Designed to delight and demolish

With the Beosound Theatre, Bang Olufsen has taken the humble soundbar to another level, discovers Steve May and it has the price tag to show for it

- Steve May

SOUNDBARS DON'T COME any more premium than this 18kg whopper from Danish design honcho Bang & Olufsen. Rather than shoot for the mainstream, the brand has gone seriously upmarket with a component that's as uncompromising as it is exhilarating - the Beosound Theatre looks like no other soundbar on the market right now, and it doesn't really sound like anything else either.

Design is obviously a talking point. Available in a variety of finishes, the most 'affordable' iteration features a smart fabric grille. Our sample had a more expensive slatted oak wood grille, which channels Scandi furniture design. This cosmetic uplift comes at a price though, because while the fabric edition sells for £5,590, three oak variants with wooden grilles sell for £6,390.

Regardless, there's a phalanx of speaker drivers behind that point forwards, sideways and upwards. A coaxial centre channel array features a lin tweeter mounted in front of a 5.25in mid. Either side are 6.5in woofers. There are then Land R channel arrays of 3in mid and tweeter, plus four 2.5in full-range units for side and height. There's no separate sub, which is fine because that would cramp the Theatre's style. And B&O rates the low-end reach of this one-box audio solution at 28Hz.

AV INFO

PRODUCT: High-end single-box Dolby Atmos soundbar

POSITION: B&O's flagship, above the Beosound Stage

PEERS: Devialet Dione; Sennheiser Ambeo

There's more to its design than first meets the eye, too. For example, the decorative aluminium endstops are upgradable, so that when you swap your 55in TV for something larger, either 65in or 77in, you can change the endstops for ones that are longer, thereby maintaining the system's overall symmetrical design.