Big sound from a big range, there's something for every budget
Harman Kardon has had a busy IFA – and after teasing its Citation 500 smart speaker before IFA, the company has dropped a full range of Citation speakers, for every budget and need.
Clearly gunning for Sonos – with Google Assistant its weapon of choice – Harman has possibly developed the widest range of connected, multi-room speakers out there.
We got a guided tour at IFA 2018, and learned why there’s more to these connected speakers than meets the eye.

Harman Kardon Citation One – £179
The range starts at the Citation One – a direct and unashamed competitor to the Sonos One, with Google Assistant built in. Like the full range it’s adorned in fabric and comes in a huge range of colours to suit every taste. On the tech side it features a mono 40W speaker with a touch sensitive panel at the top, but not the touchscreen control found on the rest of the Citation range.
It packs a punch – and while we couldn’t get anywhere near a proper listen in the busy Harman area, it certainly gives the Sonos One a run for its money.

Harman Kardon Citation 100 – £279
Next up is the Citation 100, a slightly larger speaker featuring a larger driver (50W) for a bigger sound, and also features a touch control on the top – but not the screen version found on the bigger, badder Citation speakers. Both the One and the 100 can be connected as stereo pairs.

Harman Kardon Citation 300/500 – £349/£579
Next comes the Citation 300 and 500, the latter was announced before IFA. These two up the sound input again, with 100W and 200W output respectively, and are stereo (thus can’t be added as a stereo pair) and feature the touchscreen input on top. At around 80db the speaker won’t be able to hear you shouting – so Harman has added this touch control across its range.
Read: Harman Kardon Citation 500 review
Big sound is a given, making them definite competitors to the Sonos Play: 5 (but with a voice assistant) – although there’s no aux input.

Harman Kardon Citation Tower – £2,179
And then to the top of the range. The Citation Tower comes in at a cool £2,199 and features two ginormous freestanding speakers. Each has a sub-woofer at the bottom making it a 2.2 system with 2 x 200W speakers, producing what is a pretty awesome sound. The right-hand speaker acts as the controller, streaming music and doing the Google Assistant business, before handing off to the left-hand speaker.

Harman Kardon Citation Bar – £799
Harman has also added Google Assistant into its Citation Bar – a connected soundbar, again with touch control and Google Assistant. It’s sold as a soundbar but you can add a sub-woofer and satellite speakers if you wish. The soundbar itself has three drivers built in, which makes it a 3.0 system by default, increasing to 5.0 with the two satellite speakers. If you add in the Citation Tower, the soundbar will change to work as a single central speaker.
Read next: Harman Kardon Citation Bar review
It’s a decent looking range of connected Google Assistant speakers and is certainly set to be a big player – but there’s one more impressive trick up the Citation range’s sleeve. You can group any of the speakers together for multi-room audio – and build up the system over time.
We’ll be reviewing the Citation range when they drop – which will be up for pre-order in October.