LATEST ADDITIONS

Performance
Build Quality
Value

AT A GLANCE
Plus
Zip-Cliq mount for easy install
IPX6 rated for use in high-moisture locations
10-inch woofer
Optional billet aluminum Advanced Grille
Minus
Expensive

THE VERDICT
The overhead fruit of Bang & Olufsen’s partnership with Origin Acoustics combines superior, finessed sound quality with remarkably refined looks for any ceiling.

Although the story of its beginning may sound like it, Bang & Olufsen isn’t one of those up-and-coming startups that briefly create a lot of noise and then are never heard from again. B&O’s is a classic tale, though. Two engineers, Peter Bang and Svend Olufsen, tinkering in the Olufsen family’s attic (not garage) in Struer, Denmark, start building and selling radios. They didn’t do a Kickstarter campaign because, well, it was 1925, and Kickstarter hadn’t been kickstarted yet. The fledgling company’s first “commercially viable” product was the ominous-sounding B&O Eliminator, a device that allowed a radio to run off of AC (alternating current) from a wall outlet instead of DC (direct current) from expensive batteries. This early innovation set the tone for Bang & Olufsen ever since: be innovative, use quality materials, and above all (some would argue), do things your own (e.g., the Bang & Olufsen) way.