Sound Quality & Tonal Balance
- “Tonally outstanding with a gift for vocals and instrumentation that is truly and unequivocally impressive.”
- “You perceive a single point of sound with little in the way of mechanical generation involved in it.”
- “The levels of refinement on offer here are hugely impressive.”
- “The Arendal gives [instruments] a life and presence that is enough to stop you listening critically to the speaker and begin listening unambiguously to the music.”
Musicality & Character
- “This is a speaker that seems more effortlessly able to sound more fun than the 1528 did.”
- “The little speaker nails the tonality and scale… but also nails the feeling of a musician kicking back.”
- “Easy-going joy will be quite sufficient and the 1961 Bookshelf has to be seen as a Best Buy.”
Build, Design & Construction
- “Built like a (small) lorry.”
- “There is a very well judged balance of serious engineering and room-friendly simplicity.”
- “It feels more like cement than anything else.”
- “This is a clean, modern and fundamentally elegant bit of kit that is going to drop into most spaces without drawing attention to itself.”
Engineering Highlights
- “Exceptional cohesion, tonal realism and detail.”
- “The handover between the two drivers is excellent… tonal consistency is pretty much absolute.”
- “Where the cabinet is very much part of the performance on older speakers, on the Arendal, it’s simply not there in any meaningful sense.”
- “Lack of colouration helps those drivers to do what they do.”
Value, Use & System Matching
- “There are points where the Arendal sounds radically in advance of anything I’ve tested recently under £1,000.”
- “It’s a hugely likeable little speaker that gives a genuine take on the classic broadcast monitor sound in a thoroughly modern package.”
- “Unfussy about placement.”
- “Try it without [a subwoofer] first.”
- “You don’t need to give a monkey’s about [its BBC lineage] to find this a very talented and compelling little speaker.”
Read the full review here.
