CONCLUSION

   Harman Kardon counts many decades in the market and used to be one of the best audiophile brands money could buy. Nowadays they may be focused more in the design and manufacture of consumer oriented products but that doesn’t mean they’ve thrown away all the knowledge they have amassed throughout the years and the NOVA wireless stereo system is a good example of that (although we do feel Harman Kardon can do much better). Audio clarity is excellent thanks to superb mids and highs, bass levels are very good and get even better with the bass boost feature enabled and in terms of volume levels well you may not be able to throw a multi-room party with them but they can fill at least one very large room with clear and bass-rich sound (especially when used with the optical input). Now before some audiophiles I know jump on me I do need to point out that I’m not comparing the NOVA with some exquisite (and much more expensive) set of speakers designed solely for such demanding audiences. However I do feel that for their size (and price) the NOVA wireless stereo speakers are extremely good at what they were designed to do and that’s to produce clear, accurate and powerful sound without the need of much space and/or an extra sub-woofer. Of course not all is perfect and so the NOVA wireless stereo system has two features that may annoy some users. The first is their sleep function which activates after the speakers have been idle for 5 minutes while the second is the rather loud beeps both speakers make whenever you turn them off or connect them to a Bluetooth enabled device. Tiny issues in the long run which we can’t consider to be cons but there are present so we do need to point them out.

   Finding a pair of stereo speakers that sound and look like the NOVA by Harman Kardon is not easy and that obviously costs so as we speak you can find them for USD299.95 inside the USA (Amazon.com) and for 327Euros inside the EU (Amazon.co.uk). Overall this price tag may seem as a bit over the top to some of you but worth mentioning is that similar proposals by other leading manufacturers cost even more and are not really that much better in terms of sound clarity, bass levels and power output (at least from the ones we’ve used in the past). With that out of the way we feel that Harman Kardon has produced one of the best Sub USD500 Wireless Stereo Speaker Systems to date with the NOVA and that’s why it gets our Platinum Award.

PROS

- Build Quality
- Design
- Power Output (80W)
- Touch Capacitive Buttons
- Bass Boost Feature
- Audio Inputs (Bluetooth/3.5mm/Optical)
- NFC Compatible
- Harman Custom DSP
- Also Available In White

CONS

- Price (For Some)