You most likely know Honeywell as an industrial conglomerate with some consumer offerings such as air purifiers, but the company recently came out with its first hi-fi speaker called the Aviator. Priced at Rs. 39,999, the table-top speaker is aimed at home entertainment purpose at the high-end.
I have been using one for a few weeks, so let's try and see what it's all about:
The first thing that might strike you about this speaker is that it looks a lot like a high-end big projector with a pair of crossed legs for support at the bottom. Weighing a little under 5.5kg, the speaker has a textured rubbery top in a light beige colour with the bottom one-third in grey. You can also get it with a black bottom. The front carries LEDs around, has a circular ring that lights up white when you switch it off or on, blue when you are playing something. The top locates the USB port, playback controls and Honeywell branding. The back houses the service port and 3.5mm audio jack.
You get two dongles–one USB type and one for the lighting port–in the box, along with the charging cord, but no aux cable is bundled. In order to pair it for lossless mode, you insert the appropriate dongle in the speaker first and then to your device to play the music. The controls at the top also have small LEDs to indicate the mode selected (Bluetooth, lossless, AUX) as well as the volume. You can change tracks, play, pause and power on or off using the control buttons. The controls work reliably – whether from the speaker itself or from your source device such as a smartphone. It would have been a nice touch to add a remote control for independent control given you wouldn't want to move the speaker frequently.
Supporting AAC, SBC and proprietary audio codecs for lossless, the Aviator comes with Bluetooth 5.3 connectivity. When it comes to the audio quality, the Aviator doesn't disappoint. Given its size, the 240watts output speaker has sufficient loudness and oomph to fill a 15x15 room and a little larger room, too, for a get-together or a movie watching sitting. When in lossless mode, playing something over like Apple Music (both iOS and Android), the speaker delivered clear vocals with warm treble and pretty deep bass. While mids continue to shine, rarely the background instruments sacrifice in output along with other tones at the highest volume. It does a good job of handling background soundtracks and dialogues for watching movies and TV series, especially if used wired.
Overall, the Honeywell Aviator is a nice-looking speaker for your entertainment room that can be used wired for your TV and projector or wirelessly along with lossless playback from your Android and iOS devices. Having said that, it's in a competitive segment with the likes of Edifier, Marshall and Sonos trying to capture the home audio entertainment, especially given the price tag, so you might want to keep an eye out for a deal if the speaker does fulfil your expectations.