If you own Bowers & Wilkins’ Zeppelin loudspeaker, chances are, you love them. They look great, they sound amazing, and all your friends end up wanting one whenever they hear it playing in your house. At least, that was the case a few years ago. Now, every time they look at your speaker, they wonder why it still has a Lightning dock and why it only supports Airplay, almost like your beloved compact home speaker was a relic from an ancient past. Well, it kind of is. It’s probably time to upgrade to the B&W Zeppelin Wireless.
That’s right, B&W have finally embraced the present and released a new model of the Zeppelin that ditches the outdated docking port, giving it a sleeker overall appearance. More importantly, B&W decided to expand the speaker’s repertoire beyond Apple’s Airplay, adding Bluetooth and Spotify Connect as options for users, finally welcoming an entire world of users invested in other mobile platforms.
Billed as a “radical redesign,” the B&W Zeppelin Wireless retains the familiar airship silhouette on the outside, but gets a whole lot of changes right under that shell. Aside from its newfound wireless streaming capabilities, it gets an all-new sound, courtesy of five drivers, each of which gets pushed by a dedicated class-D amplifier. Four 25-watt amps drive the two 10-inch double-dome tweeters and the two 3.5-inch midrange drivers (which both have Fixed Suspension Transducers for controlled speaker cone behavior), while a 50-watt amp handles the six-inch subwoofer and its long-throw voice coil that enables a deep, clean bass sound even at the highest volumes.
The B&W Zeppelin Wireless is available now, priced at $699.