Astell&Kern Acro BE100 Bluetooth Speaker - White

Exceptional sound quality. I’ve been building and buying audio gear for the last 20 years. This unit is a “mid master”. Highs are accurate and non-fatiguing. Freq response says 50hz I’d say in a small room you’ll hear those freq. in a large room it rolls of around 60-65hz. If you want stupid sloppy bass get the JBL Boombox 3. The Bluetooth 5.0 and DAC in this Astell unit provides CRYSTAL clear output. Reminds of the type of output of my Bluetooth receiver by Bludento puts out. I’m talking like CD quality. Don’t knock it till you try it. I use mostly lossless files and I’ve been impressed. I purchased for the kids room. The whole house is SET with my audio gear including Rotel amps and hand made SB acoustics, 3-way speakers,l. This unit puts a smile on my face listening to music in the kids room. This unit is pricey but will sound much better than it’s competitors, including the B&W zeppelin. Don’t waste your money on Bose. I also believe this will compete with the $1600 Bang & Olefson BeoSound Level. It’s sounds much better than the Beolit 20 ($500 portable 4.2 Bluetooth speaker) which I own and compared side by side. Sure, you could build a better system for $500, but not compact like this. Aesthetically, it matches its price point. Nothing cheap feeling at all. I wish the volume knob had more weight to it. If they lowered the price to $375 they would sell 100k of them. I also wish this had a sub out with some bass management features.

The Acro BE100 speaker attracts mixed reviews; this is a positive one; for two reasons, first is the build quality but the second is slightly more complicated;I own a number of DAPs [Digital audio players] that house my music in a variety of file formats and are usually played from these High-resolution units to a variety of headphones and IEMs…. all good then…. except most of the hi-res DAPs are volume restricted [apparently for the health of my hearing] when output to my headphones either directly by wire or Bluetooth…. (people buy additional amps to overcome these paternalistic restrictions).Often, however, many DAPs have a ‘line out’ setting which outputs the signal at full strength (which would blow my headphones, so I understand); this line out via an aux cable to the Acro BE100 aux input makes for the magnificent sound that this speaker then makes – in Astell and Kerns words ‘getting the best from your device’. It does from my DAPs.

Sound quality was very average at best, very underwhelming. Looks great.

I recently bought an Astell&Kern digital player which I've been using with a pair of soundcore speakers - and they have been superb. I wanted a speaker in my workshop and came across this - it was heavily discounted at more than half price so I ordered it. It arrived and was somewhat larger than I'd expected - my soundcore speakers are more compact - and its not a battery model, it requires a mains supply. Sound quality is fine but not spectacular. It promises a radio on board but in practice it doesn't have it, and anyway it would have been FM only. I can get radio on my phone and play it through the speaker. So I'm a bit underwhelmed overall. I get the impression its old stock, very old stock. It's not worth hassle of a return and refund and it does what I wanted, but its really nothing special. I would have been much better off overall with a Soundcore speaker like my others. Heyho. Its not the end of the world, just a little bit deflating. Meh.

I bought 2 of these in white on prime day for £99 each. They were reduced from £449. WTF.I owned an A&K mp3 player. At £500 it was the entry level player. Others were several thousand pounds. So I knew the brand and the audiophile sound quality.I have several sound systems including Sonos 5 and a couple of Bang and Olufsen bluetooth speakers. The A&K sounds better than the £540 Beolit 20. It is a similar size, but the A&K is mains only. The A&K sound does not have the deep bass of other speakers this size, but the clarity and detail are there. I don't know why there is such a huge discount, I thought there must be some catch, but no, for what I paid it's a fabulous amazing bargain.