Canon’s Light & Speaker ML-A doesn’t look much like a camera
Canon is famous for making cameras. Could its new Light & Speaker ML-A signal a bright new future?
Have you ever seen a Dell hi-fi? Or a Denon laptop? Of course you haven’t, because some brands stick to what they know. Canon, for example, only makes cameras and printers. Except now it doesn’t.
The Canon Light & Speaker ML-A does exactly what it says on the tin, combining a 10-watt Bluetooth speaker with a 300-lumen LED lamp in an aluminium chassis that’s about the same size as a two-litre Coke bottle.
Unfortunately the ML-A isn’t waterproof so it won’t help you to stay hydrated, but it does have a 2600mAh battery inside – enough for eight hours of illumination, five hours of music, or three hours of both. That means you could conceivably take it away for a (very short) camping trip, but considering it also weighs 1.6kg it’s probably better suited to going no further than the back garden.
The lamp part is adjustable in terms of where you point it, how bright it is, and the colour temperature of the light, while the main body houses a 50mm driver and passive radiator for 360º audio.
It’s a properly left-field move that not even Stuff saw coming – and with any luck it’ll sound more musical than one of Canon’s printers.
You can pre-order a Canon Light & Speaker ML-A now for £269. We’re big fans of the silver finish, which has a real ‘architect’s desk’ vibe to it, but the ML-A is also available in black for the same price.
Tom Wiggins
Contributor