Switch On This Dial And Music Will Play Throughout Your House

Alyssa Bereznak
·National Correspondent, Technology
Updated
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What if playing music when you get home was as automatic as flipping on a light switch or turning on the heat?

Bang & Olufsen’s latest gizmo, the BeoSound Essence, is made just for that.

This thermostat-like knob is meant to be mounted on your wall in an easily accessible area of your house, and works with Bang & Olufsen’s wireless speakers. Whenever you want to listen to your jamz, you can press the top circle button on the knob’s front plate. The Essence’s Bluetooth signal—powered by a discreet white box you can hide behind your couch—will automatically pick up the music you had playing from any of your Bluetooth-capable gadgets and play them from your speakers.

You can change the volume with a quick turn of the knob, and skip forward and back by pushing the arrows on the left and right — sort of like the old iPod’s famous click wheel. The Essence also comes with its own music app supported on both iOS and Android and is compatible with AirPlay, DLNA, Spotify and most internet radio stations.

If you’d prefer to carry that little knob with you to your couch or your bed, it also comes mounted on a fancy little aluminum plate (which, will debut in gray, but has the potential to come in a whole line of Denmark-approved colors, as seen below).

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The company’s C.E.O., Tue Mantoni, made a good point during one of his private CES presentations: “When people take out their phones to put on a song, they don’t turn on the music. They read 10 emails before they turn on the music.” But, as is the norm with B&O products, there’s one incredibly preventative factor in their goal to make electronics more accessible: price. The BeoSound Essence (which, by the way, sounds like a line of Snooki’s perfumes) will go for an obscene $995 this spring. And adding that extra slab of aluminum will set you back $200 more.

Here’s to hoping we see some cheaper copycats of this very cool idea in the near future.

You can read more about the BeoSound Essence right here.

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