Home / Lifestyle / Mobile / Laptop / Mobile / HP to equip premium PCs, tablets with Bang & Olufsen audio

HP to equip premium PCs, tablets with Bang & Olufsen audio

Hewlett-Packard on Tuesday announced a partnership with Bang & Olufsen. Under the terms of the agreement, HP will equip its personal computers, tablets and accessories with Bang & Olufsen speakers and software-based enhancements. Previously HP worked with Beats Audio, but after the latter was acquired by Apple, the partnership was destined to end.

The two companies said that they will custom tune each notebook, desktop, tablet and accessory for precise sound. In all HP devices that carry the Bang & Olufsen or B&O Play brand, audio circuits will be EMI shielded, just like on premium mainboards from various manufacturers. In addition HP will use special headphone jacks with “reduced ground noise”. All HP devices featuring the premium audio brands will come with software control panels developed with Band & Olufsen.

HP_EliteBook_Folio_1020_G1_Special_Edition__Right_facing_verge_super_wide

The Bang & Olufsen brand will appear on HP's Spectre, Omen, Envy and select commercial PCs. The B&O Play brand will appear on HP Pavilion PCs, tablets and PC audio accessories. The first HP systems with Bang & Olufsen and audio will show up this spring.

“Audio plays an important role in the experience customers have on their PCs, tablets and accessories whether it's watching a movie, listening to music or Skyping with friends and family,” said Ron Coughlin, senior vice president of personal systems at HP. “With their passion and expertise, we are thrilled to work with Bang & Olufsen to create exceptional sound experiences for customers.”

HP is not the first company to use audio enhancements from Bang & Olufsen. Asustek Computer also equips its PCs with speakers and software from the renowned audio company.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: While it is impossible to get studio-quality sound on a mainstream laptop without increasing its price considerably, hopefully, HP’s notebooks will improve quality of integrated audio thanks to Bang & Olufsen at least a bit. Still, all improvements of such kind are more about marketing than about technology.

Become a Patron!

Check Also

DLSS 5 NVIDIA

KitGuru Games: DLSS 5 misses the point

It would be hard to argue that NVIDIA’s DLSS technologies haven’t been a net positive to the PC space, with the machine-learning based upscaler successfully translating lower resolution inputs into a final image which is perceivably sharper while hogging fewer resources. Though somewhat more contentious, the next evolution of DLSS came in the form of Frame Generation, using ML in order to generate additional frames for high-refresh rate gaming. Both techniques can have their issues, but generally speaking they’ve allowed for more people to experience higher-end titles at increased frame rates. DLSS 5, however, takes a sharp pivot, with a very different end goal in mind than the performance-boosting versions that came before.