Review: B&W's A7 AirPlay speaker offers outstanding sound
In my testing of AirPlay-enabled speaker systems, I've found it to be mostly the case that, with sound quality, you get what you pay for. Which means that Bowers & Wilkins’ $800 A7—the most expensive AirPlay system I’ve yet reviewed—should sound very, very good. Thankfully, it doesn’t disappoint: It sounds incredible.
The A7 cuts an imposing figure on your shelf or tabletop: The 12.6-pound unit measures 14.2 inches wide, 8.7 inches tall, and 6.3 inches deep. It’s a handsome, rounded-corner rectangle with a wraparound, black-cloth speaker grille, brushed-chrome accents across the top, and a thin aluminum band that wraps around three sides of the unit. The enclosure is made of glass-filled ABS.
The A7 itself sports few buttons. Integrated into the leftmost edge of that metal band is a power button; on the right side, also integrated into the band, sit two volume controls. The subtle buttons are geniune, tactile ones—they click—which is a nice reprieve in an era when too many speaker manufacturers opt for touch-sensitive capacitive buttons instead.
Across the bottom rear of the A7 are a power jack, a 1/8-inch (3.5mm) auxiliary input port, a USB-B port, an ethernet jack, and a Reset button. You can stream music to the A7 via Wi-Fi or wired ethernet; alternatively, you can listen to USB audio from your Mac or Windows PC, or to another audio source using the auxiliary input.
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