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Review: $399 Beosound A1 Portable Speaker Shows Why Bang & Olufsen Commands a Premium

Bang & Olufsen recently released the third generation of its award-winning Beosound A1 portable Bluetooth speaker, and after playing with it for...

Sure, at $399 it's pricey, and this ultraportable unit from B&O is unashamedly pitched at the premium end of the Bluetooth speaker market, but the Danish high-end audio manufacturer's principled attention to design and craftsmanship almost justifies the price alone. The A1's solid aluminum casing certainly feels like it could take a few knocks, but its smooth finish is bound to attract scuffing and dents if you bash it about or throw it in a backpack with other hard objects. Switching to some dub techno and dialing up the internal amp using the A1's onboard controls easily overrode the source device's maximum output, but it was almost impossible to induce distortion at high volume, thanks to the responsiveness of B&O's proprietary digital signal processing.

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