Reviews for Bowers & Wilkins Zeppelin Air

Great sound, easy to setup just read the instructions included. Don't understand all the complaints going on about "can't connect to network" blah blah.

Unboxed and connected to my wifi in 15 mins. Even though it is not officially supported I can even charge the iPad on this thing. B&W made an exceptional product.

The audio has enough bass without too much "boom" or exaggerated. The Zep. Air can fill a small-medium room with adequate level. Distortion was not experienced at high volume.

It's pricey but worth the cost of admission IMO.

I noticed that people are having problems with AirPlay. Guys, please, invest in a high quality router and modem and forget about all the woes of disconnections before blaming Bowers & Wilkins. For me, Netgear wireless devices is the solution.

The speakers sound amazing. (Note that it will take a few hours/days for them to burn in, however, so they don't sound amazing out of the box. But soon, they will.)

BUT, the AirPlay is useless (even with the latest firmware installed).

When I turn the speakers on, AirPlay works. But it permanently disconnects usually within an hour or two, meaning I've got to power the speakers off and on to re-enable it. This is just terrible engineering -- I mean, if the speaker realizes it's lost the Wi-Fi connection, then it should try reconnecting on its own afterwards! Really just unforgiveable.

But also, quite often the AirPlay just stops working from one song to another. The connection isn't lost, because I can reselect the speaker as output, and the AirPlay works again. So I have no idea what's going on there.

I could forgive short gaps in AirPlay, because I understand there might be WiFi interference. But the fact that it just dies all the time, and I can rarely get it to play more than 2 or 3 songs in a row, makes it completely useless.

Hopefully B&W fixes these in future firmware updates, but I doubt it, since I figure they would have been fixed already, since it seems like everyone on the Internet is complaining about the same thing.

Solid, great sounding speakers, but AirPlay was a key selling point.

I bought my partner the ZA for Christmas from the Online Store. After spending three hours on Christmas Day trying to get it to AirPlay properly I have come to the conclusion that the WiFi or AirPlay module is faulty. I had to update the firmware to 1.1.3 twice. After the first firmware update, the unit went into some kind of torpor and wouldn’t even respond to a hard reset.

I found that a LOT of customers have the same problem, but most end up returning it at this point. It was by PURE CHANCE that I ran across a forum post that pointed me to where to download the software to restore the firmware to 1.0.0.

Incidentally, B&W don’t include a USB cable, so unless you have one handy, you can’t update the firmware.

But EVEN AFTER finally successfully updating to 1.1.3, the ZA now connects to my wifi network fine, but will only AirPlay for half a minute. I set my WiFi router to issue a dedicated IP to the ZA’s MAC address and used an IP scanner to watch. When the ZA stops streaming, it disappears from all my iDevices’ AirPlay lists, and also the IP scans fail to detect it. So I’m quite sure that the WiFi/AirPlay module is kaput.

Apple was very accommodating when I called to arrange for a replacement, but ultimately, I wasted a lot of my time trying to get it to work and have to waste more time and effort lugging it to FedEx and waiting another 7-10 days for a replacement unit that was supposed to be a CHRISTMAS GIFT for someone special.

This product isn’t cheap. Is it wrong to expect better QC than this?

Words cannot but fail to describe how disappointed I am.I bought this at the Apple store in Tampa yesterday. It simply will not communicate with nor work with my PC as the set up page cannot be found when typed in as specified in instructions. Also, it will not work with my iPod through the dock connector either. The iPod displays a message that the accessory ( the Zeppelin ) is not supported by the iPod and that is despite the fact that the iPod is listed as being able to be played through the dock connector on all the literature . Oh! and there is no technical support available either, so only option is to return . I would give it zero stars as that is what it deserves.

Not impressed with the space age design.
If you play this at at a low setting, the sound is very good.
To play this a little louder in order to fill a large room, there is way too much static and distortion.
Airplay cuts in and out.
The Bose SoundDock 10 will fill a room, no static noise. I prefer the Bose sound. Audiophiles are way too consumed with knocking Bose, but I am here to tell you that this B&W is very expensive and just doesn't compare to the Bose sound dock.
Now, if you want a big speaker surround system for playing music from a quality A/V speaker rather than music from an iPod compressed music source - look at B&W and other high end brands. For iPod docking - Bose has the best sound if you are planning to spend $500+

I bought this unit for Black Friday and had it set up all week. Not once in the whole time did AirPlay work for a whole song.

I first set it up with the default Firmware and followed the instructions. I had my network hidden and used WPA2 Wireless Security. The B&W would could not find my network. I un hid my network and the B&W finally found it. Once the Zepplin was all set up I tried using it via Airplay. The music would play for about 5 seconds and then the Airplay would drop and I would have to restart the Zepplin to find it again on Airplay. I tried with my MBP, iPhone 4S and iPad2 all with the same results. So, I updated the Firmware to 1.3.3. With the update I could 'almost' make it through a song before it was dropped. I repeated this several times in several rooms across my house. No Joy.

The sound is great when it is playing and it looks great but alas I bought it for the iPlay functionality not the looks. I am returning this unit as completely unhappy with it.

Note: I currently stream my music to Living Room via Airplay and AppleTV and office using Airport Extreme and an Amp. With excellent results. I wanted a portable unit to move to other rooms and the deck.

I will keep looking for a decent unit.

I just bought this from apple store Dec 5 2011. The cabinet and look is perfect for a small room. I use it for airplay through my iphone + use it as tv speakers for a small room via Optical mini cable. I wanted to use it for Airplay of my PC iTunes but there are problems with airplay through firewall that I cannot seem to figure out - This is a big drawback because i don't put all my music onto my iphone and want access to those songs.
The sound is decent and room filling for a small bedroom or small office. Don't expect pinpoint soundstage because stereo separation is limited. Clarity of treble is good.
I like the options for connections - optical, airplay, ipod dock. There was ethernet but I wasn't able to get that to work as "airplay".
The biggest CON is the setup. Although listed by some as easy, there are too many issues. I found support was good but only if you can speak to someone...they try to get everyone to use their website and email support - not happy with that after I spent 1 long night fiddling with airplay. The problem turned out to be IE 9 has a bug when submitting to the device during setup. Wish they listed that problem on their site. It was easily solved by using Chrome browser instead.

This system was problem first try setup by cable (Ethernet ). This more simple to setup by iPad or iPhone it,S take less than 2 minutes.New firmware 1.1.3 updated but still some time drop play air that why rate 4 star.

This unit did not work out of the box after setting up the air play on a wirelessG router with 128bit encryption. Furthermore hooking up an iphone4s to unit plays for a couple of minutes and then turns off. The red light flashes, unit has to be unplugged and powered up again.

This is no better than an expensive and ugly recharger. The sound, when it can be heard is awesome for mp3 player. All details are clear and balanced bass is deep. I put in a support request to B&W and hope to get some help because the web site support does not say enough. Furthermore the video is so lame. I'm from a computer engineering background and should be able to get through all the manuals to setup unit easily but this unit just doesn't work well. It is a dissapointment.