Reviews for Bowers & Wilkins A7 AirPlay Wireless Music System

I recently upgraded from the Zeppelin Air to the new B&W A7. I wondered if the A7 would justify the extra money and within minutes of the first use, I was very happy with the upgrade. First, the set up took less than a minute using the B & W app. The same app didn't work as well on the Zeppelin even though they're both using AirPlay devices. It took me over an hour to set up the Zeppelin and it I was only able to do it with an old Gateway laptop. It wouldnt take to my MBA or any of my iOS devices. None the less, it eventually connected and it sounded great. The A7 delivers (IMO) crisper fuller tones. Our great room has 25ft ceilings and the A7 easily fills the room. I took it outside to do yard work and it still sounded great without having wall to bounce sound off of. Plus, it reconnects within seconds of plugging it back in. Again, the Zeppelin takes up to 10 minutes...I moved it one time, and at first thought I had to reconfigure it. Since the A7 reconnects so quickly, I take it with me to another room if I think I'm going to be in it for a while. It's also more compact and can fit into more narrow places, ie the toilet tank. I'm planning on getting at least one more. I want every room to have one. It's so convenient with the airplay. I've never had an interruption or dropped connection. Before I had the dedicated AirPlay speakers, I used apple tv to stream Pandora, but I have to either leave the system on or turn it on every time I want to listen. This stays on standby mode until you're ready.
Lastly, the build quality is classy and conservative. It easily blends with any decor and doesn't compete for attention. I've become a little discriminating to electronics and feel like the music systems should be heard, not seen...that much.

65 of 68 people found this useful

I also have the A5 and I rated it 5 stars. If I could rate the A7 higher I would. I also have a Zeppelin and I feel the A7 is a step above the Zeppelin in sound quality. B & W have discovered a niche and nobody else has elevated their product to this level. The A7 is a quality product evident by its materials, look, sound and ease of use. While I am not an audiophile, I do appreciate music that's feels like your in the middle of the real production and the A7 sounds like this especially in the high-end. If you like your music loud, you can crank it full open with no distortion. The setup is very easy and in a couple of minutes it was working. I have the A5, A7 and a Zeppillin playing on multi-speaker mode in different rooms in my house and they all work great together or individually. The average music listener will not hear much difference between the A5 and A7 but it delivers the best sound you can buy in an airplay speaker. I recommend it highly.

26 of 26 people found this useful

I will start by saying I'm certainly not an audiophile and don't have "golden" ears but I do know what I like. The A7 sounds like what it is, a small all in one shelf unit and possibly the best all in one shelf unit on the market. The only problem is in this segment you could probably find several speakers costing half as much that sound virtually the same to most ears.
Airplay is another achilles heel with the A7 as others have noted. I have 2 airport extremes blanketing the house with wifi and you could be certain every 45 minutes to an hour the airplay would cut out with the A7 for a couple seconds or more. Have several Apple TV's that I havent had any trouble with using airplay so I cant help but blame the weak G wifi card in the A7. Overall probably better solutions out there for an airplay speaker.

23 of 24 people found this useful

I've tried the A5 and the A7 at a store and the A7 is way warmer and more powerfull (got a sub and more speakers), of course exactly as stated by the compagny. So if you want the total experience, skip the A5 and go with the A7.

The construction is impeccable and its sound really great, simply a beautiful mix of form and fonction, I love it! A bit expensive but you get what you pay for.

Its lost one-star simply because its was, in apparence, hard to setup. I tried to follow the simple step provided to make it join my WIFI network but its alway fail to connect and the A7 was getting stuck with a blinking purple light (NO WIFI connection in the manuel)

I tried with the iphone app procedure and the mac app, no success. I didnt understand why my iphone, macbook air, apple tv, friends computer connected to my router but the A7 didnt want... I must say have general knowledge with WIFI and computer. I did remember that I had my router for quite a long time and after inquiring about it I found that I had a 802.11g/2.4 router (di-524) that was 10 years old and the A7 (A5 also) only work with a 802.11n router.

It written on the web site and in the manuel but I'm not somebody who's changing is router because its not the latest gizmo so I didnt think about it at first.

I did buy a 802.11n router and the A7 was joining my new network in 30 secondes...
I just wish the WIFI requirement was stated more explicitly, I guess some people will miss this beautiful product and think it dont work because B&W dont front the WIFI instruction more clearly and not everybody is computer savant.

