B&W Zeppelin

Speaker set-ups that let you play music from your iPod out loud have been on the market for a number of years and there's a huge range to choose from.

But if you want the coolest looking and, arguably, the best sounding one then look no further than the Zeppelin from UK company Bowers & Wilkins, or B&W.

Other systems use electronic wizardry to artificially boost the quality of the sound, with varying degrees of success. The Zeppelin's amplifiers (all three of them) have circuitry called Digital Sound Processing, but this adjusts the balance at different volume settings rather than tweaking the overall quality.

The reason the Zeppelin sounds so great is basically down to the sheer out-and-out quality of the technologically advanced speakers – for example, lasers are used to maximise the performance of the glass fibre cones. And, unusually for this type of product, the Zeppelin has a proper bass speaker – a Kevlar-reinforced one, no less.

When you play your favourite tunes on the Zeppelin they sound so much better than normal that you feel as if you are listening to them for the first time. You can hear each instrument distinctly and the sound is clean yet warm and engaging. And everything you play sounds good, from soft chamber music to raucous hard rock from the likes of, well, Led Zeppelin.

The system's dock charges your iPod and can be used to sync it with a computer. You can also plug the Zeppelin into your TV and play video from your iPod – the picture quality is pretty good.

Everything about the Zeppelin is appealing, thoughtfully designed and a joy to use. Take the remote control, for example – it's shaped like a slightly flattened shiny black egg and nestles comfortably in the hand.

And the dock has a clever spring feature that keeps various types of iPod firmly in place without having to use those cheap-looking white plastic adaptors.

B&W made its name designing studio-quality speakers used by some of the world's top artists and boasts that many of the tracks on the average iPod are likely to have been recorded using its products. Leading studios that use its famous 800 Series reference speakers include London's Abbey Road and George "Star Wars" Lucas's Skywalker Sound.

The Zeppelin, of course, takes its distinctive shape and name from the giant airships that glided through the skies between 1900 and the 1930s. This elegant era of air travel came to a sudden halt after the Hindenburg burst into flames over New Jersey in May 1937 at the end of a transatlantic flight.

But this offering from B&W is one Zeppelin that certainly won't crash and burn.

Price: Dh2,999

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