Skip to main content

Bang & Olufsen’s first soundbar looks stunning and has a price tag to match

You’ve got to hand it to Danish audio company Bang & Olufsen: It has never once allowed a little thing like money to get in the way of making a product that looks as good as it sounds. Take its very first soundbar, the Beosound Stage, which B&O recently debuted at an event in Italy.

Recommended Videos

On the performance side, this speaker is a powerhouse, packing 11 drivers and a matching number of amplifiers. According to the company, these give the Beosound Stage enough range, from deep lows to sparkling highs, that you won’t feel the need to supplement its sound with a subwoofer. And given that the Beosound Stage starts at $1,750 when it goes on sale later this fall, that’s a very good thing. Of course, that price reflects the two standard finishes — natural aluminum or bronze-tone aluminum. But because this is B&O, you also have the option of ordering your Beosound Stage in smoked oak wood, a warm and refined-looking material that apparently does not grow on trees, judging by the massive $850 premium you’ll need to shell out if you want it.

Sticker-shock and hardwoods aside, the Beosound Stage makes a compelling case that it should be your soundbar of choice should your budget allow for such a toy. It’s a Dolby Atmos-capable speaker that includes support for Dolby TrueHD. You connect to your TV via HDMI-ARC, and if you happen to own the company’s Beovision Harmony TV, the Beoremote One BT that shipped with it will control all of the soundbar’s functions. It’s also more than a stand-alone soundbar. It connects to B&O’s multiroom BeoLink speaker system — with a neat one-touch-to-join feature — and also packs Apple’s AirPlay 2, Chromecast, and Bluetooth, for an essentially endless number of wireless streaming options.

The Beosound Stage is reminiscent of the Sonos Playbar in that you can place the Beosound Stage on its “back” flat on a surface in front of your TV, or you can orient the speaker grill into the room when it’s wall-mounted, making it a versatile component. Despite the fact that its really just a 3-channel stereo speaker, the Beosound Stage is capable of a 3D-surround effect, thanks to a pair of dome tweeters placed at the far ends of the bar and angled outward. How convincing is this effect, and how well does it deliver on the promise of Dolby Atmos? We’ll let you know as soon as we get out hands on a review unit.

You can head over to B&O’s site if you’d like to be informed when you and your cash can be parted.

Correction: The original story misidentified Bang & Olufsen’s home country. It’s Denmark.

Simon Cohen
Contributing Editor, A/V
Simon Cohen is a contributing editor to Digital Trends' Audio/Video section, where he obsesses over the latest wireless…
Bang & Olufsen’s latest headphones look gorgeous and cost a fortune
Bang & Olufsen Beoplay H100.

Iconic Danish audio brand Bang & Olufsen (B&O) is well known for both its stunning industrial design, as well as its premium prices, but we still weren't quite prepared for its new Beoplay H100 wireless headphones. They're sleek, built from a combination of leather, aluminum, and scratch-resistant hardened glass, and each earcup has a rotating "haptic" dial for intuitive control over both volume and noise cancellation. The price for these new cans? $1,549 -- a huge increase over the company's previous flagship, the Beoplay H95, which were already pricey at $800.

If you can afford them, the B&O Beoplay H100 are available September 3 in three color options: Infinite Black, Hourglass Sand, and Sunset Apricot.

Read more
You can now buy TCL’s 7.1.4-channel, 860-watt soundbar for $600
TCL 2024 Q Class Q85H soundbar.

In May, TCL formally announced its new soundbar lineup for 2024. At the very top sat the TCL Q85H, a 7.1.4-channel, 860-watt Dolby Atmos- and DTS:X-capable beast with a surprisingly reasonable price: $1,000. Today, you can buy the Q85H for the first time, and both Amazon and BestBuy have set their prices even lower at just $600.

Buy at Amazon

Read more
Nakamichi’s insane Dragon soundbar reborn with quad 750-watt subwoofers
Nakamichi

When it comes to Nakamichi's Dragon Dolby Atmos soundbar, hyperbole just comes with the territory. After all, massive performance is what you should expect from a $3,900, 3,000-watt, 11.4.6-channel monster of a sound system. But apparently, we ain't seen (or heard) nothing yet: the company has just announced a new 12-inch, 750-watt subwoofer for the Dragon, which can be added as an upgrade to existing systems for $1,500, or you can order the Dragon with up to four of these massive cubes for a grand total of $8,500. That gets you 5,000 total system watts, by the way.

Nakamichi says it developed the new 12-inch sub as a direct response to customer feedback. Its survey of owners and "fans" revealed that 41% of the respondents want three or more subs, and that 67% of them think those subs should have a 12-inch or bigger driver.

Read more