Pantheone Speaker Review: Hand-Sculpted, Lossless Streaming and Extremely Loud

Who is the Pantheone 1 for?

• For those who are after a functional centerpiece in their living room, the Pantheone design is unique, intriguing and will be a conversation starter every time
• If you need a sound system with serious output power, Pantheone 1 is a powered speaker that is capable of easily filling up a room with music - even when it is packed with lively guests
• While purist audiophiles would only consider limited ways of wiring up their sound setup, Pantheone 1 has multiple connectivity options from lossless streaming to a quick Bluetooth pairing with a mobile phone

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House guests don't all have audiophile ears to appreciate the dynamics and frequency response of your exotic speaker set up in the living room, but most guests will have the eyes to see and admire a set up if it looks intriguing enough.

To say call the Pantheone speaker design intriguing is an understatement. Upon first unboxing, it was one of those unique products that once you overcome the initial shock and awe, you would immediately take a selfie with it and share it on social media. Here are some of my impressions after spending a few days with the Pantheone 1.

A Speaker and a Sculpture

The shape and size of the Pantheone 1 immediately reminded me of Ridley Scott's vision of what an extra-terrestrial egg would look like - and I don't mean it looks 'horror-ble' but that there's something organic and alien about it. This biological aesthetics is partially due to the fact that there is an absence of any sort of straight lines or right-angles on the speaker - as is the case in the world of nature. Another contributing reason is that the speakers themselves are not made by machines, but are sculpted by hand. There's an intangible living quality about it, as all hand-crafted things do.

Yet the Pantheone speaker is not merely a work of art, and does much more than look pretty. It is a union between art and technology, and is actually a powerful speaker as well as a connected device.

One speaker to Fill the Room...or if you'd like the House

It turns out the viral speaker Devialet Gold Phantom is not the only single speaker that can fill up a room: even a single unit of the Pantheone 1 is able to blast music at incredible volumes. Unfortunately I wasn't able to test the Pantheone speaker to its full capacity (for fear of the police turning up at my door) but even at less than 50% volume the amount of sound its array of speakers that consists of dual 6.5 inch sub-woofer, dual 4 inch mid-range cones, and quadruple silk dome tweeter was pumping out was already staggering (tested outside of office hours, of course).

The power that you can get from even a single Pantheone speaker is enough for a house party. And if that's still not enough for you, a Pantheone spokesperson told me that you can daisy chain up multiple speakers which would be loud enough to light up a few apartment floors.

Even if not daisy chained, the Pantheone 1 speakers can be placed throughout the house (up to 8 rooms), and the Pantheone app is able to manage the volume and playback of each of the array of speakers around the house.

From lossless streaming to regular Bluetooth to Audio jacks

Being a connected speaker, Pantheone 1 is able to access streaming services that you would expect including Spotify connect, Amazon music, Tidal, and TuneIn either via WiFi or Ethernet and stream lossless audio. This ensures you're getting the best wireless sound quality possible, with it being able to stream rates of up to 24-bit/192kHz.

But this is not a speaker that can only be enjoyed by people who know what '24-bit/192kHz' means, as it is also Bluetooth 4.2 enabled, and will connect with any device - even older devices that use the standard SBC, AAC or APTX codecs.

If you want to simplify things even more, the Pantheone 1 even has a standard 1/8 inch audio jack input, which pretty much ensures the flexibility to be connected to any sort of sound source you want - even if it is an old record player as long as it has a line-out.

Final Remarks

Pantheone 1 is not your typical living room sound system, and that's the whole point. This is a unique product that will make an impact to your living space both aesthetically and phonically. Not only does its head turning design make a bold statement, it's wireless connectivity ensures that there are no wires anywhere to mess up the aesthetics. At the same time the ability to stream hi-res music ensures that you're not compromising the audio experience. The Pantheone 1 is an exciting entry to the world of home audio and is a successful attempt to disrupt our expectations.

David is a tech enthusiast/writer who is often on the move, but since the lock-down is on a mission to explore gadgets to improve his 'home work'. This is a contribution to an ongoing IBTimes review series on gadgets for Home Productivity.