Recap:

- Need a 802.11n router
- No ¨#$%#¨ only number and letter in the WIFI password

If there is audio drop out, its because your WIFI router signal is not perfect to the location of your speaker, more your router or speaker or change for a more powerfull router and its will work, i guess ;)

I hope it will help some people, this is an amazing product :)

Cheers

21 of 23 people found this useful

This is an excellent speaker, probably the best in this class of speaker. The sound is rich and simply wonderful. I have B&W floor standing speakers, and these things come pretty close.

That said, I'm sorely disappointed that B&W does NOT presently support the Wi-Fi Wireless N standard. So for those of you who play uncompressed audio because you want hi-fidelity, or those with big homes where the router is far from the speaker, you will see intermittent drops in audio.

This actually applies to all their Wireless speaker systems (as of December 2012) – including the Zepplin, A7 and A5.

I took the speaker back with a lot of sadness.

12 of 13 people found this useful

it's a nice speaker if you have a limited space. the sound is very good (mine sounded so so at first, but did get much better after a few days of breaking in). the base is good for a small speaker, but it does not sound like a big system like bose sounddock 10 does when you turn the volumn up. it's fuller sound than bose at low to mid volume. the airplay sometimes drops if there is any interference such as when my microwave is on.
it's a great speaker, but for the price i expected better.

16 of 25 people found this useful

I had to modify my Wifi Password to get the A7 to connect. I am using Airport Extreme with all of the default settings, my problem was that I had special characters in the WPA2 password and initially had my SSID hidden. The resolution was to remove special characters (like # or !) and use letters (caps or not) and numbers and I made my SSID visible. Once I did these 2 steps, the A7 connected easily.

4 of 4 people found this useful

Amazing speaker system. Compact and great sounding. I have owned 7.1, 5.1, and 2.1 systems and they always sound like garbage. Bass is way too muffled. This works perfect nice tight bass, and perfect highs mids! I like the Airplay but use it for direct connect on my new 27 imac. Worth the price. I can say that airplay from PC to BW is hit and miss, but MMP or IPad connects every time!

4 of 5 people found this useful

I purchased this about a couple of months ago and love it. The sound is incredible for any office or any small room.

2 of 2 people found this useful

My first generation Zeppelin died a loud and unpleasant death. Having been on for several days and getting a lot of play, I heard - grrrrrr, BANG! My Zeppelin self destructed. For a moment I thought it just didn't want to play any more Bob Dylan - that can't be true. It was five years old and had provided many hours of enjoyment. I loved it's deep, rich, full sound.

Now it came time to select a replacement. Having had a previous occurrence with my Zeppelin of a bad power supply requiring me to send it to the service depot for repair, I was reluctant to buy another B&W product. I had a Sonos Connect allowing the Zeppelin to be part of my home listening system. So, I was looking for powered desktop/book shelf speakers to connect to the Sonos. I also have several Sonos powered speakers scattered around in various rooms, but I never thought the sound was any better than passable. I listened to several other offerings. None of them had the richness of my Zeppelin. I did not need a iPhone/iPod/iPad dock. I just needed a good powered speaker for my office. I had no way to listen to the A7 prior to purchase, but I was taken by B&W's claim that the A7 had their highest quality amps for best playback on their renowned speakers. Digital optical input to the amps should be ideal. So, I bought it.

I thought that my Zeppelin was the hottest thing on the market for my purposes. I was very pleasantly surprised to find that the A7 out performed the Zeppelin - to my ears. The sound is rich and dynamic. I generally don't like heavily accented bass. But the A7 has very clearly distinguished bass while not being overdone. The channel separation is as good as one can expect from a single desktop speaker. I like to use Bob Dylan's "Man in the long black coat" as a measure of my sound systems. The opening provides very clear channel separation and instrument isolation. The A7 is not my Mark Levinson/Thiel CS2.7 combination, but it's pretty darn good.

Several reviewers have been disappointed with the WiFi, and I am too. It's the only reason I rated the A7 as four stars rather than a perfect five. Luckily, my Sonos Connect has an ethernet output that connects directly to the A7. This way when I want to use the A7 independently from the Sonos music system, the A7 can access the internet via the B&W app. WiFi problem solved.

1 of 1 people found this useful