Trekking the show floor at CES you’ll stumble past hundreds or even thousands of speakers. The Samsung booth is no exception. When we say “booth” we really mean “insanely huge display and demonstration campus”. During a tour of the booth we fell in love with one pretty product which had looks to match the sound.
The Samsung H7 is a shoebox sized speaker that will sit beautifully on a large bedside table or a dresser or a buffet. It is definitely a speaker that has the power to be shared.
The two big features noteworthy here though is not where you should keep the H7, it is in UHQ and how the H7 is used.
Firstly… what is UHQ???
UHQ is Samsung’s proprietary technology that enables 32bits of rich, detailed sound from any source that provides 8 to 24bit sound. UHQ audio has the ability to upscale audio sources to a 32bit output, for both wired and wireless connections. 32bit sound creates audio which is much closer in quality to the original recording than existing HD audio, delivering rich sound that brings each note to life with incredible clarity. Samsung has also developed its own audio algorithms to perfect ultra-high quality sound by leveraging the intelligence of existing proprietary technology, and tapping the expertise of its U.S.-based, state-of-the-art audio lab.
So essentially, it is upscaling audio in a similar way that new 4K televisions are upscaling HD content. They’re using proprietary technology to make even streaming audio from Spotify sound even better, and you WILL notice.
UHQ is new for 2017 and the H7 is one of the first products on the market to receive this new technology.
The functionality around the H7 is interesting. The product itself has two large dials and a touch screen in the middle. The dials can be used to navigate and select within the menu system where you can scroll through a large range of audio services. Particularly high quality audio services like Deezer. Using the H7 has a great feel to it, the materials are premium and the different styles to the H7 are quite cool.
It is one of those products that at a glance could be quickly ignored but it is a product you need to experience to understand. Touch it, hear it, feel it.
We loved the Samsung H7 so much that we decided to give it the Best Audio of CES 2017. We can’t wait for it to hit Australian stores so that we can have another crack at it.
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