I’ll be honest; I have plenty of sets of speakers at home. There’s at least one decent pair in every room of the house. But sometimes you’re in the kitchen cooking up some spätzle — I don’t know what you eat, I’m just assuming — and you turn to your Panini press and say, “Sure you make great sandwiches, but why can’t you play me some Brainticket while I prepare this Bavarian dough?” The Panini press, however, says nothing, silently staring back at you with its indifferent and unblinking metal casing. You focus back on the task at hand, but are shaken by a feeling that you are somehow less than before.
Thank god Sony’s here to finally put an end to our ongoing nightmare of appliance silence. The company recently announced an LED Light Bulb Bluetooth Speaker, which will combine all the superpowers of a 360-lumen bulb and a 2-watt, 40mm speaker into one harmonious pod of entertainment and tasteful lighting. All you have to do is screw it in any conventional light socket. Good thing I have so many empty ones around the house. I got tired of all those mooching light bulbs thinking they could squat rent-free and not play me Sun City Girls when I asked.
Sony claims that the speaker’s position at the front of the bulb ensures optimal sound quality, while the light reflects off and around it from behind, providing wide and even distribution. The bulb comes with a remote, but users can also download an app to control sound and light through their smartphones. So if you feel weird about directly asking the bulb to play some Viper and set the lighting to “mood,” you can ask through that little middleman in your pocket. And, frankly, that is kind of weird.
The bulb is being launched May 23rd in Japan and retails for ¥23,880 (about $199), but a US release has yet to be announced. In the meantime, we’ll just have to watch the promo video below and dream of a day when we can escape the horror that is GE’s silent home.
• Sony: http://www.sony.com