New 'floating' speaker has a very Zen design
Chinese smartphone maker Meizu is bring its first product to the US, but it's a wireless speaker, not a phone.
- Maggie Award for Best Regularly Featured Web Column/Consumer
Funny word "floating." It apparently has a few different meanings.
Take Meizu's Gravity, a newly introduced Indiegogo project that's a "floating" wireless speaker.
Gravity isn't really floating, however. It just kind of looks like it's floating thanks to a weighted translucent stand that has a display integrated into it.In case you've never heard of Meizu, it's a big smartphone company in China with a 13-year history -- or so company reps tell us (we just reviewed its 10-Core Pro 6 Android smartphone). Before it was making smartphones, it made popular MP3 players in China. In 2015, Meizu got a $590 million investment from Alibaba and it's on the Fortune 2016 Unicorn List, sitting at number 33 with a valuation of $3.3 billion.
Gravity is the first product it's launching in the US.
I haven't listened to the speaker, so I can't tell you how it sounds, but its design does look cool. That said, it's a smaller speaker than it appears in its promotional video. And I should also point out that it's both a Wi-Fi and Bluetooth speaker.
The Gravity is scheduled to ship in December of this year and carries a list price of $249, though you can preorder one for as low as $169 as part of the Indiegogo campaign.
As always, please note that CNET's reporting on crowdfunding campaigns is not an endorsement of the project or its creators. Though Meizu is an established company, contributing to a crowdfunded project comes with risk. Before contributing to any campaign, read the crowdfunding site's policies, such as those for Kickstarter and Indiegogo, to find out your rights (and refund policies, or the lack thereof) before and after a campaign ends.
