Luxury

The best (looking) home tech for 2022

Every now and then, something really, really good looking is also devastatingly smart.

Here is Boulevard’s line-up of the best-looking home tech that will quicken your heartbeat even as it brings music to your ears, cleanses the air you breathe – and blows your mind.

Bang & Olufsen: the Beolab 90

From the design-forward audio fanatics at Bang & Olufsen comes this extraordinary vision of acoustic performance. True to the Beolab line, this latest iteration is part home tech, part statement art-piece. The Beolab 90 is the brand’s top-of-the-line speaker and takes its extravagant place among the world’s most advanced digital speakers.

And with its sculptural design, wood base, brushed-gold trim and aluminium frame, we’re in love.

And we haven’t started on the sound. Per B&O, the Beolab 90 is “the culmination of their wildest dreams” – and the initiation of our own. The 65kg structure houses a cluster of drivers and amplifiers that pull together to deliver 8,200 watts of raw power and acoustic precision. And of course it’s just dying to connect to your other B&O speakers or Beovision Harmony TV.

The Beolab 90 is made to order and can be customised to suit your own, impeccable taste.

Go further with the Bang & Olufsen’s ‘the Beolab 90’.

Naim Mu-so for Bentley speaker

We could happily accessorise our living room with the Naim Mu-so for Bentley speaker and never even plug it in. The breathtakingly sleek speaker blends old-world aesthetics with cutting-edge tech, through a 12-year-old partnership between the auto legend and the audiophiles at Naim.

This special edition Mu-so features lacquered Ayous, a sustainable African hardwood, along with metallic accents and a copper-threaded speaker grille. Should you decide to plug it in, the Mu-so is fabulously connectible, multi-room ready, and delivers an award-winning level of single-box sound quality.

Headphones by Focal complete the set, and the experience.

Specs:

450 Watts of music power
Google Assistant / Apple Siri
Pricing TBC

Go further with the Naim Mu-so for Bentley speaker.

Buben & Zörweg: Bugatti Grande Illusion Deluxe

This is no mere watch safe. Sure, Buben & Zörweg’s ‘Bugatti Grande Illusion Deluxe’ boasts the hardcore security tech and precision engineering you’d expect of a high-end safe, and yes it also features four watch winders atop a layer cake-like stack of jewellery trays. But the specs take a back seat to the arresting design and fabulous gadgetry that’s more at home on the set of James Bond than stashed away in an horophile’s strong room.

The collaboration with Bugatti inspired the ‘racing carbon’ styling and slash of Chiron Super Sport orange. And true to B&Z’s playful approach to home security, the safe is unlocked through biometric tech that sees the top of the tower (mounted with a tourbillon clock) rise mechanically to reveal the watch winders and trays. Who knew the rather banal act of fetching your watch or car keys (a radio frequency-shielded drawer is optional) could be transformed into a moment of showstopping tech, rakish style, and sheer delight?

It’s limited to only 30 pieces globally, one of which is on display at the showroom in Ion Orchard.

Go further with the Buben & Zörweg’s ‘Bugatti Grande Illusion Deluxe’.

Vaonis Vespera smart telescope

For anyone whose spirits soar when looking through a telescope, then sink when looking at one, there is finally, 400 years after Galileo, a telescope that looks the part: space age, chic, and wonderfully graceful.

The latest release from specialised manufacturers Vaonis, Vespera combines a telescope and camera with app functionality that takes the guesswork out of finding, identifying and sounding clever about planets, stars and galaxies. The smart telescope leverages GPS and a world of internal mechanics to train itself on your desired celestial object, and beams it back to your phone or tablet. It also has light-pollution-defying tech, so you don’t need to head to the nearest wilderness to get your astronomical fix.

Specs:

40cm long, 5kg
2M pixels resolution
USD $1,649 incl P&H

The Vaonis Vespera launches in Spring 2022 – preorders are currently being accepted, or impatient types can opt for the larger Stellina telescope.

Go further with the Vaonis Vespera.

Cipod bespoke home cinemas

You’re only ever in there when the lights are out, so does your home theatre really need a designer fit-out? Yes. Especially after seeing these bespoke cinemas by Cipod.

The specialist UK-based team brings serious tech cred together with handcrafted interior spaces and lush design to create wowfactor cinemas tailored to your home. The modular design allows not only for the bespoke cinemas to be installed in a matter of days, it also allows for relocation if you can’t bear to leave your Cipod behind as an inclusion.

Specs:

Minimum 5m by 4m by 2.5m high space
4K Ultra HD technology projector
Meridian 9.4.4 Dolby ATMOS
Pricing on application

Go further with Cipod bespoke home cinemas.

LG Rollable OLED TV

Straight from the Consumer Electronics Show 2021 comes the new LG Rollable OLED TV. And it’s not the usual “next generation” TV tech – a bit flatter, a bit brighter, or less bright but somehow more rich, or with a new ergonomic remote.

It’s rollable.

We have no idea how it works, but this gorgeous 65-inch OLED TV screen rolls out from what is ostensibly a rather svelte Dolby speaker slash credenza-looking thing. On command, no less – it’s plugged in to both Alexa and Google Assistant.

But for those of us who resent televisions for destroying both the look and (moreover) the whole orientation of a room, there is finally a solution that does not involve foregoing television.

Go further with the LG rollable OLED TV.

And lastly, Gush hi-tech paint

Oh yes, paint.

Paint that strips the air of indoor pollution (including the dreaded haze). Paint that kills bacteria. Paint that kills mould! Paint that transforms you home into a rainforest (sort of) by ionizing the air.

Perhaps the most good-looking and cutting edge of all the home tech on this list, Gush paint offers a multitude of health benefits by leveraging the largest surface area in your home – along with some pretty out-there chemistry.

And health benefits aside, we’ll also have this palette…

Go further with our interview with the Gush paint founders.