Mother’s Day is almost upon us and we have your mothers day gift guide just in time! Bang & Olufsen provides great style and sound for almost any application and lifestyle, in a wide range of prices. Once you’ve priced those Luis Vuitton or Chanel accessories, get a bigger smile from Mom for less with Bang & Olufsen’s perfect gifts for Mother’s Day.
E8 2.0
Beoplay’s new E8 2.0 earbuds make a smart gift for on-the-move moms. The E8s and their case with three built-in extra charges make Mom’s tunes and programs available everywhere. She can easily keep up with her family and friends with the intuitive touch interface for all of her favorite features: a tap on the earpiece starts, stops or changes songs, takes calls activates voice commands and more. The built-in omnidirectional microphone gives better sound quality than those in standard phones, and the earbuds themselves rival much more expensive models.
The free B&O app now operates not only core Bang & Olufsen audio and video systems but all the Beoplay devices too, with a built-in equalizer to tailor sound to Mom’s taste. For those noisy environments in home, office or shopping the Transparency Mode can provide tranquility and keep the outside world out, but one tap on the earpiece lets users hear all around them. The Transparency Mode is easily customized via the app.
Regardless of size, Bang & Olufsen sets and keeps high standards for sound as well as looks and the E8s are no exception. The E8 2.0 earbuds are tuned by Bang & Olufsen’s acclaimed acoustic engineers for no-compromise quality. B&O uses quality materials, carefully selected for comfort, style and durability. Comfort, perfect fit and sound is assured by providing five pairs of silicone ear tips in varying sizes. B&O style is evident in veteran B&O designer Jakob Wagner’s design. Durability is backed by Beoplay’s two-year worldwide factory warranty and choice of materials. They are available in Black, Natural Blue, Indigo Blue and Limestone colors and the case/charger is now made from aluminum with a real leather casing.
That charger case has another surprise: it is wirelessly chargeable with either your existing Qi-enabled wireless charger or B&O’s own optional wireless charger. Just place the case on a charger to get ready for 16 hours of playtime.
With all that going for them, the E8 2.0 is an easy-winner gift for $350.
A1
The A1 portable bluetooth speaker is a small gem featuring not only surprising sound but clean elegant looks. The A1 is an elegant yet simple metal disc just under 2 inches thick and 5 1/4 wide and just over one pound in weight, the palm size and rounded shape enabling mothers to fit great looks and sound in purse, stroller pocket or bag, keeping hands free for important tasks. B&O’s characteristic attention to looks and feel as well as performance show up in the A1’s use of aluminum, polymer, leather and rubber, making the A1 not only durable, splash- and dust-resistant but very attractive in designer Cecilie Manz’s choice of Natural, Moss Green or Black.
The free B&O app makes operation intuitive and enables sound control for location and taste with the app’s equalization controls. For home entertainment use, another A1 can be paired to make a complete stereo system. Mom can take one with her for portable use, then put it back in the system when she gets home. The great sound comes from using good chassis materials, two internal 30-watt amplifiers and two speakers (woofer and tweeter) unlike most one-way portables. The A1 can also be used as a phone speaker. With up to 24 hours of playtimer and True360 Sound the A1 is great gift surprise for only $250!
M5
For the bedroom, kitchen, home office or den, the Beoplay M5 is a good choice, featuring typical attention to detail, construction, convenience and sound quality. This Bluetooth speaker is another thing of beauty from B&O designer David Lynch, blending cool aluminum and a selection of warm fabric colors for great looks anywhere in the home. Designer Cecilie Manz chose Black, Natural and Bronze color schemes to fit any decor or location.The fabric cover is made by prestige Danish fabric maker Kvadrat The multi-room M5 supports Chromecast built-in and Apple AirPlay, so mothers can play different music in different rooms – or let one song play from all the speakers throughout the home. With its three tweeters, a mid-range driver and a powerful woofer the M5 uses four powerful amplifiers to provide more than enough sound to go around. All that fits in a cylinder measuring only 6 1/2x 7 1/2 inches
and weighing a little over 5 1/2 pounds.
Providing Mom with music choices is made easy, as the M5 provides integrated music services of Spotify, Deezer and TuneIn internet radio. There is also a line-in connection for local devices such as TVs and computers. The free B&O app can tailor sound preferences and makes control a breeze. The aluminum top disc is a click/rotate volume and connection control for quick access and is viscous-damped for a smooth feel. With beautiful sound, looks and construction the M5 makes a special Mother’s Day gift for $600.
Beosound 1
“Striking” is a good first-impression description of the Beosound 1. This aircraft-grade aluminum portable wireless speaker includes Google Assistant for convenient voice operation of playlist, news and weather but can also be controlled with the free B&O app. The top disc can rotate for volume control and also features touch sensors on its top surface for basic controls. The Beosound 1’s compact conical design is by long-time B&O designer Torsten Valeur, but it is not just a pretty face. The round cross section and tapering height combine with the aluminum chassis to provide room-filling and accurate sound in any environment.
Although the Beosound 1 is a true portable capable of up to 16 hours of playback depending on volume, but it is a true hi-fi system, with two power amplifiers. Wireless operation is through Beolink Multiroom and Chromecast (built-in) as well as AirPlay. Fitting all this into a sleek aluminum cone weighing less than 8 pounds, a bit over 13″ high and just under 6 1/2″ wide at the base was a challenge brilliantly overcome by B&O designers, making the Beosound 1 a marvelous gift for any mother at $1750 or $1925 with optional charger.
The Shape
Surely all mothers long for enormous ugly speakers, right? No? How about making everyone happy with amazing room-filling musical beauty and a speaker no one trips over or even notices? The British audio magazine “What Hi-Fi?” accurately describes this revolutionary approach to the longtime conflict between speaker appearance and quality like this:
“The B&O BeoSound Shape is a wireless music system unlike anything we’ve seen before. It looks more like beautiful wall art than a piece of technology, but it masks an extremely clever and well thought-out system that could just be the way forward for how hi-fi should look in our homes.”
That is not an ad but a review with which we strongly agree. There is nothing like the Shape, both in its adding beauty to any room and in its stunning sound quality. The Shape is very versatile in its use of building blocks to create a customizable and expandable sound system for any size room and any placement problem.
This wall-mounted system provides an easy online design tool which enables Mom (or anyone else) to design a system in quick foolproof fashion, individualizing something which has always demanded accommodation by the user, often to the detriment of everything else in the room. The design tool features a large number of patterns for the hexagonal tiles, auto-prompting correction of any errors, making it easy to produce a finished design in just a few minutes. The process even helps with color combinations and pattern choice. Fabric covers are available in a large number of designer colors as well as upscale options from famed Danish fabric maker Kvadrat.
The distinctive multi-bevel hexagonal tiles are outwardly identical, freeing owners to use imagination and individual tastes. For enhancing a room’s feel the fabric tile faces accent and benefit from custom lighting, the inspiration supposedly being changing light from snow-covered mountains in changing daylight.
To avoid long-winded technical explanations, the Shape building blocks are the Core, which connects the system to the home’s wireless network and any source on it, an amplifier which can power two pairs of speakers, the speakers themselves, and sound dampeners to remove the muddying produced in any speaker used on- or in-wall. The system can consist of up to 11 amplifiers and 44 speakers but in even most larger spaces 4 speakers produce room-filling unforced-sounding music.
Words do not do the Shape justice, so visit Scottsdale Bang & Olufsen to see and hear this revolution in home design and entertainment. Give Mother’s Day a “Wow!” moment, or add a Shape to your home any time, but experience this unique work of visual and sound art yourself.