Harman Kardon Onyx Wireless Speaker System with Rechargeable Battery

Great design and great quality. The build in battery is a good move! Just the power plug that is difficult to reach when you have to charge it back. Read more

The Harman Kardon Onyx has a unique combination of benefits that are not found in other Bluetooth or Airplay speakers. It also has great sound for what it is. Of course I think any product of this nature needs to be judged on how it performs relative to the category. Side-by-side with any Bluetooth speaker, the Onyx will likely sound far superior, and it should. It has dedicated tweeters, woofers, and bass radiators. Yet, if you put it next to a wired, and amplified, home stereo pair, it's not going to compete, nor will any wireless speaker for that matter. But I think you'll be surprised with how good the Onyx can sound. At 11 inches in diameter the Onyx is not designed to be something you can stuff in a backpack like the Jambox. Rather it's a portable in the sense that you can grab it by the handle and place it anywhere on your property, inside or outside, and enjoy 6 hours of battery-powered music. Kind of like a compact boombox. (for those of us who remember those) You could certainly toss it in the car and take to a friends house too. The Onyx is very well constructed and certainly feels like a quality product. The stainless handle is solid, and the leather is thick. It looks very sleek. PROS: 1. It does sound rather good for what it is, and can easily fill a room with crisp-sounding music. 2. Has Airplay for lossless transmission of audio, and easy integration with Apple and iOS devices. It's great for Apple households. Once it's on the network, you can stream anything to it from any Apple device from anywhere in the house in seconds. 3. Has a battery, and can be played wirelessly for 6 hours. Many competitors of this size and quality do not have a battery, and almost no Airplay speakers do. The easy portability around the house combined with Airplay is a huge benefit. 4. As any audiophile will spot, the unique shape of two partial spheres is the only one that can completely cancel standing waves inside the cabinet. This was intentional, and well-thought. 5. The touch-sensitive strip on the speaker is a cool feature. Just slide your finger across the top to adjust the volume. 6. It was amazingly easy to set up with my iPhone. Just download the App, plug in a USB to lightning cable to your phone, and follow the instructions. Took about 30 seconds to share my phone's WiFi settings and it was on the network. CONS: 1. Airplay interference. This is a BIG con. Airplay is great when it works, but if you are in a tight residential area with lots of WiFi networks, be prepared for frequent drops, and skips. I have a brand new Airport Extreme, and all devices sit no further than 15-20 feet from the router. I even downloaded a SSID signal sniffer and tried switching to the least populated 2.4 Ghz channel. Some improvement, but it still skips. If it keeps doing this, I'm going to send it back. As good as the Onyx sounds, music is just not enjoyable with these interruptions. Bluetooth is not much more reliable, and doesn't sound quite as good. 2. The Onyx's internal WiFi radio only supports the ancient old wireless G standard, which might contribute to its spotty connectivity. It should at least support wireless N. If Harman Kardon truly wanted to address the interference issues, it would equip the Onyx with the new 5 Ghz wireless A capability. At this price, the Onyx is for early adopters and gadget hounds. Few will be running a router without wireless N. 3. The firmware is terrible. Log onto the Onyx's network configuration page in your browser, and it will frequently freeze up. Don't even try to adjust the network settings here. It will drop off the network. There's also no EQ and no other settings, or sleep timer, or any other functionality to the firmware. Harman needs to improve the firmware and the App. Nobody cares about building playlists inside a third-party App. This is silly when you already have iTunes. But we DO care about control over the device. 4. The price. At $500 on Amazon, the Onyx is an expensive toy. You could have a good mid-priced AV receiver for this cost. Yet, I don't know of any other device that has this combination of functionality. The DT Cube is the most similar, but no Airplay and much more bulky, and I don't think it sounds as good. 5. Bass could go a tad deeper, with a tad more accuracy. The cabinet has room for bigger bass drivers. Yet, this is a nit pick. TIP: If you don't care about Airplay, or don't need the 3.5 mm input jack, the Onyx Studio is a stripped-down version of the Onyx. It has the same chassis and the same drivers, but is Bluetooth only. It's currently selling for under $200 on Amazon and is a steal at that price. It will blow the doors off any other Bluetooth speaker at that price. UPDATE: I ended up sending it back. My take: $500 is too much to be enduring Airplay wireless interference causing music skips and stops. I think if Harman updated the Onyx to support 5Ghz WiFi it might eliminate this interference. Hopefully the next revision will have this. Read more

It's a very very very good speaker, more powerful, clean sound and high connectivity. This one is the best between all speakers. Read more

Powerful and reach sound from not so big device suitable to carry it with you while walking Read more

for the price it wasnt what we wanted and was not loud enough. we have a friend who bought a similiar type system and only paid $150 and was just as loud. Read more

For it's size, this one impressive Speaker. I own a Minx Air 200 and Bose Sound Touch 30 Series III and SoundTouch Portable Series II. I had couple issues though. Using it through DLNA was extremely difficult and I gave up. Bluetooth was perfect, and if that's all you want it's great. One other thing is, it is designed to be portable (with rechargeable battery) but the package itself is not very portable. It looks like it belongs on a Mantle than on Beach blanket. My primary need was WIFI Internet Radio, Portability and then Bluetooth. The Bose SoundTouch fill the bill and can be synchronized together. Usability is great. I didn't want to slave my phone to the speaker all the time. But again as a Bluetooth portable (battery driven), this is about as good as it gets. Read more

For a product whose singular job is to replicate sound across bluetooth and WiFi networks, this is a spectacular disappointment. Audio drops out regularly during songs. It sounds great while playing, but what's the point if every song is interrupted by an audio dropout? Absolute waste of money, terrible look for an historically good brand. Returned - I like my music playing continuously. Edit: To provide a little more detail, I understand that Bluetooth is very much subject to interference issues, and not always ideal for optimum playback in heavily populated areas. However, I have two other Bluetooth speakers that do a much better job of maintaining their respective connections (a JBL Authentics L16 and an Infinity One for portability). I would even argue that the Infinity One is able to produce a much better sound quality (with the exception of slightly hyped bass) for considerably less money. You can find an even cheaper portable option with exceptional sound in the Denon Envya Mini. The Authentics, of course, is roughly twice the price and absolutely worth it given the way it handles Bluetooth and DLNA. Read more

$550.00 High end speaker does not have a remote very disappointed, main reason that i returned it. the sound is good. Read more