Bowers & Wilkins Formation Bar Review

This stylish three-channel soundbar looks gorgeous and sounds fantastic – but a hefty price and lack of key features make it hard to recommend.

Sounds superb; Easy to set up; Impressive build quality; Looks gorgeous;

No HDMI connections; No remote control; Limited to lossy audio; Expensive;

Bowers & Wilkins Formation Bar review: Style over substance?

An attractively designed, well-crafted and accomplished soundbar – but it suffers from limited features (no HDMI connections, no remote control in the box), limited bass, and a high price all considered.

Impressive sonic performance; Excellent multi-room platform; Can be expanded to 5.1; Eye-catching and well made;

Expensive; No HDMI connections; No remote control; Limited to lossy audio;

Bowers & Wilkins Formation Bar Review

Soundbars are, almost across the board, ugly. If they're not ugly, they're designed to blend in and tend to look a bit boring. So the Bowers & Wilkins Formation Bar fills this reviewer's heart with joy because it redefines what soundbars can look like, with a design that's simply stunning. But at $1,199.99, it's priced uncommonly high, even for a top-tier model. No one will argue with the beauty of the Formation Bar, and its audio performance is quite good, but in order to sound its best, it needs an optional subwoofer, the Formation Bass, and that costs another $1,000. Design Before we confront the price problem again, let us bask once more in the beauty of the Formation Bar's design. Available in black, the 4.3-by-48.8-by-4.2-inch (HWD), 12.1-pound speaker has a faceted pattern underneath its cloth grille surface. Its oblong shape is reminiscent of the B&W Zeppelin, if it had been stretched out, narrowed, and cut like a precious stone. It's the kind of geometric pattern we see i...

The pricey Bowers & Wilkins Formation Bar may be the most beautiful soundbar we've tested, but it needs a companion subwoofer to sound its best.

Beautiful design; Excellent clarity and richness; Relatively easy to operate

Prohibitively expensive; Limited connectivity; Lacks deep bass depth without subwoofer