Bang & Olufsen’s new Beosound Emerge is a slim, book-inspired home speaker
Image Credit: Bang & Olufsen
The compact form-factor on B&O’s latest WiFi speaker is designed to fit anywhere, while providing powerful sound.
Beosound Emerge from Bang & Olufsen is a connected home speaker with a unique design. With side panels that wrap around the speaker like the cover of a book, and the front marked with Bang & Olufsen’s logo, reminiscent of a book’s spine, along with a thin footprint at just 6.7cm, allow the home speaker to proudly sit on your bookshelf or discretely in tight corners. We’ve seen a similar effort from Ikea’s Symfonisk speakers, that hides a Sonos speaker in a lamp.
The vision for Beosound Emerge was to create the slimmest speaker possible that could still deliver full range, ultra-wide sound despite its size through its revolutionary driver configuration. Whether placed on a bookshelf in the bedroom or a tight corner of the kitchen, Beosound Emerge’s slim design allows you to extend your music to a new room or complement an existing speaker in the same area without taking up extra space.
Christoffer Poulsen, Senior Vice President and Head of Product Management, Bang & Olufsen
Despite it’s small form-factor Bang & Olufsen say the new speaker will be able to reach you everywhere in the room, with full-range, ultra-wide, 180-degree sound. The omnidirectional, side-firing 4-inch woofer, features a bass port that guides low frequencies to the back of the speaker. The 1.45-inch mid-range driver and 0.6-inch soft dome tweeter are both arranged at the top of the speaker. Active Room Compensation acoustically optimised the sound based on the room, giving powerful sound in any environment.
As with their other audio equipment, B&O’s premium aesthetic doesn’t end at sound. Beosound Emerge is wrapped in premium materials including precision cut, pearl-blasted aluminium, natural oak wood and seamless knitted fabric from Kvadrat.
The WiFi speaker is loaded with all of the connectivity you’d expect from a modern smart speaker, including Bluetooth 5.0, Chromecast, AirPlay 2, Spotify Connect and Bang & Olufsen Radio. Multi-room audio is also available with Bang & Olufsen’s Connected Speaker system, allowing you to share audio among other new B&O speakers such as Beoplay A9 and Beosound Balance. Use the Bang & Olufsen app to customize the Sound EQ. Physical connections include a line-in/optical combi-jack, Ethernet and power via USB-C.
The speaker is available with or without Google Assistant at no additional cost. The smart assistant allows you to hands-free control music and the volume, as well as all of the usual Google Assistant smarts such as setting alarms, checking the news and controlling smart devices. Use the Google Home app to pair two Beosound Emerge speakers for stereo sound. Physical controls atop the speaker are easily accessed, even in tight spaces. Soft-touch buttons can play/pause music, change the track, switch radio stations, turn off voice control and adjust volume with a circling motion (iPod click wheel vibes anyone?)
Beosound Emerge comes in Gold Tone – Light Oak for $899 and Black Anthracite for $699. It will be available in select European markets from today and globally from Autumn 2021. The speaker is not available for pre-order in the US as of yet, but follow this link to be notified when it’s in stock.
For more smart assistant-enabled home speakers at every price point, click here.
If you’re after something a little more portable from B&O, check out their Beolit 20 Bluetooth speaker here.