So Levitating Speakers Are A Thing Now

Late last year, we had a fantastic time playing around with Plox’s floating Death Star speaker. At the time, we were intrigued by its levitating electromagnets, but now it has company: LG has a levitating speaker that’ll play music for 10 hours, then descend slowly to its base station to charge and float back up again.

LG’s PJ9 Levitating Portable Speaker (honestly, guys, I would have called it the Leviosa) relies on the same concept of electromagnetism to hold its turbine-shaped, 360-degree-audio speaker unit in mid-air, where it’ll sit for (up to) 10 hours of playback. When its internal battery runs low on juice, LG says it’ll “automatically descend” — hopefully not with an unceremonious thunk — to the base, where it’ll charge wirelessly.

That base station also includes a small subwoofer, which should contribute to the range of sound pumped out by what is otherwise a tiny upward-firing speaker. Everything happens over Bluetooth, of course, and you’re able to connect two devices simultaneously — although each one will kick the other off as it starts playing music.

LG is showing off the PJ9 at CES 2017 in Las Vegas, so stay tuned to see what we think of it in the coming days.

If you’re keen on that levitating Death Star speaker by Plox, by the way — and let’s be honest, that’s the only kind of speaker that should levitate — then you’ll find it for $249 at JB. [LG / Plox]


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