Reviews for Bowers & Wilkins Zeppelin Air

Overall I'm still extremely happy with my Zeppelin Air. It has superb sound -- really amazing for its form factor. Even at louder volumes we're happy. However, it does fall off our network fairly often. It's a good distance from an access point, so I suspect it would be less of a problem if it were closer. I have an Altec Lansing inAir that seems to have some of the same issues with wireless, so I'm not sure how much better the competition is. If your Zeppelin is close to its source it probably won't be too much of a problem.

Had it delivered yesterday. By the end of the day yesterday wanted to throw it out of the window. Followed set up advice to the letter and got nowhere. Had to do complete restore this morning and tried again. No luck. Factory restor again - the finally decided to use iPhone iOS route to set up. Worked first time and now listening to the satisfying deep, crisp boom of my tunes. Worth the trouble I think.
Go for it!

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.

Zeppelin Air is a great product and I want to write this review to help anyone who is hesitating whether to buy it. Be patient and read on, I hope you could make the best choice for you.

First, you need to realize it's not an apple product. Since it's not made by apple, you shouldn't expect Zeppelin Air to work as seamless as it is between apple products (like AIrplay from iPad to Apple TV). They are from different company. There will be some gaps/dropouts during Airplay, but I think this is totally bearable. Some people complain about the airplay is dropping out every 1 minute. Do some research on how to better set up the airplay. It's mostly about the routers. When you get the router done, it's not going to dropout every minute and I'm sure about it because I went through all that. B&W is a respectable company with great reputation.

Second, the way it sound is great. It is room-filling, but it utilized more bass to create a feeling of room-filling, so it's kind of an easy way to achieve that name. So you will need a little EQ adjustment if you want it to sound more natural but it's no big deal, just some clicks on whatever iDevice you're docking it with.

Third, it has individual drivers for high/med/low frequencies, but there is a good distance to listen to it. I have a studio which measures 18X24. From 3-5 feet, it sounds great with an excellent stereo feeling to it. But when you get further away, you hear more how it is individual drivers instead of separate speakers.

Ok, so far I've stated three drawbacks of it. BUT, none of them marks it a bad product. I've owned Bose,Beats headphones+speakers. None of them could compete with B&W unless you're a Bass-sucker. I would definitely recommend this product. But I just hope whoever buys this great speaker could think whether they can accept these three minor(I consider it minor) drawbacks since it's priced at $599. Just keep in mind that it's not an apple product, so expect do some work on your own to get it work smooth. Want something this good and plug and play? Buy $999 B&O which is without airplay. Otherwise, enrich yourself with some knowledge of routers and you'll enjoy this wonderful speaker as you take a sip at your cappuccino.

I've been working with the Zeppelin Air for a client during the last week, and the Zeppelin has great sound, but I've encountered a few usage issues.

First, if you unplug it from the wall, there is no internal battery backup for the settings, so if you move it to another room, be prepared to use an Ethernet cable again to set up the wireless network and password.

Also, whenever I've undocked an iPad 2 from it, I've had to press the power button again briefly for it to be recognized by AirPlay again. If I don't, iTunes doesn't see it as a speaker. I assume this would apply to all iOS devices, but I've only tested it with an iPad 2.

Only problem is that my new iPhone 4S will not work longer than a minute and the zeppelin drops from the wireless network

Okay, first the good stuff. This thing sounds AMAZING! I actually compared this unit to the beats boombox and while the bass on the boombox is stronger (naturally), both units were plenty loud enough. I do think the zeppelin has a more balanced aound. The key difference was when you're trying to listen at low volumes. The Zepplelin has way more detail even when you have to listen to your music at lower levels.
Bad stuff: The Airplay part of this unit ONLY works with the music part of your Itunes library. Movies, stuff off the internet, no can do. Don't worry though, there's a mini plug input if you want to use that. Oh, and knowing what input you're using can be a little confusing since it's only a little light that changes color to let you know which one you have on.
I bought the MM-1's too..and returned them (they get HOT!) and put this in front of my computer instead. I do not regret the $ I spent on this unit at all. : ) As other reviewers have said, "if you can afford it...get it!"

I've had the Zeppelin Air for a little over a week and, like any speaker, it's now starting to open up. Setup was not as difficult as other reviews have described. As long as you follow the included instructions it will only take 10 minutes at the most, and given its price I'm sure most are willing to kill 10 minutes setting it up.

Setup:
You start by connecting the Air to your computer via included ethernet cable. Then you access an offline website to name the Air and log it onto your router. After waiting about 2 minutes for the flashing purple LED to turn solid, you open iTunes and start streaming music.

Streaming:
The streaming process is very good. I've had the sound cut off twice, each time was for less than 1 second. Having connected other speakers through airplay, I can tell you this is normal and just a minor bug in Apple's software.

Build:
The build quality is quite good. B&W built a rubber base into the Air, which allows the system to grip most surfaces very well. There is no handle to hold the Air, which makes moving it from room to room kind of difficult. Overall the build quality seems very solid.

Sound:
Since B&W is known for their audiophile grade equipment, it should come as no surprise that these speakers sound very good. Any serious audiophile most likely would not buy the Air however, since at this price range a bookshelf system would sound better. However, I didn't buy this system only for sound quality but also convenience and portability. The treble is clean and detailed, I would say about equal to the B&W MM-1. Mids are warm and powerful. The Bass is surprisingly good for a speaker this size. While I wouldn't say it has strong punches, it does sound very natural and present. Whenever I hook a new sound system to my iTunes library, I always open up and adjust the equalizer to fine tune each frequency. When I performed this tradition on the Air, I ended up keeping nearly all the frequencies at +/- 0, which in other words means the sound is very well balanced. My only real complaint about the sound quality is that the stereo separation isn't great, but is definitely the best I've heard from an iPod speaker system.

Remote:
The remote as others have mentioned could use improvement. The aesthetics are great, but it can be difficult to determine which end is up. B&W indented the back of the remote to help determine the correct end, but the design could be better. The remote can turn the system on and off, either adjust the iTune's or the speaker's volume, skip between songs on your iPod or iTunes, and switch between audio sources.

Overall:
I would say the design of this system is its strongest feature. The sound is very well balanced and detailed, and loudness is extremely impressive given its size. The connectivity is very convenient, with only a few glitches that will certainly be fixed with software updates. The price is high, but you get what you paid for... The nicest looking, most technologically advanced, and best sounding iPod/iTunes speaker on the market.

This is a great speaker which sounds awesome after you get it working. It works fine when connected wired or docked but the wireless can cause some major pains. I have it working with all my devices now which is great.

The WiFi issues were related to the router that I have. I had to use another wireless router to get it to work.

- iPod Docked works fine and the sound is great.
- iPad Docked works fine too. You select the Zeppelin Air you configured if you want to see video while it is docked.
- Both the iPod and iPad charge while in the dock.
- Both the iPod and iPad can use AirPlay
- Devices can be docked when other devices take over. If the docked device is connected to the AirPlay you will need to disconnect it using the selection icon. You do not need to take the device out of the dock and it will still charge.

Sorry I could not put my troubleshooting tips in here but it is worth it once you get the wireless working with the right router.