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Yes the Swedish cool kids are at it again with the very coolest blue tooth speaker you could ever wish to own. The OB-4 is a portable high fidelity loudspeaker, with the emphasis on ‘loud’. The OB-4 has two 4″ bass drivers and a pair of neodymium tweeters delivering sweet crystal clear sound at 38 watts per channel which equates to 100 decibels of stereo sound – if you are like me and can’t quite fathom exactly how loud that is take this explanation.
“when measuring sound a 10 db increase equals a 10 time increase in the intensity of the sound. Therefore a sound that is 100 decibels is 10 times louder than a sound that is 90 decibels (which is equivalent to an incoming subway train) and 100 times louder than a sound that is 80 decibels.”
So it is loud enough for most people, according to that definition its 10 times louder than an incoming subway train!
The OB-4 has a delightful minimalist interface that screams style, (its why I loved the early Saab motor cars for their dashboard style – not for their reliability) with only a few buttons that enable you to listen connected to Bluetooth, or FM radio, a line in port or the built in disk.
The battery is very long life and will run for about 72 hours of continuous listening, it supports both high definition bluetooth as well as BLE (bluetooth low energy).
As is usual from the style guru’s at Teenage Engineering this is not an appliance you buy for new technology, rather this is an appliance you buy because it is extremely beautiful, its simple and perfect in its function. At time when you can easily buy a portable bluetooth speaker for under $100 (in fact I found one on Amazon for $3.99) it seems a lot of money to spend $649 USD (just over $1000 AUD) and that is before you also grab some of the lovely add ons. But trust me this is absolutely worth it if you want something that looks fantastic.
There is a motorised revolving knob for the ‘tape’ function that you can use to interact with your sounds, skipping forward and backward – it is a ‘brushless motor, hall effect sensor and intelligent motor control’ what ever that means, I just love the way it rotates and you have a tactile connection with your music.
The premium leather bag and strap is custom made by Bill Amberg Studio, hand stitched cow hide each with its own edition number and available for $400 USD ($620 AUD). There is also a remote for $89 USD which comes with a handy magnetic back to let you remotely adjust the volume and skip tracks – you know do what a remote does.
There are so many reasons why this is a great device and a design classic but frankly you already know all of that so now its just a question of where it is going to fit in the house.
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