Elipson Planet LW Active Wireless Speaker Review & Comments

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Reviewed by Ed Selley, 19th November 2012. As a technical achievement, the Planet LW is a class act. The striking looks, excellent performance and very solid build of the “ordinary” Planet L has been seamlessly merged with amplification and control to create an outstanding pair of active speakers.
Read the full review...
 
I'm gonna be bold and say that, aside from the lack of useful hifi connectivity, the Kef LS50 has a rival for my (eventual) affections. This speaker also has a dual-concentric drive unit and whilst I can't tell if it is of the same quality and performance as the latest Uni-q driver it does seem to be a rival. And one that I suspect does a bit more bass. But it also does that from a sealed cabinet, with what I presume to be a better Q and greater time-domain accuracy. That spherical cabinet also offers an optimal cabinet shape for controlled diffraction. All in all, an almost perfect speaker design.

But, I do have to say "almost". £1200 for an "iPod speaker" is fairly ludicrous and as there's no mention of Bluetooth in the review one must assume this device is stuck with its proprietary wireless modules. That's just dumb. And no line in of any kind, analogue or digital... A huge pity then, because this is not, IMO, an iPod speaker that crosses the boundary deep into hifi territory, but a hifi speaker that got chopped off at the ankles and is now sulking by the kerb alone and lost in iPod-speaker land... sad. Truly sad.

Elipson have two ways out of this odd, nay bizarre, marketing decision (and it IS a marketing decision): they can build a future model of speaker that had connectors to accept an input from hifi pre-amps and/or source components OR they could build a dedicated pre-amp with a built-in Kleer wireless module. Or, indeed, they could dump the Kleer altogether and go with Bluetooth. And they need to make a proper remote control, obviously.

One last criticism:, I suspect strongly that people are not going to want to stick dongles in everything. That's a HUGE design weakpoint. We've got wifi and Bluetooth both *integrated* into all, or most, of our devices already so what on earth are Elipson thinking, assuming that we're going to ignore that conveniently-minimalist tech to kludge up their conveniently minimalist speaker design with dongles sticking out of everything? I have to wonder too for how long these presumably-easily lost or broken dongles will be available as spare/replacement parts (and at what cost). To hobble such a great design with Kludge wireless dongles is just dumb. And lazy. Elipson need a slap for this.

Overall, on the strength of this review, colour me very interested indeed, but Elipson have no chance of scoring sales to hifi or music enthusiasts or anyone older than about 25 (who are the people who have the money to buy things like these speakers...) without realising the huge incompatibility and roadblock to use the Kleer system they have is. People like me, for instance. And I *WANT* to want this speaker!
 
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