Reviews for Bowers & Wilkins Zeppelin Air

Once you listen to the Zeppelin Air, the other systems in your house sound a little hollow. Excellent sound, Only problem is occasionally the air play set up has to be configured again. Totally Recommended.

One of the best speakers I have ever had. In addition to all of its positive feedbacks, I wanted to add that it has some minor issues such as WI-FI. It is pretty hard to set your device up in order to use it wirelessly.

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...

It took me more than two hours to finally succeed to turn the device light into purple so that I could setup the airplay feature. The sound is truly extraordinary but I just hope not to have to reset the wireless connection all over again...

Bought myself these speakers a year ago. The sound is great the shape is large and cumbersome. You cant place them close to a wall as the quality of sound drops and they do not work well unless plugged into the wifi box!

I have been waiting for Bowers & Wilkins to begin selling the A5 and A7 Airplay speakers. In the meantime I spent a lot of time comparing the specs to the Zeppelin Air that was released last year. In the end I bought the Zeppelin at the beginning of October 2012. It's a crackerjack and I think better value for money than the A7. That said the Zeppelin arrived without the latest software that I downloaded and then proceeded to walk through the steps with the BW App, but despite following the direction to the letter airplay failed to work. After a few emails to England, their support staff told me to reboot my router. Bingo!!

All in all I top notch product and must be one of the best airplay systems for the IPhone or IPod.

Other than the good sound, there is great difficulty in its formula to connect to your wifi, and very poor performance if you do. Intermittent play at best, not consistent as with my bluetooth experience.
The remote control and buttons on the speakers work poorly and are often non responsive.
The speakers default to tv play when a video or youtube media is play, thereby only giving sound.
Software restore would not fix my no longer working wifi connection in the unit, and support said I had to send it in to have it looked it.
I sold it as is

These speakers deliver amazing quality sound and the customer service is second to none. I recently had a small issue and upon return of the product, found that they had replaced damaged external parts and extended the warranty as a gesture of goodwill - unheard of from its more mainstream counterparts - Bose etc. If you are looking for fantastic acoustics delivered through a beautifully designed and built product, the Zeppelin Air is definitely for you!

I've owned the Zeppelin Air for 10 months and agree with many users that the sound is fantastic but the wireless functionality is unreliable at best - certainly frustrating.

I've used with three different wireless modems in two different apartments (and separate internet providers) with little distance between modem and Zeppelin.

I've implemented the update with no improvement. The thing drops out to the point where I can't get through a single song.

For the money, this is not worth it.

BW should stop selling this unit since it clearly hasn't committed to a solid fix after all this time and selling such a flawed product damages its reputation.

Compression in the BOSE units leads to poorer fidelity, however, at least BOSE has a more reliable technology.

Do not buy this unit.