes library and therefore acts exactly like an airplay speaker – you can even control from Android/iOS device with a decent app that can access all the internet radio on earth. You can also play FLAC (which Airplay does not allow. There is also less latency using the Sonos compared to Airplay, subjectively. I also got 6 months free Napster, which is nice, and Spotify premium works with it too… I looked around and would have considered the B&W, but the Sonos beats it on connectivity and future-proofness. I’m looking to add another Play:3 in the near future.