Harman Kardon Aura

Harman Kardon Aura is a wireless one piece speaker system that delivers rich and clear sound. It has stunning looks that will definitely get noticed in your living room. At the first glance, if you are acquainted with Harman Kardon’s SoundStick, you might confuse Aura with it. It features a cylindrical dome shaped design with subwoofer housed at the bottom. The speaker holds six 1.5-inch drivers and a 4.5-inch subwoofer.

The volume controls, Wi-Fi, and power buttons on the device are touch sensitive and run along a black strip in the circular slider. There is also a white LED ring at the speaker core that changes when the volume is modified. In addition to this, it is also equipped with 3.5mm aux input, digital optical input, AC Power and a service port. However, dirt can easily fall into the speaker from the top, and you can’t remove the top glass to clean it.

Connectivity

You can connect your smart phones to the Aura in several different ways. It has built-in AirPlay for iOS users and Bluetooth connectivity for all Bluetooth enabled devices. Setting up AirPlay is simple. Your device and Aura need to be on the same Wi-Fi network for streaming music using AirPlay. Bluetooth pairing is breeze and devices instantly recognise the speaker.

You can also control your music with the Harman Kardon App available at AppStore and Google Play. This app then acts as a centrepiece, giving you control over the HK Aura from your smartphone or tablet. In addition, all your songs on your device are automatically synced to the app. The app also features a search option and enables you to control the volume and bass level.

Performance

The speaker delivered sound as rich and fulfilling as the appearance and packs plenty of power, despite its compact size. The speaker is designed to deliver omni-directional 360 degree sound. The delivered sound output is full and bright, irrespective of the placement of the device. The audio quality is equally good for all genres of music.

As the volume is raised, it gets really loud and there is no amount of distortion even at higher volumes. On tracks with intense and sub-intense bass content, the sub-woofer pumped out thumping bass. Thus, fans of bass lovers would not be disappointed at all. The mid and treble ranges are well-defined, and surprisingly, the vocals sound crisp and clear, even at low volume levels. The six 1.5 inches drivers and sub-woofer don’t even miss a single beat.

One disappointing feature that we found was that the touch sensitive controls at the black strip can hinder your music playback if touched mistakenly. For example, while you are streaming music and another person or anyone mistakenly presses the touch buttons, it may possibly raise or lower the volume suddenly or turn off the speaker, which can be irritating at times. The sound at lower volume levels is clear, sharp and not muffled. It does justice to all types of media inputs, such as movies that have many special and surround sound effects or other multimedia content.

With the Digital Optical cable port, you can connect TV and turn Aura into a home theatre system. In all, Haman Kardon Aura is capable of filling a medium-sized room with booming sound and surely has power to backup its price. The Bluetooth connectivity works well within the range with no loss of connectivity.