Harman Kardon turns 70 years old this year – and as part of its birthday celebrations, the company established by Dr Sidney Harman and Bernard Kardon in New York back in 1953 is launching three new products at this year’s Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland.
All three are contenders for the best Bluetooth speakers, and all three are intended to offer the same combination of value and performance that has seen Harman Kardon thrive over the course of seven decades. Birthdays, jazz and speakers, what's not to love?
With the Aura Studio 4 Bluetooth speaker, the company has dipped into its back catalogue and come up with a variation on the design language that saw its iconic SoundSticks given a place in the New York Museum of Modern Art back in 1999. It’s one of the very first Harman Kardon products that makes extensive use of recycled materials in its construction too.
It uses a downward-firing 132mm bass driver along with a further six drivers in an effort to create as big and precise a sound as possible. That striking transparent cabinet gives a view of 324 crystals at the base – these glow in a number of different colours to give a visual accompaniment to the speaker’s sound.
Go + Play 3, meanwhile, is similarly indebted to some tried and tested Harman Kardon design. It’s a semi-circular Bluetooth speaker with an exposed, down-firing bass driver augmenting stereo drivers, and it uses a tactile combination of aluminium, tempered glass and fabric in its construction. Battery life is a claimed eight hours, it features automatic room calibration technology, and can be part of a stereo pair if you decide to buy a couple.
The smallest of the trio is the Luna Bluetooth speaker. It’s compact and fairly light, its IP67 rating means it can go into any realistic environment, and its 12-hour battery life means it will keep going no matter how long your party lasts. Fabric and aluminium make up most of the chassis, a two-way driver set-up does the audio business, and it too can be half of a stereo pair if you’re after a true stereo sound on your trips outdoors.
All three of these Bluetooth speakers are on sale from 15 September. Aura Studio 4 will sell for €329, while Go + Play 3 is likely to cost €349, and Luna goes for €179. However, there's no word on UK or wider pricing just yet.
