B&O Play Beoplay M3

amazon B&O Play Beoplay M3 reviews

Sonos Play:1 is almost always the first name users notice when they intend to buy themselves a wireless home speaker system. Next is the new Sonos One model that was launched not long ago. Sonos products often possess strengths such as reasonable prices, excellent sound quality, and excellent compatibility and connectivity with almost any streaming service you are using. They also provide users with a Sonos system platform to cater to multi-room needs. Of course, there are other options on the market, but they rarely match what Sonos already has.

Beoplay M3 aims to change that user’s mind when it combines ease of setup, ease of use, great sound quality, and sophisticated design. The product is also compatible with Apple AirPlay and Google Cast and comes with Bluetooth connectivity to work with most mobile devices today.

Beoplay M3 has a hardware design similar to Sonos One when it has a 0.75-inch tweeter and a 3.75-inch woofer, plus a Class D amplifier for 40W of power. Its sound easily fills a medium-sized room yet is compact enough to place on a kitchen table, living room corner, or a bedroom nightstand. The appearance of the M3 at first glance is quite monotonous and somewhat boring (especially with the black version). If the black Sonos One model offers a discreet and sophisticated look, the M3 is not; in return for the simplicity of the M3, it will probably make users who love simplicity feel excited. It just depends on personal feelings.

The M3 is also different from the M5 because it is a unidirectional speaker and cannot spread sound. However, it is quite impressive in that it does not make the sound too monotonous or rigid, so users can place the speaker on the shelf and enjoy music anywhere in the room without changing the sound quality too much. At a moderate volume, the M3 gives a warm and emotional sound comparable to an analog system. The bass of the M3 is not too strong but still conveys enough details that average quality speakers can miss.

Users are also advised not to leave the speaker at the highest volume because it can affect hearing. However, in fact, at the highest volume, M3 is still not enough to make your head dizzy even when listening for a long time. It also has the plus point of not distorting the sound at the highest volume, which will cause hiss and make difficult users unhappy.

At low volume, the bass overwhelms other bands quite heavily, making the M3 unsuitable for listening to podcasts or any other program where the voice is dominant. The speaker gives the best sound quality at a volume level of about 30% ~ 70%. That is where it will lose out compared to Sonos One or Play:1 because these two speakers can give good and detailed sound at any volume level.

The M3 is a wireless speaker, but you can also use it in wired mode with the 3.5mm input hidden at the speaker’s base. To control the speaker wirelessly, you can use Apple AirPlay, Google Cast, or Bluetooth. Unfortunately, the M3 lacks support for Spotify Connect, so it won’t be easy if you want to listen to music from your computer without direct pairing. However, the Spotify mobile app supports the Google Cast connection protocol well so that the M3 will work effectively with both Android and iOS.

With the Beoplay App, users will set up the M3 speaker over a WiFi network and connect it to a multi-room device chain with other Beoplay speaker products. Still, the two M3 speakers are not capable of direct connection together. The App also helps users convert the tuning profiles for each position where the M3 is set up. There’s also the new Beoplay ToneTouch feature, which includes four preset EQ settings, “Warm,” “Excited,” “Relaxed,” and “Bright,” for you to change the sound quality to your liking. These EQ modes generally don’t change the sound too much and are generally not too important.

In the current era of technology development, what M3 lacks and loses to its rivals is the ability to control by voice. This speaker cannot play a song you requested, filter artists, albums, playlists, or reduce the volume with voice commands. It is also not compatible with Google Home, even with Cast-enabled. The App can only control the speaker on the smartphone/tablet or by the physical knob on the speaker’s body, intentionally hidden to keep the necessary fashion.

This weakness makes the M3 too “crazy” before other competitors on the market today, especially when compared to Sonos One, which has an extremely convenient voice control feature. Despite the advantages of good sound quality, high volume levels, and luxurious design, it is still difficult for the M3 to surpass Sonos One in features that support multi-room or voice control, plus the Sonos One costs $100 less than it. The M3 finally returns to the first goal of the B&O Play lineup: luxury. In this case, it’s not worth it at all.

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