Teenage Engineering OB-4 | Full Demo and Review

This is not what you think it is. The Teenage Engineering OB-4 presents as a portable boombox, but it's more, it's a magic radio.

What is it about Teenage Engineering and why are they in our minds creating the instruments and devices we didn't know we wanted? They've created a one-of-a-kind product, which is no small feat in today's market, the OB-4.

The OB-4 is a magic radio. It's a boom box presenting portable radio that lets you manipulate audio sources from Bluetooth to line in any FM radio station. It also has internal sounds from an ambient drone creator, to a metronome to 30 mantras.

Teenage Engineering is a quirky company that inspires people to create, and not when I say people I mean Bon Iver, Thom Yorke, Childish Gambino, Skrillex, and Trent Reznor. Their new field series — which we've covered a few times — is packed with features and a portable design made with the intention to create music anywhere.

The OB-4 blurs the lines between music consumers and music creators. This magic radio automatically records up to 2 hours of audio on its internal tape for you to play with, it even tracks your moves between radio stations. Neat.

It's a pretty simple device. It's stereo with its 2 tweeters, 2 woofers and a bass reflex for the low end. There’s 4 inputs — Line In, Bluetooth, FM radio and Disk — a Volume/Power knob, a Tape Dial, a display and the handle is also the antenna which you can boost the reception with the extended antenna supplied. And It’s got an average of 40 hours of battery life.

The coolest feature by far is the internal Tape. With that, you can rewind, fast forward, change the speed, and create loops. With a few simple movements and button functions, you can sample a live radio station and manipulate it.

The Disk mode is pretty neat too, with its 3 modes. Switch between Ambient, Karma and the Metronome. Ambient creates drones generated by the FM radio, Karma is a collection of 30 different preloaded mantras, and the metronome goes from 1 beat per minute up to 800 beats per minute.

You can dial in the mix of the 'ambience' when in Ambient mode, scroll through Karma to find something to Zen out to and When on the 808 style Metronome you can change the pitch of the kick drum.

Once you start learning the tricks of the OB-4 — which is not hard at all — you'll be exploring sound like never before.

The OB-4 comes in two colours, Matte Black and Gloss Red. The Matte Black costs $519 USD and the Gloss Red costs $559 USD and you can accesorize it with a leather or mesh backpack and a Ortho Remote, to control the OB-4 wirelessly.

Find out more or buy the OB-4 from Teenage Engineering's website.

#engineeringthesound #teenageengineering #ob-4

[sodiumlights]

Nice brief overview but a few things to note for any potential buyer who hasn't done a wee bit more research;

1) there is no audio output. If you want to record what's player you'll have to mic it up

2) the antenna makes sod all difference

3) it's fm radio only

4) it's the height and width of an A4 sheet of paper

5) it's incredibly expensive...(tip; keep an eye on amazon prices as they flux between £450-£520)

6) ...but sound's ace

7) you can now save up to 70 loops but as yet you won't be able to delete them

8) mine is already showing signs of warping on the top-plate (the unit is plastic, albeit nice plastic)

9) mine has a very noticeable 'warble-frequency' at minimum volume settings

10) my battery is now falling way short of TE's estimated play/stand-by time, six months after purchase

11) it's the kind of thing you buy after you have run out of things to buy, a luxury item

12) I don't regret buying mine.

[rickardrenstrom]

Can someone tell me how good it sounds compared to say a Sonos 5 or something. I might buy one but I’m in it for the sound, portability and looks, not any of the “special functions”. Thank you very much!

[KnoxParanormal]

Great video! Thanks! Can you connect the OP-1 Field to the OB-4 with Bluetooth, or only through the FM transmitter and line-in?

[wimeik]

Do they only come with a US power supply because I just bought mine from an Aus retailer & it only came with a US chord?? Thanks!!

[dmcinnis]

Lovely demo! They should hire you for the new recorder. I haven’t seen a good demo of that yet!

[Frakaphoto]

OB-4 like most TE product are in fact design by alien from the future.

[DayflightTrok]

Because it has no Audio Out to record a Loop into a DAW for me it is not of interest.

[floozyspeak]

i have 2 and love them, one has a broken a knob i debate on how to fix that but this device is unlike anything out there and its awesome for real time improvsiational live looping, especially now with ai music, we can basically have the AI attempt beats and what not while i remix it in real time, and while it does need to be mic'd i dont think teenage ever thought it would be a sort of new stage in beatboxing, cause its that powerful, the buffer is large, so advanced tricks like sample radio for vocal, capture beats then capture something else, then do a slow pitch and save those attributes and scrub them across all the loops, you dip into one, then messing with that etc, its alot of fun.. ive done a few videos on them as well, a must buy

[ThomasWelraeds]

I still don't understand what it is 😂