Nocs NS2 Air Monitors- 03.13.13
There is no denying that the Nocs NS2 Air Monitors are stunning. Beautiful, elegant computer/small room active speakers with built in AirPlay tech, making it ridiculously easy to throw your music around the house… and with AirPlay’s multi-speaker set up being so easy, it’s been fun hooking up the speakers in every room - from laptop to kitchen to living room to bedroom to be in sync, so music follows us around the house and NOTlabs! But back to aesthetics, these are designed in Stockholm (assembled in China) and have hand-built soft touch rubber coated cabinets (feels SO good!), Kevlar reinforced woofers and silk dome tweeters. I’m smitten by the way the red pops - they also come in black, white, grey, orange, and yellow. The set up is relatively easy (but also easy to forget, lest you need to reset and do it again - but you can ping the website for that too) - you basically plug it in, press setup on the back, and connect to its personal wifi network, hitting the usual 192.168.1.1 to set it up to attach to your network. You can also use AirPlay Direct Mode, which allows you to play to the temp wifi network it will create, perfect for wifi-less scenarios (simply double click the setup button till it turns amber.) Ready to take a peek at the details and setup? See the full unboxing on the next page!
On a side note, i feel like i’d be remiss not to mention that these look quite similar to the Audioengine A2, which are the mini’s of the NOTCOT favorite, the Audioengine A5 and Audioengine S8, which we have with few of with airport express plugged into the backs. With a very similar look, as well as the silk tweeters and kevlar woofers, the A2s also sound and look good, but don’t have AirPlay built in or the rainbow of rubbery coated colors that the Nocs NS2 Air Monitors have, only coming in satin black and high gloss white.
… and to be honest, the soft touch rubber coating is… SO nice, and the red does pop incredibly well on just about any background!
While we’re looking at Nocs, here’s a peek at the unboxing of their NS800 Monitors as well… Micro-Armature speaker, stainless steel housing, and kevlar reinforced cables combine to create what they are calling “one of the smallest in-ear headphones in the world”.
The sound is good and clean.
----- Lee 12.04.15 17:32