Thanks Steve. Looking forward to your review. Based on the raw specs at least, the Beolit 20 seems like a dud IMO. It’s 2020 and the new Beolit only supports Bluetooth 4.2 and has a Max battery life of 8 hours at “typical” battery life. With Bang & Olufsen’s most recent Bluetooth-enabled products e.g. Beosound A1, H95 all supporting Bluetooth 5.1 and offering vast improvements in battery life, I’m baffled by the specs of the Beolit 20. 

Hopefully your review is able to provide a more positive take on the Beolit 20, cos on paper this looks like a real step backwards for B&O.

Looking at the feature set on the B&O website, they dont seem to have added anything meaningful really.

I'm sure the battery lasts longer yes, and I'm guessing the sound will be bigger / more meaty.

I guess as its.a BT speaker, there was little additional they could do with it (no direct voice control, no multiform, no Halo control etc)

And I presume they know their market better than me, and having another proper size portable (ie BT) alongside the BS1 makes sense.

But as one of the 10 new product releases, this seems pretty underwhelming to me.

IMO that only counts for 1/2 new product.

MM

John @manchester have a video here:

Love the qi-charger! But was expecting the A1-internals with voice control.

Michael wrote:

A bit disappointed it doesnt do multiroom and wifi. Its a stellar product for home use and I barely bring mine out. I do bring A1 and the small P-something speaker when I travel or go out camping etc. It would have been a marvel to introduce people to the multiroom feature. I like it but I dont like the color schemes that are to contrasty. Pity.

Hi Michael,

You could always connect a Core to the Beolit to give it Multi-room and Wifi.....  Please feel free to get in touch if this is of interest and I can help with the connections.

Kind regards, Steve.

The Beolit is so close to being an amazing product. But at this price point, I think they had to remove certain features. The Qi wireless charging is a nice touch as is the longer battery life. Although I completely agree if it had wireless streaming built it, it would be an excellent alternative to the BS1 (The BS 1 is more of an in-home portable, while the BL 20 would be an excellent take anywhere type portable. Probably would be a best in class product with wifi streaming, voice controls and BT 5.0. Yup, so close....