If you’ve bought an HP laptop recently then there is a good chance that it had Beats audio built-in. Unfortunately for HP, Beats Electronics was bought by Apple last year. This obviously meaning that no other company would be allowed to have Beats audio on their devices, including HP. But there is no need to fret, HP quickly recovered and partnered with a new high-end audio company.
Since HP was allowed to use Beats audio in their products until 2015, the time had come for HP to move on from Beats, whether they liked it or not. So, the company decided to partner with Bang & Olufsen to replace Beats audio in their future products. If you have never heard of Bang & Olufsen before, it is a high-end Danish audio company that has been around for some 90 years. They have partnerships with companies such as BMW and Vertu, who both include Bang & Olufsen audio in their products.
HP plans to work closely with Bang & Olufsen to carefully and precisely custom tune each laptop, desktop, and tablet for ‘precise sound.’ HP even has plans for accessories made using Bang & Olufsen audio. As a matter of fact, HP plans to release devices with Bang & Olufsen audio built-in by Spring. These devices will not just have the Bang & Olufsen built-in, but they will feature a custom audio control panel that will allow users to custom tune their listening experience.
The first devices with built-in Bang & Olufsen audio releasing this Spring will be HP’s Spectre, OMEN, ENVY and ‘select commercial PCs.’ HP did not give any release window for the first tablets releasing with the enhanced audio, but the company did say that they are coming.
It will be interesting to see how Bang & Olufsen audio sounds on HP PCs, tablets, and accessories compared to Beats audio. It will also be interesting to see if losing Beats audio will affect HP device sales at all, despite them partnering with a new high-end audio company. Regardless, props to HP for getting on the ball and quickly finding a new high-end audio company to partner with so that their devices don’t lose the nice audio quality.