I hate to subject my readers to the sausage-making more than is absolutely necessary, but I have to admit something that falls squarely in that domain: most of the time, the first images I take of the unboxing process—of the outer shipping carton itself—are there just to give me some room to monologue a little about my expectations. The hope is that I can use that space to get you into the same anticipatory mindset I’m in when I’m preparing to review a new piece of kit.
Granted, maybe the outer box gives you some sense of the size of the overall package. That’s why I often include a multitool for scale. But really, that’s a bonus. I just need some room to riff. But the shipping carton for PSB’s new BluOS-based iQ2 active speaker system (US$1399, CA$1699, £1199, €1299 for standard finishes or US$1499, CA$1849, £1299, €1499 for the premium walnut veneer) has a really cool feature I couldn’t help but draw your attention to explicitly.
You can’t capture that cool feature in just one photo, but there’s a hint here. Check out the vector drawing of the speaker itself. First things first, it does the thing that I think a lot of products from Lenbrook, PSB’s parent company, are doing with their packaging lately: it delivers a sneak peek at the product itself, but in such a way as to leave some room for imagination. It also makes something clear that, in my experience, a lot of normies get confused about when they see their first pair of PSB speakers: the fact that the tweeter is below the woofer.
“But wait,” he says in his best Ron Popeil voice. “There’s more!”
Flip the box around and you also get a similar vector drawing of the back of the speaker, showing you all of the connectivity at a glance. Sure, none of it is labeled, I hear you saying, but it at least lets a potential shopper see how many and what sorts of connections there are. And the drawing is within a fraction of an inch of being perfectly to scale, so you can imagine how this thing might fit into your environment.
Why does any of this matter? I’m thinking here about a potential new hi‑fi convert encountering this thing in the wild and getting some useful information from a glance at the box—something that no inscrutable bullet-point laundry list of features and supported services could ever give. Such lists aren’t going to entice anybody. But this might.
Granted, I also hear you saying that most people who buy these things are going to order them online, and even if they buy them at a brick-and-mortar store, they’re likely to point to a display model and ask a disgruntled, underpaid clerk to grab the box from the back.
But hey, man, I’m constantly seeing stacks of KEF active speaker boxes at my local Costco. And I see people eyeing them. Why couldn’t we see stacks of PSB active speakers at Costco, too? Let a Wookiee dream of a world where more brands of hi‑fi products are found on more mainstream store shelves, will you?
And in that dream world of mine, packaging like this is going to attract more converts than something that looks like an emblem-festooned NASCAR stock car. Or, at the very least, it couldn’t hurt.
Crack open that outer box, and the first thing you’re met with is the handy quick-start guide and other pack-in literature. Nothing too exciting, to be sure, but still nice.
Nothing terribly exciting directly under the pack-in literature, either, but it’s groovy to see that PSB is including a high-quality ethernet cable in addition to the Type A (North America, Japan) and Type C (South America, Europe, other parts of Asia) power cords neatly coiled in their own little cubbies.
With that foam end cap out of the way and one of the iQ2 speakers removed, you can see here that PSB uses softer and more flexible EPE foam instead of stiff EPS around the speakers, and tucked within a cutout in the EPE foam that separates the cabinets themselves is the accessories box. I like that sort of efficient use of space.
Inside the accessories box, you’ll find the magnetic grilles for the tweeters and woofers, as well as little rubber feet for the bottom of each speaker.
You can see here that each cabinet is double-wrapped in a fiber bag (I think that’s non-woven polypropylene, but don’t quote me on that) as well as a plastic bag for extra protection.
Strike that. Each cabinet is actually triple-wrapped, with a protective foam-paper covering under the fiber bag. At this point, one can’t help but assume that the finish on these things must be pretty nice, given all the fuss.
Indeed. Pretty darned-tootin’ nice. This was honestly something of a surprise for me—not the niceness of the finish, mind you, but the exact color. I had no say in the finish of the review sample sent my way, but I’m happy to see it’s the Granite Grey. Of course, if I’d been shopping for myself, I probably would have gone with the Premium Walnut Veneer option. Or maybe the Ember Red (rawr!). But the gray finish gives a good sense, I think, of what might be a better fit for most modern interiors.
You can also see here how the grilles affect the overall aesthetic of the iQ2. I’m torn. I like both looks, but if these were mine, I think I might set them up with the woofers grilled and the tweeters in their birthday suits.
A quick look at the backs of the speakers reveals the location of the bass-reflex ports, as well as the I/O section on the primary speaker. Don’t get hung up on whether or not the one with the innies and outies is the left or right cabinet, by the way—that gets sorted out in the setup. Either speaker can be assigned to the left or right channel.
A closer look at the I/O reveals something—actually a lack of something. If you’re familiar with the way most active speakers work, you might be expecting to see some form of tether connection. Or you might assume that ethernet port is for connecting the primary and secondary speakers.
Nope. There’s a four-pin connector for such purposes on the step-down iQ1 (US$999, CA$1299, £899, €999), but the iQ2 cabinets sync with one another wirelessly. Sometimes—rarely, mind you, but every so often—I find myself loving the fact that I live in the future.
Last up, as is tradition, a shot of one of the iQ2s sitting atop one of my Monoprice 42838 stands, on which they’ll be perched for the duration of my in-depth evaluation. Contrast this image with, say, the shot of the KEF Q Concerto Meta from my unboxing of that speaker to get a sense of just how itsy-bitsy the iQ2 really is. You can tell someone a million times that a speaker cabinet measures 9.7″H × 5.7″W × 7.6″D, and I guess for some people that means something. But seeing it in context like this tells a more meaningful story, in my opinion.
And hey, I’m a writer; I’m a sucker for a good story. Even if a picture tells it way better than I could.
. . . Dennis Burger
dennisb@soundstagenetwork.com
