- 160W Bluetooth speaker with an iconic design
- Integrated customizable lighting that moves with the music
- Roughly $300 / £230 / AU$464 before taxes and tariffs
Harman Kardon has unveiled its new Aura Studio 5 wireless Bluetooth speaker in Japan.
Like all of the Aura Studio speakers its transparent dome takes me right back to the Harman Kardon SoundSticks that graced so many Apple Mac owners' desktops from the aughts onwards – speakers so iconic that they're in the New York Museum of Modern Art – but this is very much a speaker for today with up-to-date Bluetooth, integrated lighting and a powerful amp.
Harman Kardon Aura Studio 5: key features and pricing
The new generation of Aura Studio speaker comes with built-in lights to light up your room, and there are five pre-set nature themes – campfire, cherry blossoms, galaxy, harvest and ripples – that you can customize via the companion app. The app also enables you to change the EQ, pair two speakers together and keep the firmware up to date.
The speaker is designed to produce a 360-degree sound field from its 25mm tweeter, six 40mm mid-range drivers around the outside for 360-degree sound, a 143mm subwoofer and 160W amplification, and it delivers a frequency range of 45Hz to 20kHz. Harman says its Constant Sound Field technology delivers consistent audio throughout your room irrespective of where you're sitting.
Bluetooth is 5.4 and there's a wired 3.5mm aux input for other audio sources.
So far this is a Japan-only release, with a price tag of 46,200 yen (roughly $300 / £230 / AU$464 before taxes and tariffs). The current model, the Aura Studio 4 is $299 / £279 / AU$399, so similar pricing is likely when the model launches elsewhere.
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