B&W Zeppelin 3

B&W

B&W Zeppelin

The original Zeppelin was a

smash-hit for 56-year-old British company Bowers and Wilkins, despite their chutzpah in naming it after a German airship that is now best-known for its role in the Hindenburg disaster of 1937, rather than the fact that before the fi re, the airship had been commercially successful for 30 years.

B&W’s original Zeppelin, back in 2007, was just an iPod dock. Since then, we’ve had two more models designed to bring the Zeppelin into the modern age, fi rst the Zeppelin Air and then the Zeppelin Wireless. This newest B&W Zeppelin has been built fi rmly with today’s streaming age in mind. It is, says Bowers & Wilkins, the “smartest and most fl exible Zeppelin to date” and we here at LWA would have to agree!

It is also the best-looking Zeppelin yet, in either of its two fi nishes (midnight grey or light pearl grey) because there is a new dimmable and switchable ambient light that shines down from the Zeppelin to its pedestal to create the magical illusion that the speaker is fl oating in mid-air, like its namesake.

It is certainly also the best-sounding Zeppelin yet, with this new model benefi ting from the recent research that has seen B&W’s entire speaker range upgraded, so the Zeppelin now has a pair of 25mm Decoupled DoubleDome aluminium tweeters (as used in B&W’s 600 Anniversary Series) as well as two 90mm midrange drivers that benefi t from B&W’s proprietary Fixed Suspension Transducer (FST) technology, which appears in all B&W’s high-end fl oor standing speakers. There’s also a 150mm bass driver. The total amplifi er power available to drive these is now an impressive 240-watts.

Although B&W’s Zeppelin is certainly wireless, it does have a single wired USB-C input which although is promoted as being “for service purposes” can be fi tted with adaptor to enable wired Ethernet, rather than Wi-Fi. And so far as wireless is concerned, it has AirPlay 2, so anyone with an Apple device can send the Zeppelin music at up to CD quality and beyond. For Android device users the new Zeppelin 3 is fi tted with Bluetooth with SBC, AAC and aptX Adaptive. Although B&W doesn’t specifi cally mention a Roon capability, the fact is that because Roon can address anything with AirPlay 2, the Zeppelin can deliver it that way.

When the Zeppelin is connected to your Wi-Fi network you can use B&W’s ‘Music’ app to activate the services you want included on the app’s menu —services that include Tidal, Qobuz, Deezer, Soundcloud, TuneIn, or lastfm. And if you are a Spotify user, you can use Spotify’s own app to fi nd the Zeppelin after which you can then play all your tunes from either a free or paid Spotify account.

After you’ve played a few tunes, B&W’s ‘Music’ app will automatically create playlists for you, including ‘Made For You’, and ‘Recently Played’ based on those tunes. We have to say we were surprised that there is no Chromecast or UPnP support, but with regard to the latter, B&W is telling us it will be added later this year.

We did love that Amazon’s Alexa voice control feature is already built in to the Zeppelin, so you can just ask it to play your favourite song, rather than fi ddle around with apps, and, when your song does play, you’ll appreciate why B&W says of its newest Zeppelin: “Why choose between a product with the features you need and a beautiful design with the sound you want? Have them both with the Zeppelin Wireless Speaker.” Price: $1,199