Kanto Ora review

The Kanto Ora desktop speakers first underwhelmed me with their look, only to overwhelm me with their sound. When it comes to visuals, I don't know if I could pick the Ora out of a hypothetical speaker lineup (or what kind of crime they may have committed to get put there) but once I start cranking the bass and blasting tunes, it starts to matter less and less. 

There's a certain confidence in the aesthetic of the Kanto Ora speakers. They don't need to be crammed with RGB, or have angular architecture to catch the eye—all the Kanto Ora needs to do is catch the ear, and it does this very well. 

Out of the box, the Oras just need to be hooked up to a power socket, plugged into each other, then connected to an audio source. Unfortunately, the box only comes with the power lead and cable to link the two speakers up so you have to source your own USB-C or RCA cables to get it online. 

If you lack any of these, it does have a rather great Bluetooth mode, but this can be somewhat limiting as Bluetooth doesn't support lossless FLAC Audio. No aux jack means getting very high-quality audio from your phone is a challenge but this is admittedly, a bit of a niche use case. 

Connectivity: Bluetooth, RCA, USB-C
Speakers: 2 x 0.75 inch tweeters, 2 x 3 inch subwoofers
Weight: 2kg
Frequency response: 70Hz – 22,000Hz
Price: $350 | £309

Being someone who throws my spare cables into a miscellaneous bag like a sitcom character trying to clean their apartment before a date arrives, this meant a few minutes of fishing around for wires before I could get everything set up right. However, once you get your cables together, everything functions perfectly. And, with the ability to flit between Bluetooth and wired mode by just clicking the front of the right speaker, I often found myself passively swapping audio sources in seconds.

This is a real privilege that hits at what makes the Kanto Ora speakers work so well—they feel designed to fit unobtrusively into a space. They aren't a centerpiece but