Reviews for Bowers & Wilkins A5 AirPlay Wireless Music System

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!

Just what I expected. Did research on B&W for almost a year while I was still a student finding that almost everywhere, everybody rated the Zeppelin as the best AirPlay product in the market (along with most B&W state-of-the-art products). Now that I started earning some money, I bought the A5 instead of the Zeppelin or the even more expensive A7 (a reduced price makes it very attractive).
It took me less than 15 minutes overall to carefully enjoy unwrapping it, placing it, removing the pastic lid from the remote (which task was awfully impossible for another reviewer here (?)), downloading the B&W installation app, instaling it to both my iPhone 5 and my MacBook Air, and enjoying its amazing sound.
I love my A5. It has been playing music almost every morning and every night for me.
Can't lie and have to tell that it disconnected from my devices one time out of the blue and unexpectedly, but it took me a couple of minutes to get it playing again with the B&W installation app. It has never happened again in 2 months.
My A5 is the best $500 I've spent in my life as a music lover. Extremely pleased.

On the technical side, everything just worked. Very simple set up procedure—best AirPlay setup I've used so far, in fact. (I've set up 4 different AirPlay speakers.)

On the audio side, I can't imagine much better sound coming out of a similar size package. I am especially glad there isn't an artificially inflated bass or other gimmicks that make it sound big on the showroom but not so good at home. Instead, this simply delivers crisp audio without distortion.

As long as you aren't expecting a wide open stereo sound stage or to experience the kind of sound you'd get out of a larger system with dedicated speaker, receiver, and amp, you will be very pleased with this product.

It's so good I'm thinking about getting the MM-1 computer speakers, which this is apparently similar too.

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.

Bought this to use in a small room. The sound quality and available volume are very good for such a small device. It does, however, start distorting near full volume, but we would never use that volume for anything other than testing the speaker.

B&W are noted for producing realistic sound. If you are looking for silly bass levels, look elsewhere. If you want true to life sound quality, B&W is your brand.

The A5 is perfect for a small to medium sized room. For a bigger room the A7 may be more suitable, depending on how loud you play your music.

Setup was very easy and worked first time. I downloaded the setup app before the speaker arrived, and had it playing within a couple of minutes of plugging it in. Have your WiFi password handy for installation.

Price: It is B&W, so it will have a premium price. I believe the value is worth it.

I like this speaker so much I have decided to use them throughout the house. Set-up is simple, as it seems to be with anything linked to Apple. I like that I can use the Remote App to control different zones and that I can move these around for different environments. The sound blew me away and I listen to music everyday so my experience has become pretty extensive over my 45+ years. Apple has a tremendous return policy so what can you lose - take on home and try it!!! I would be surprised if many come back!!!