When we did a Bluetooth speaker Group Test back in HFC 443, the Katch was comfortably the best. Time waits for nobody though, and DALI has been continually tweaking it to keep it competitive.
The good news is the basic formula of the Katch remains unchanged. It contains a pair of 21mm soft dome tweeters and 90mm mid/bass drivers that have been designed with a long throw to extract as much low end as possible. It is augmented by a passive radiator to maximise the radiating area. An individual 25W Class D amp powers each driver, which is more than sufficient. The internal battery can be used to charge your phone and there is a 3.5mm line-in as before.
The major points of revision are the battery and Bluetooth. Neither were too far adrift in the original, but the competition has moved on. Updated Bluetooth now adds AAC to the aptX suite to ensure Apple users can secure better performance from their devices. This was perhaps the most significant omission from the original. The new battery is larger and now gives 30 hours of use from a two-hour charge.
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