Slated to arrive this fall, Bang & Olufsen’s sleek soundbar comes with 11 powered drivers, Dolby Atmos, AirPlay 2, and built-in Chromecast support, not to mention a eye-catching design and (naturally) a hefty price tag.
Bang & Olufsen took the wraps off the Beosound Stage soundbar—a first for the legendary Danish consumer electronics manufacturer—on Sunday, just days ahead of IFA in Berlin.
Measuring 43 x 6.7 x 3 inches and encased in either an aluminum or smoked oak wood frame, the Beosound Stage features a total of 11 drivers, including four woofers, four mid-range drivers, and four tweeters, each of which are powered by their own 50-watt amplifiers.
Because of the “superbly deep” sound delivered by its four woofers, the Beosound Stage doesn’t need a subwoofer, Bang & Olufsen claims.
Bang & OlufsenThe Bang & Olufsen Beosound Stage features either an aluminum or smoked oak wood frame (above).
The soundbar offers 3D object-based audio courtesy of its Dolby Atmos support, and you can stream video and audio via AirPlay 2, Bluetooth, or on-board Chromecast. You can also use the Beosound Stage in a multi-room audio setup thanks to its support for Bang & Olufsen’s BeoLink Multiroom platform.
The Beosound Stage connects to your TV via its HDMI ARC port, which lets you connect your video sources directly to your set while sending audio back to the soundbar using the included HDMI cable. Of course, the downside of an HDMI ARC setup is that it doesn’t support lossless audio via Dolby TrueHD, meaning you’ll have to settle for “lossy” audio for standard 2D surround and Dolby Atmos-encoded audio.
It’s also worth noting that the Beosound Stage lacks a built-in digital assistant such as Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant, a feature we’re seeing in more and more soundbars, particularly the pricier ones.
Speaking of pricey, the Beosound Stage is slated to land with an eye-popping $1,750 price tag (according to Engadget), or a whopping $2,600 if you opt for the version with the smoked oak wood frame.
That’s almost $1,000 more than our current high-end soundbar pick, the Denon HEOS HomeCinema HS2, although it’s worth nothing that we’re seeing plenty of new soundbars creeping north of the $1,500 mark.
We’ll have a full review of the Bang & Olufsen Beosound Stage once we spend quality time with it.