The first time I encountered Bang & Olufsen was way back in the mid-1970s when I saw a Beogram tangential turntable featured on a TV science show. It’s hard to describe how futuristic and yet stylish the Danish company’s products looked back then, almost half a century ago. I swear that if any company launched those same hi-fi products today no one would think them old fashioned as they still look as fresh and as stylish today. Great design is timeless and always looks contemporary.

B&O, as the brand may be better known, has pulled away from making audio, turntables and cassette decks in favor of speakers, TVs, and headphones, carving out a reputation for producing fabulous wireless speakers and some really cool headphones and earphones, all featuring exceptional acoustic engineering.

The Beosound Stage is B&O’s first-ever TV soundbar and is positioned at the premium end of the market, aimed at the type of consumers living in minimalist homes, all painted white and featuring light wooden floors and huge picture windows. It’s designed for those who want great TV sound but who are unwilling to endure the unsightly clutter of speakers and wires trailing everywhere.

Designed to be wall-mounted or laid flat on its back in front of a TV, at 7.7 cm the Stage is hardly thicker than a paperback novel but at a meter long, it’s quite a wide soundbar but all the better for creating a convincing stereo soundstage. There are no fewer than 11 separate loudspeakers and the Stage supports Dolby Atmos. As well as offering Bluetooth streaming, the Stage can work as part of a multiroom sound system via B&O’s Beolink protocol, Apple AirPlay or Chromecast, and it has enough power to fill even the largest of rooms with some great movie sound.

As you’d expect, the Beosound Stage looks especially cool. It has a brushed metal frame running all around the edge of the unit with a textile speaker grille that covers the 11 driver units. It’s available in four color combinations at three price points. The limited-edition anthracite model has a black anodized frame and a silver speaker grille, while the two entry-level finishes are available with a bronze frame and warm taupe grille, or brushed silver frame and a black grille. Finally, there’s the exclusive and exquisite finish of a smoked oak real wood frame with a cool grey fabric grille, and it looks a million dollars.

Four discreet primary control buttons are etched into the metal frame running around the Stage and these can be used for Bluetooth pairing, power, volume, and forward/back controls. The Beosound Stage has a three-channel sound system with a boosted center channel that’s been optimized for reproducing speech with clarity. Dolby Atmos is supported for creating a sound that moves around you in a 3D space. Although the Stage doesn’t have upward-firing speakers, there are angled drivers that cleverly project sounds outwards whether the Stage is positioned on its back or wall-mounted beneath the TV. 

Thanks to the B&O app and the ease of Chromecast, it’s a simple job to connect the Beosound Stage to a Wi-Fi network using either the 2.4GHz or 5Ghz bands. Ethernet is also available via a port hidden at the rear of the unit next to all the other inputs. B&O has provided two Ethernet ports so you can loop through the connection to enable smart TV functions.

And speaking of inputs, the Stage includes two HDMI 2.0 ports, one of which supports eARC for connecting the soundbar with a TV. You can control the Stage using a TV remote and so B&O hasn’t included a dedicated remote. Instead, you can either use the TV’s remote for volume, power and mute or else you have to use the downloadable B&O app which is available for both iOS and Android platforms. The app is essential for setting up, registering and operating the Stage. For connecting other audio devices such as a CD player, there’s a 3.5 mm stereo analog input. Frankly, I’m surprised there’s no optical input provided and the Stage is the first TV soundbar I can recall that doesn’t have an optical SPDIF input.

A brief word of warning, I first tried using the Beosound Stage with my Panasonic 4K TV and soon ran into connection problems with the soundbar not talking to my TV. I spent several hours trying to troubleshoot the issue until a helpful person from B&O advised me to switch on remote support in the B&O app. Engineers in Denmark were then able to access logs in the Stage that told them there was an HDMI issue with certain Panasonic TVs manufactured in 2016. I gave up on the Panasonic and used my Samsung 4K TV instead.

Setting up was very simple and once connected to my Samsung TV, the Beosound Stage worked like a charm with my TV remote, plus I could switch inputs on my smartphone using the B&O app. The app also has several listening modes that can adjust the soundbar’s settings to suit the source sound. There are listening modes for speech, music, movies or you can create your own.

