Renowned speaker manufacturer Q Acoustics has made its first foray into active speakers – and there are both bookshelf and floorstanding options available.
The Q Active 200 bookshelf speakers and Q Active 400 floorstanding speakers add to Q Acoustics existing 20i and 30i series of passive speakers as another option for those making a foray into a premium hi-fi setup where minimalism is the key.
The Q Active 200 bookshelf speakers are available for £1,499 / $1,999 / €1,999 per pair this month (you can add stands which cost extra) while the Q Active 400 floorstanders are available from January.
The Q Active series are likely to be used alongside a turntable where you don't have an amp in between since there's a built-in phono stage plus a class D integrated amplifier.
But they're so much more than that since there's a model that supports either Google Assistant (available now) or Amazon Alexa (available later) while you can also connect to any Bluetooth devices of course plus there's support for the all-important Spotify Connect plus Apple's AirPlay 2 and Google's Chromecast – connectivity is certainly not an issue here.
As well as streaming sources and turntables, you can connect to any wired sources via HDMI ARC, optical digital and analogue line in. You can also stream files from a media player, NAS drive or computer on your network.
The Q Active series can offer all these connectivity options as they have a separate control hub, wirelessly linked to the speakers themselves. All incoming audio is converted to is converted to 24-bit/96kHz hi-res audio for the transfer to the speakers.