British audio company Bowers & Wilkins has introduced a new version of the Zeppelin speaker. The speaker, of which the first edition dates from 2007, will receive support for Alexa and AirPlay 2 and is immediately available. The price is 799 euros.
The Zeppelin consists of a left and right loudspeaker coupled to two 90mm midrange drivers. In the middle is a 150mm subwoofer. According to B&W, the Zeppelin has a frequency range of 35Hz to 25kHz. At the ends of the speaker are two double-dome tweeters that, according to the manufacturer, are isolated from vibrations from other drivers, which according to B&W provides better sound.
With the Bowers & Wilkins Music app, users can choose from different streaming services to play the music from those services through the speaker. Spotify, Soundcloud and Deezer, among others, can be streamed via Zeppelin. In addition, users can stream music to the speaker via Apple’s AirPlay 2 or Bluetooth and there is built-in support for Amazon’s Alexa. Support for, for example, Google Assistant is missing.
At the beginning of 2022, according to B&W, an update will come with a multi-room function for the device, which makes it possible to connect the speaker to other speakers within the Zeppelin or Formation series. It will not be possible to set up a stereo pair; in the multi-room setup, each speaker provides stereo sound separately.
The first speaker in B&W’s Zeppelin series appeared in 2007 and was then marketed as an iPod dock. The 2011 Zeppelin Air’s biggest innovation was that it had AirPlay support, and the 2015 edition focused more on wireless features like Spotify Connect. Those speakers all still had a supplied remote control to control the device, but the new Zeppelin works completely with the telephone, or with voice control. The speaker is available in both dark and light colours.