Bowers & Wilkins Takes Flight With Airship-Shaped Zeppelin Pro Speaker
The luxe British audio brand’s stylish Bluetooth speaker is better than ever.
Bowers & Wilkins’ new airship-shaped speaker is reaching for the skies with its latest top-shelf iteration. The Zeppelin Pro Edition gets upgraded over the standard model inside and out, starting with the new Solar Gold/Space Grey colorways and revised downlight that now offers 15 different hues to project onto its metal pedestal below.
More noteworthy than aesthetics is the introduction of Titanium Dome tweeters, borrowed from Bowers & Wilkins’ 600 Series floor-standing speakers. Mounted at the far edges of the enclosure, these high-frequency speakers are protected from the vibrations created by the larger drivers.
Among them are the 90 mm midrange drivers, which also benefit from the inclusion of Bowers & Wilkins’ previously developed floor-standing speaker tech called a Fixed Suspension Transducer. This device mitigates air resistance to the rear of the drive unit’s diaphragm, thereby improving sonic transparency, per Stereophile. Additionally, the midrange features more cone damping, which results in a “more open sound,” according to the British audio brand. The heart of the system is the 150 mm subwoofer, carefully mounted in the most voluminous section of the Zeppelin to avoid rocking.
The unit is plenty powerful on its own, with the ability to access a variety of music services including Deezer, Last.fm, Qobuz, Tidal, TuneIn and others via AirPlay, Bluetooth, and Spotify Connection from the Bowers & Wilkins Music app. Existing Zeppelin owners can also link the wireless speakers together to create a multiroom system.
Even with improvements across the board, Bowers & Wilkins hasn’t increased the Zeppelin’s $799 MSRP for the Pro Edition, which goes on sale beginning October 15.
