Harman Kardon's new speaker feels old
I've been a contributing editor for PCMag since 2011. Before that, I was PCMag's lead audio analyst from 2006 to 2011. Even though I'm a freelancer now, PCMag has been my home for well over a decade, and audio gear reviews are still my primary focus. Prior to my career in reviewing tech, I worked as an audio engineer—my love of recording audio eventually led me to writing about audio gear.
Harman Kardon's Onyx Studio 7 feels like a Bluetooth speaker from a few years ago, and its high price and spartan feature set aren't enough to compete by today's standards.
Harman Kardon's latest portable Bluetooth speaker, the Onyx Studio 7, feels like it was shot out of a time machine. For $479.95, it falls short on features we now commonly see on speakers for half the price (or less). Sonically, the Onyx Studio 7 delivers powerful bass depth that will appeal to those looking for some thunder, but not almost $500 worth. There's no EQ to adjust audio performance to taste, Bluetooth codec support is outdated, and the speaker lacks a water-resistance rating. Ultimately, you can get much better performance for the price—or even for far less.
If the Onyx Studio 6 resembles a designer handbag, the Onyx Studio 7 takes things in a completely different direction. The cloth and metallic materials remain, but this speaker looks more like an homage to the planet Saturn. Available with black, blue, or white cloth grilles, the 12-by-10.6-by-6.3-inch, 7.3-pound Onyx Studio 7 has a rounded body that seems to hover inside its ring-like handle. Cleverly, the handle is also the stand that the speaker leans on to sit upright on flat surfaces. It’s an interesting design that won’t be for everyone, but it’s nice to see a company pushing the envelope a bit in the portable speaker realm—this really doesn’t look like any speaker we’ve tested in recent memory.
Also, it’s worth pointing out that yes, this is a portable speaker with a battery and a built-in handle, but it’s on the heavy side, so it’s portable more in the room-to-room sense and less in the throw-it-in-a-bag or take-it-camping sense. Unlike the Onyx Studio 6, the Studio 7 isn’t waterproof and has no IP (ingress protection) rating at all, making it a poor choice for most outdoors scenarios.
Beneath the grille, dual 1-inch tweeters and a single 4.8-inch woofer combine for 50 watts and deliver a frequency range of 50Hz to 20kHz. Across the top of the grille, there are push-button controls for Bluetooth, power, playback, and volume up/down. The playback button can be tapped twice to skip forward a track, but there’s no way to backward-navigate a track, which is annoying.
A recessed panel on the back houses a connection for the included power adapter, a 3.5mm aux input, and a USB-C port for service. There’s no included cable for the aux input, which is frustrating for the price.
The Onyx Studio 7 is compatible with Bluetooth 4.2, which is a bit out of date, and unfortunately only supports the SBC Bluetooth codec—it won’t play AAC or AptX codecs. There's also no companion app with EQ, so you can't adjust the sound signature. The speaker can wirelessly connect with another Onyx Studio 7 to form a pair, at least.
Harman Kardon estimates battery life to be roughly eight hours, but your results will vary with your volume levels.
On tracks with intense sub-bass content, like The Knife’s “Silent Shout,” the Onyx Studio 7 delivers some serious thunder. At top volume levels, the DSP (digital signal processing) kicks in to prevent distortion, but that doesn’t really seem to thin the low frequencies out too much. At slightly lower volume levels, the bass is powerful and well balanced with higher frequencies in the mix.
Bill Callahan’s “Drover,” a track with far less deep bass in the mix, gives us a better sense of the Onyx Studio 7’s general sound signature. The drums on this track sound, well, thunderous, just like the sub-bass in the previous track. If you have the Onyx Studio 7 on a resonant surface, it will vibrate intensely—and this is a track that really doesn’t inspire the kind of subwoofer vibration we associate with, say, electronic music. Callahan’s baritone vocals get a pleasant low-mid richness paired with a high-mid crispness, and the acoustic strums and higher-register percussive hits both get enough high-mid and high-frequency presence to keep things bright and defined. This is a highly boosted and sculpted mix, with lots of added bass depth.
See How We Test Speakers
On Jay-Z and Kanye West’s “No Church in the Wild,” the kick drum loop receives enough high-mid presence for its attack to retain its punchiness, but the added bass depth also imbues the loop with rumble it doesn't typically have. The sub-bass synth hits that punctuate the beat prove to be a little too deep for the drivers to reach down and grab—we get a little of their power, but not the full-on subwoofer rumble you might hope for. In its place, you have added bass power at slightly higher frequencies, creating intense kick drum sounds. The vocals on this track are delivered cleanly and clearly, without much added sibilance, but they can at times sound like they’re doing battle for space with the added bass thunder.
Orchestral tracks, like the opening scene from John Adams’ The Gospel According to the Other Mary, as well as jazz tracks, tend to send pretty natural through the Onyx Studio 7. The bass boosting doesn’t really knock things too far out of whack on these recordings. The lows do take a big step forward, but not so much that they ruin the balance and overshadow the other higher-register instrumentation.
The Harman Kardon Onyx Studio 7 has powerful, capable drivers, but it simply doesn’t offer an experience befitting its $480 price. It doesn’t play higher-fidelity Bluetooth codecs, it has no extras whatsoever, and its portability is limited by its weight and lack of water resistance. Simply put, this speaker feels outdated. For far less money, the $350 JBL Xtreme3 and the $250 Sony SRS-XB43 are two portable options that outperform the Onyx Studio 7 on multiple levels. If it’s a design piece you want, consider the $500 Bang & Olufsen Beolit 20, which delivers a far more rewarding experience overall.
Harman Kardon's Onyx Studio 7 feels like a Bluetooth speaker from a few years ago, and its high price and spartan feature set aren't enough to compete by today's standards.
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I've been a contributing editor for PCMag since 2011. Before that, I was PCMag's lead audio analyst from 2006 to 2011. Even though I'm a freelancer now, PCMag has been my home for well over a decade, and audio gear reviews are still my primary focus. Prior to my career in reviewing tech, I worked as an audio engineer—my love of recording audio eventually led me to writing about audio gear.
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