Reviews for Bowers & Wilkins A5 AirPlay Wireless Music System

Im reading all frustration with the network issues, and so far I haven't experienced any. Im using AT&T UVerse in my home. works flawlessly so far (knock on wood). I used B&W control Version 1.0.3 (3339), setup on my mac laptop first then added apps to iphones, three different phones they all work great. Only drops happened when the phone was used for sms or other functions, occasionally. So far we are amazed at the sound quality. We tried different positions, we found that up high, at an angle, with a wall behind it, sounds best. It really fills a room up with quality sound. This is definitely the "party in a box" solution i was looking for. My daughter and her friends are planning an iPhone/A5 party. That will surely be the acid test.

As a happy owner of several other B&O products it was very disappointing to realize just how poorly designed the A5 speaker turned out to be.

The sound quality is C- compared to other B&O offerings, but the real shortfall is in the streaming software/firmware. The A5 randomly selects audio output levels for the various sources (Mac, iPhone, iPad) a user might select. The output level for my macbook Air turns out to be turned all the way up. That just doesn't go over well when I'm trying to be relatively quiet and respectful of my sleeping 5 year old son upstairs.

I have a one strike and your out rule when it comes to products being poorly designed and lacking a thorough thought process. B&O management - you need to get it together and implement firmware updates to solve this type of problem. There are many others who have complained here and elsewhere.

I am so very disappointed in this product. I previously owned a Bose sound dock but, after hearing a friends B&W Zeplin Air I decided to purchase a B&W unit and bought the A7. Setup was difficult due to lack of detailed instructions. I eventually accomplished the setup and settled in to listen to the crystal clear sound from the speaker system. No disappointment here at all! It's a spectacular unit. However, after a day of working almost seamlessly, it now quits within ten minutes of starting. I have rebooted the speakers and checked the router without finding any problem. Both my iPhone and my wife's iPad experience the same problem and both of these devices are within 10 feet of the speaker system. I have scoured the internet for a solution and nothing comes up. The person who recently wrote that all these complaints are likely "user caused" has prompted me to submit this saga. It is one more example of the problem and is definitely NOT my fault. A perfect example of great speakers but poor wireless technology. I will be returning this speaker next week.

I originally purchased the Phillips Fidelio airplay speaker, It was constantly disconnecting, and cutting out while playing songs. Based on the other reviews, I thought it must be a hardware issue on my end.

Exchanged it and brought home the A5 - what a difference! Easy to set up, worked flawlessly immediately and the sound cannot be compared.

The A5 is completely worth the extra $$. The sound is much richer, and the base is a lot stronger - at full volume, I'm pretty sure my neighbours across the street can hear it, ha ha! Seriously though, this is the quality I wanted for my home - something that would sound like a great home system in my kitchen and livingroom for when I'm entertaining. The A5 definitely will fill this requirement.

For someone who knows very little about speakers and technology, I can hear a huge difference between this and the Phillips. I also listened to the Bose Airplay that's around $370, and the A5 sound is far superior to the Bose, too, in fact.

I would highly recommend it, and it's worth spending the extra $. You won't need anything else!

I'm on my way to the store to return this product. I couldn't have been more disappointed with the setup - I worked at it for hours before I found the two key issues, 1) you can't have a special character in your password, 2) you have to have wireless g compatible network. So what do these things have in common, they aren't documented anywhere. You will be searching the web for hours like I did in order to find this stuff. The product is less than 6 months old and it doesn't have wireless n, how crazy is that. I live in an apartment with 30-40 wifi networks around me…there is too much competition on every channel for me to be using wireless g. So here is the suggestion that I got, get an airport express. I just paid $500 for this thing and now I should spend $100 to get it working and doesn't that go against the whole reason I purchased an airplay speaker?!?! So you might be wondering why I gave this two stars instead of one, well I thought it did have nice sound when I plugged it directly into my router…and besides who takes those guys seriously that post 1 or 5 stars. ;)

great when you can connect to it via wi-fi. Worked may be 2 hours out of the past 20 days. Luckily apple took it back.

Setting up with with Mountain Lion on my MacBook Pro 13'' Retina failed. Easy setup turned out to be anything else than easy. The B&W setup App did not discover the device and any possible solutions provided by the step-by-step problem solving did not work either. There is no help line to call. Leaves me in a frustrated state, having spent a lot of money.

Having previously purchased Bose systems in the past, I always wanted to try B&W
First product is the A5 - Looks and Sounds Amazing. Very easy to setup using the B&W App available from app store for FREE
True test of this system would come when i played (Edgar Winter Group-FRANKENSTEIN) Which exceeded my expectation, then second test (Phil Collins In the Air Tonight) felt like Phil's drum set was right beside me, awesome then tossed in a JOSH GROBAN and 3 out of 3 - this product is excellent! big sound from a small box and very clear sound at that...great product! for those audiophiles who might not want to spend $700+ on the A7 like me.

Before I begin, i will explain my technology setup:

i have a BRAND NEW wireless network (Netgear3800) that handles 300mbs sec, dual band, I've got a NAS 323 setup, and i live in a condo. The router is in the living room, as is the B&W A5 speaker, and my macbook air 13 inch 2012, all in the same room. I also have a brand new airport express in bedroom 2 to use airplay on the speaker there.

So the speaker sounds AWESOME, and even without the sub, it's got a nice amount of lows and bass sound that doesn't take away from the clarity of the highs and mids sounds. I'm using lossless Apple Songs when playing and for some reason, any time i'm shopping or purchasing new songs online, while playing, it totally CUTS OUT. My wife can also be playing songs of her iPhone and even if we aren't doing anything at all on the network except playing music, it will still chop the songs up. I'm trying to figure out what else i can do to avoid this from happening, like running this on the 5ghz router band, but then some of the components wont be able to attach to the speakers.

I also tried last week the pioneer A4, and have to say the bass was way too much and muffled the mids and highs, i really do like this A5 speaker, and want to keep it, but this chopping up songs is quite annoying cause it sounds REALLY good

This speaker is awesome in so many ways. After deciding that Bose was too mainstream and Bang and Olufsen was to expensive, I decided that Bowers and Wilkins was the perfect balance between sound quality and price. I do not regret my decision. It is the best of the best.