Reviews for Bowers & Wilkins Zeppelin Air

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.

Zeppelin looks great and sounds great, no doubts it one of the best or the best speaker system for iPhone, iPod or iPad. Design beats Harman Kardon, Bose or any other equipment. I would give 5 star but AirPlay connection is not acceptable. I have tried set up connection several times using Ethernet cable, PC, iPhone or iPad wireless system and achieved nothing. Zeppelin is not able to connect to my home WiFi network. I believe B&W was aware about this issue because they recommend to install latest firmware 1.1.3 but good luck when you try to do it. I have a feeling that IT Department of B&W lives in last century. If you want to update firmware first you have to install dedicated B&W software on your PC, connect Zeppelin to PC and manually install driver. I tried to do it several times but my Windows Vista only shows info that device is not recognized. I wonder why it's so complicated when other companies can provide updated firmware as a file which can be installed without any software by connecting directly any external flash/hard drive.

Firstly, this thing is built like a tank and weighs a lot more than its size would suggest.
It sounds as good as it looks and if you had to do a blindfold test you'd never believe that such a big sound could come from such a relatively small package. Sound stage is not great which is understandable with the speakers so close together but I don't think it was intended to replace your living room hifi. It's meant to fill a small room with big sound and it does that brilliantly.

It's not all good news though, updating the firmware and setting up Airplay is a real pain. There is an app from B&W in the AppStore but simply connecting to the unit's wifi hotspot and going to its IP seems to be much easier. That being said, make sure your wifi router's security settings are set up properly else the Zeppelin will not be able to connect, even if it accepts your WiFi password.

Also, the unit doesn't control it's own volume, even though it's got vol up/down buttons, what happens is that it controls your iPhone/iPod/Mac/etc's volume. This means that when you dock your phone the first time it could start playing music at full blast!! I found this out the hard way and I feel it's a serious design flaw that should be looked at and fixed ASAP. You could seriously injure your ears.

Other than those 2 issues which cost it a star, it's a superb device and I'd highly recommend it, just remember you've been warned - don't blow your ears...

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!"

this sound is great. if you like warm sound & harmony of sounds, especially emphasized bass, zeppelin air may be the best choice. but there is one big problem. yes, you already know, the Airplay. the linkage between iProduct & Zeppelin Air are disconnected well. although i solved the problem, i didn't know how i solved it because of solving it just modifying the setting of my wireless router. i don't understand why b&w solves this problem. i think they know this problem already.

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.

Sound quality for such a small loud speaker system is really great. A set of two I think would be even better. The Bass on one unit however does not really perform all that well at high volume ranges, though it does not crack at high volumes, a noticeable decrease in bass sound quality is most definitely noted. So if you have a playlist like I do that has music with some bounce, you might be a bit disappointed when cranking it up. As a side note I would like to see B&W provide the option for an external Sub Woofer that will pair with my Zeppelin Air to add an increased dimension, and reach my desired musical listing satisfaction. Good Purchase

I have had it for a couple of days. Initially when I set it up, I was quite disappointed with the quality of the sound. I started playing with positioning of the speaker; I tried elevating it, turning it, putting it a little distance from a wall, then back...and yes I found the sweet spot. As with any speaker, positioning of one makes a big difference.

I have been waiting for the "air" to come out for a couple of reasons; one - new set of speakers, each supported by an individual amp (which makes a huge difference when you crank it up, creating almost no distortion), two - capability of listening to my music from an iPhone without docking - which is very handy when you change stations that run off of apps, otherwise you would have to get up to do so.

Overall, this is an excellent speaker set. I am considering getting another one for a my bedroom after I test it for a few weeks.

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!