Bang & Olufsen Beosound Balance Review | 130 Data compared

The Bang & Olufsen Beosound Balance is a premium, visually striking smart speaker featuring luxurious materials and powerful, 880W, seven-driver audio performance, optimized via active room compensation. It offers versatile sound modes, including 360-degree and directional audio, yet its high price point and inability to fully replicate a traditional stereo pair are notable drawbacks.

The Bang & Olufsen Beosound Balance is a premium smart speaker featuring a seven-driver setup, beamforming technology for automatic room compensation, and a user-friendly app. Pros include powerful audio that fills large spaces, excellent aesthetics, and simple setup, though cons include a limited soundstage, gentle bass output, and a high price point competing with more affordable alternatives.

The Bang & Olufsen Beosound Balance is described by T3 as a top-tier, high-end smart speaker featuring a premium aesthetic with an oak base and impressive, customizable sound quality. Its strengths include expansive sound directivity, active room compensation, and smart connectivity options. However, the speaker faces significant drawbacks in its very high price point and a relative lack of low-frequency bass impact in its standalone settings.

The Bang & Olufsen Beosound Balance earned a high score of 145 from DXOMARK for its elite, clean, and 360-degree immersive sound performance, particularly excelling in dynamics. However, the review highlights notable cons, including an uneven tonal balance with weak low-midrange, limited extension at the frequency extremes, and issues with realistic distance rendering and heavy compression, particularly for audio-visual content.

The SoundStage! Simplifi review highlights the Bang & Olufsen Beosound Balance as a premium, seven-driver wireless speaker that delivers a deep, omnidirectional soundscape with minimal cabinet vibration. Key advantages include robust connectivity, including dual-band Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.0, alongside active room compensation that tailors bass to placement. A notable drawback is that configuring the speakers as a stereo pair restricts output to a forward-facing direction, sacrificing the rich, immersive sound achieved in mono mode. Simplifi.

The Audio Science Review of the $3,299 Bang & Olufsen Beosound Balance yielded a mostly negative reception, with users citing significant flaws despite high-quality aesthetics. Pros include luxury design, solid connectivity, and surprising bass, yet cons are substantial, featuring poor factory tuning, an uneven tonal balance, and a risk of DSP-induced driver damage, alongside a buggy control app.

The Pocket-lint review of the Bang & Olufsen Beosound Balance highlights a stunning, high-end wireless speaker that pairs top-tier audio engineering with exceptional design, featuring a seven-driver layout for both 360-degree and focused, beam-formed sound. Key pros include its exquisite craftsmanship with a solid oak pedestal, an intuitive proximity-activated interface, and broad connectivity via AirPlay 2 and Chromecast, while the primary con is its high luxury-tier pricing ($2,250 / £1,750 at launch).