The B&O app is not great, not by any measurement. And by extend any software endeavor has been mediocre.

Regarding the sound quality, my understanding from this review is that beolab 8 sounds (as expected) great, but compare to other B&O product like Balance or A9 (with similar price), the beolab 8 might be slightly behind. However, if you combine, sound quality, usabilty and flexibility, beolab 8 is the best B&O shelf speaker ever. I have never had the chance to listen at all these speakers, but I ll be interesting to get more opinions on that topic.     cheers

I think you can watch/read these type of reviews and come to a black and white /2D conclusion but in essence you are comparing different capabilities and price points. You may as well throw in the BL50 or 90s to push the little Blights down. I have the opinion that they are very competent speakers in stereo pair (Balance can’t do that) and a more compact piece of equipment than a couple of A9s. At the end of the day, you can always buy something bigger, more powerful, more expensive, more drivers, more amps. Go and listen to all 3 sets. I don’t think you will be disappointed when comparing against each other.

Why do you say Balances cannot be "very competent speakers in stereo pair"? I'm very happy with my stereo pair of Balances.

I guess simply because they were designed as a standalone single speaker. A lot of work has gone into into making them pairable rather than the BL8 which was designed from the get-go as a stereo pair speaker. i have my preference when listening/comparing to the Balance and BL8 and although I had a definate bias in wanting the 8s, the Balance did not please me sound-wise. But that’s just an opinion. If you are happy with the Balance…good. Enjoy. look, rather than get triggered over a comment, please read the point I’m trying to make…..you simply can’t say the BL8 is not as good as the A9 or Balance because it has less power, less drivers etc…it patently does not. But it is a generation or two ahead of both the A9 and Balance, and I would have thought the tech and the in-house development would be superior to both if there was an equality in hardware?

I understand your comment, but actually I think we are biased by the B&O marketing

There is no way to know if BL8 is 1 or 2 generation ahead of A9 or Balance (actually I would not be surprised that they share more hardware than what we think). Software wise, they look all equivalent, as they all get the same software updates.