Bowers & Wilkins may have taken its sweet time coming up with a portable Bluetooth speaker it could be proud of, but the result of the company’s patient work is a battery-powered Bluetooth speaker that incorporates just enough of the speaker maker’s proprietary technology to make it special, and sound quality with B&W’s signature character.
What sets the T7 apart from its competition is its honeycomb framework, which comes from B&W’s lauded 800 Series Diamond Loudspeakers, a fixture in the famed Abbey Road Studios in London. That pattern isn’t just for looks, it makes the speaker’s enclosure more rigid, which helps buck sound-muddying cabinet resonances. It’s effective, too, as we’ve yet to hear a speaker that is able to maintain such a clean sound from top to bottom..Even the Braven 850, which stands as one of our favorite high-end Bluetooth speakers, suffers from a bit of enclosure hum when the bass really gets going.
Armed with class-D digital amplification, and two 50mm full range drivers with matching bass radiators, the speaker reaches deep into the bass region, getting low enough to provide a truly full sound with crystal clear midrange and just the right amount of sparkle in the treble. For non-Bluetooth devices, the T7 offers a 3.55 auxiliary jack. The only thing the T7 doesn’t do is charge your device, but it sounds good enough that we’re willing to give it a pass.
The T7’s $350 price tag is steep, to be sure, but then again, so is the competing Bang & Olufsen A2, which seeks $50 more. And we think the T7 is just a bit more handsome.
Give this to your friend with impossibly good taste, and their bound to be thrilled. But even if they aren’t, you can always keep it for yourself.
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