I’ve had my eye on the Bang & Olufsen Beolit 12 for some time now and last week I finally decided to splurge and get it. The Beolit 12 is a portable speaker that can operate on battery or electricity. When I first got the Beolit I had buyers remorse but that feeling has since long gone.
Unlike most other portable speaker systems, the Beolit uses AirPlay instead of Bluetooth which can be a good or bad thing depending on your requirements. Setting it up for the first time took around 5 minutes and was a fairly simple process as long as you follow the instructions. A lot of people online have complained about the setup being too complicated but I have no idea why. All you need to do is download the Beolit app from the Apple App Store and then follow the on screen instructions.
The Beolit 12 looks ridiculously cool. It comes in four colors, two being fairly safe grey tones and the other two coming in either blue or yellow. Mine is the yellow model which I think looks the best. The Beolit 12 has a leather handle which makes the whole thing resemble a picnic basket but it also makes the Beolit easy to carry around while giving it a bit of a retro feel. I took the Beolit with me to the beach and also out tagging and in both occasions I thought the Beolit performed really well. On the beach the Beolit was loud sounding like a full fledged sound system. The Beolit pumps out 100w worth of power and at full blast the sound is just too loud for comfort when you’re close to it. A couple of days later I took the Beolit with me to an abandoned parking lot where I did some tagging and the Beolit was super loud again with music most likely being heard by people passing by on the outside. Even though the speaker is fairly small it still manages to pump out a decent amount of bass for its size.
When home, I keep the Beolit in my bedroom connected to electricity, turned on and connected to the wifi network. That way when I want to play music on the Beolit it’s available right away. If you don’t keep your Beolit on with wifi on then it will take around a minute for it to turn on and connect to the wifi network before you can stream music to it. According to B&O battery life is 8 hours unless you’re using AirPlay then its 4 hours. I had the Beolit on the beach for 3 hours playing music at 80% volume and battery was down to around 54% by then. So I guess at lower volumes it could last 8 hours and maybe even more.
I have two gripes about the device. The first night I had the Beolit on the table and when I tried to slide it towards me one of the rubber feet came off. I put it back on and it hasn’t fallen since but I informed the dealer and they told me to let them know if it falls off again. Hopefully it won’t. The second issue is the lack of Bluetooth. Although I love AirPlay at home when I’m out of the house I would rather stream music wirelessly to the Beolit and not have to use a USB cable.
Other than those two issues I really love the Beolit 12. It costs KD250 which is pretty pricy but there really isn’t any other portable unit that delivers the same sound quality while still looking this good.
29 replies on “Review: Bang & Olufsen Beolit 12”
that can operate on *
you must hate me by now :p
Lol no I appreciate your help
😀
My speaker of choice has been Harman Kardon go+play speakers for a few years now. They are big, but with that size come big booming sound too. I absolutely love them. Have you tried them before?
Nope
You tag? Why don’t you share some pics on the blog?
Not blog worthy. They’re on Instagram though.
Isn’t that against the law or something?
OT: What is tagging?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graffiti#Tag
Haha I recognize that place! Was that the Saturday that Doss and I filmed Eastern Flex?
Yup but I was there in the afternoon
Mark…. are you telling me you paid $900 for a speaker that looks like a lunch box?
You can buy three Sonos Play:3s for that price.
You could buy 3 Big Jamboxes also but that doesn’t mean anything. It’s like saying why buy a land cruiser when you could buy 4 corollas…
It says that it doesn’t represent good value for money for starters.
if you can, and it satisfies what you need.. why not? ._.
It does not look like a lunch box. It looks like a picnic basket.
I think that it’s how a speaker SOUNDS, not how it LOOKS is what matters 🙂
Although this speaker looks very cool too!
$900 cool?
is it sand and splash proof? I have two monkey kids
No it’s not. Keep the kids away from it lol
now we know that u are also running the graffiti club in Kuwait! the speaker is cool, the price is acceptable considering the brand and they engineer sound technology which has superb acoustics into it. not to mention they are not commercial and don’t want to be mass, so 900 is a good buy.
B&O is the Best !! Its Brand and name you buy !! With best sound, material and long lasting period no matter what !! Design timeless !!
Mark you can use outdoors without cable by hot spot just dowload Beosetup.
better than big jam box ?
no comparison, the beolit has bigger speakers and so pumps out 100w worth of power. The Big Jam Box is just 36w.
i recommend b&w zeppelin air ,its amazing ,easy , power full
Zeppelin Air is great but has a lot smaller speakers pumping out just 150w
I just picked up one from Craigslist and when it was first played it didn’t sound so great…I then got a chance to listen close up and was blown away at how clear and beautiful the sound was. I paid $ 350 from an asking price of $399. I feel the unit will get plenty of use and is worth every penney!