For such a slender and stylish soundbar, the Beosound Stage kicks out the sound with incredible force. With a total of 550 W of amplification, there was enough volume to bring any movie soundtrack to life. Support for Dolby Atmos works fairly well, although I’m not convinced it wraps the sound around quite like a full-blown home theatre AVR with upward-firing speakers. Even so, with a well-mixed Dolby Atmos soundtrack, the Beosound Stage does recreate the effect of bullets whistling past your ear or helicopters hovering overhead. The subwoofer effect is meaty enough that you can get away without a separate sub, although you won’t quite get the gut-wrenching boom of a big sub. The finesse of the sound processing in this soundbar is quite awesome and the Stage produces speech with exceptional clarity, teasing out all the strands in a great movie soundtrack.

This soundbar is no slouch when playing music via the built-in functions for TuneIn Internet radio, TIDAL or Deezer. There’s support for DLNA music servers, so if you have a NAS on your home network, you can access all the music on it and the Beosound Stage will play the tracks and can handle most formats and resolutions up to FLAC. The lack of an optical input is a missed opportunity here, but I guess B&O had its reasons. Finally, there’s support for Apple AirPlay, Google’s Chromecast, Beolink, QPlay 2.0, plus Bluetooth. You can stream virtually any audio content to the Beosound Stage using a smartphone, tablet or computer, plus it links into other B&O kit using Beolink. That’s just about all your bases covered.

Verdict: The Beosound Stage is a superbly competent soundbar that looks truly beautiful in any of its cool finishes. I like the fact that it can be wall or shelf mounted but I think it could also use a stand for placing it vertically on a shelf. Not everyone wants to drill holes in the wall, especially if living in a rental property. I was supplied with a metal bracket stand for the duration of the review, but this isn’t being sold to end-users at the moment. The Besoud Stage serves up bags of power and can articulate any movie soundtracks convincingly. This is an incredibly impressive soundbar and could challenge the more-expensive Sennheiser Ambeo soundbar that has received some amazing reviews. I think the app could be a little more intuitive to use and maybe a small remote for volume, power and mute would be handy for when listening to music with the TV turned off. There’s a lot here for the money and for those who want that minimalist look but who’d also like a convincing TV sound, the Beosound Stage is a superb soundbar that offers both power and style in spades.

Pricing: Beosound Stage Aluminium and Beosound Stage Bronze Tone £1,250 / €1,500 / $1,750. Beosound Stage Smoked Oak £1,900 / €2,250 / $2,600.

More info: www.bang-olufsen.com

Specifications:

• Amplifier: 4 x 50 W for bass drivers, four x 50 W mid-range drivers, three x 50 W for tweeters
• Driver units: Four x 4-inch woofers, four x 1.5-inch mid-range, three x ¾-inch tweeters
• Dimensions: 110.4 x 17.3 x 7.7 cm (WHD)
• Weight: 8 kg
• Placement: Wall or table/shelf
• Bluetooth: v 4.2
• Wireless: Wi-fi/WLAN 802.11 b/g/n/ac (2.4 GHz & 5 GHz)
• Features: 3-channel sound with support for Dolby Atmos Dolby TrueHD
• Streaming: Chromecast, AirPlay 2, Bluetooth 4.2, QPlay 2.0 Inputs: HDMI (HDMI 2.0, HDCP 2.2) with EARC and ARC support HDMI in (HDMI 2.0, HDCP 2.2 with support of 4K HDR 50/60hz) 1x Line-in 3.5 mm stereo mini-jack 2x Ethernet 10/100Mb VLAN connection with LG C9 series TV for integrated control via Beoremote One
• Multiroom: Apple Airplay 2, Chromecast, BeoLink Multiroom support including touch to join
• Remote control: TV remote (volume-mute-on-standby)control commands via HDMI ARC Beoremote One BT with LG OLED C9 TVs Bang & Olufsen App
• Frame: natural aluminium, bronze tone aluminium, smoked oak wood
• Front Covers: black fabric or grey/warm taupe fabric by KVADRAT