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 in modern architecture and home design, but has been completely absent in the realm of soundbars for, well, the entire time that soundbars have existed.

Hopefully its looks spark a revolution, and maybe in a year or two we'll be reviewing lovely soundbar designs that cost half as much.

The ends of the bar are capped with circular metallic pieces emblazoned with the Bowers & Wilkins logo.

From the front face, all you see is the cloth grille and its sheen and shadows as the light plays off its facets.

Behind the grille, the Formation Bar packs three 1-inch double dome tweeters (arrayed left, center, and right) and six 2.5-inch midrange/bass drivers (arrayed in left, center, and right pairs).

This array allows for a dedicated center channel, and clearly defined left and right channels.

There are six amps total, each delivering 40 watts, and the frequency range of the system is 40Hz to 28kHz—a respectable level that still leaves plenty of room for the addition of a subwoofer.

The system can stream up to 96kHz/24-bit audio, as it should for this price.

Bowers & Wilkins keeps the control panel somewhat hidden—it's on the top of the rear panel of the speaker, so that it can be seen from above, but not when facing the speaker dead-on.

The panel houses plus and minus buttons for volume, a play/pause button that controls audio playback, and a multifunction control labeled with the Formation logo and that cycles through available streams.

There's no power button—the soundbar switches on automatically and enters a power-saving mode after 20 minutes of inactivity.

That's good news, because the soundbar gets incredibly warm when it's up and running.

The Formation Bar ships with an optical cable to connect to the optical input on its rear panel, as well as a power cable (that is rather short considering the connection is in the middle of the soundbar and thus the need to run 25 inches before it's even cleared the edge of the speaker).

The connection panel on the rear of the soundbar also houses an Ethernet port and a reset button—but that's it.

For a smart speaker or an all-in-one Bluetooth option, that might cut it, but for $1,200, the lack of an HDMI connection is absurd.

Of course, with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth streaming in the mix, there are plenty of ways to connect, but this is still a head-scratcher of an omission.

If you're considering dropping $1,200 on a soundbar, I'm guessing you care about video quality too and might own a Blu-Ray player in addition to a media streamer, so this connection panel is limited, to put it politely.

The Bowers & Wilkins Home app allows for easy setup of any Formation speaker, and if you have more than one, you can control them as a multi-room system.

There is a very basic EQ in the app—you can adjust bass or treble, but nothing too granular.

Beyond this, the app isn't really useful as a controller.

You can stream directly from AirPlay devices, Roon, and Spotify Connect—just select the Formation Bar from the available devices in the respective app after you've connected the speaker to Wi-Fi.

The system does an admirable job with automatically detecting signal.

For instance, there's usually no need to cycle through sources to get to your Apple TV's audio, unless you're going back and forth between, say, Apple TV audio and a Bluetooth sound source.

In a scenario in which you are starting up a movie after not having used the Bar for a bit, it detects the sound source, eliminating the need to tap the Form button.

This is good, since the Formation Bar ships with no remote control—instead, it uses your TV remote's controls.

The only controls it uses are volume up, down, and mute—this is a process you go through in the app during setup (or you can opt to skip).

It's useful, but not necessarily for people who don't use their TV remotes to control volume or muting.

You can mount the speaker on a wall.

It ships with a bracket and hex tool to make this happen, as well as a guide to ensure you install it properly.

That said, the built-in rubber footing kept the speaker totally stable during testing, and it looks just as striking on a tabletop as it does on a wall.

Movie Performance

First off, we'll note that the Formation Bar can get quite loud—this is a powerful soundbar, even without a subwoofer.

That said, the bass depth you get from the speaker is more of the rich and full variety, and less of the thunderous sub-bass you might expect.

It's also worth noting that the volume on the Bar itself can max out before you've reached maximum volume on your sound source.

Streaming music via Bluetooth from a phone, when the volume levels are in sync, therefore, can deliver much more powerful maximum volumes than a direct connection from an Apple TV, for instance.

Using a universal remote will help you get the volume levels you want across the board.

Blade Runner 2049's crash scene—during which Ryan Gosling falls from the sky in what looks like a military-grade flying Lamborghini—features multiple explosions.

Through the Formation Bar, they pack a solid punch, and there is excellent clarity, but the rumble you might hope for is dialed back.

When missiles hit Harrison Ford's hideout later in the film, the explosion and subsequent gunshots are crisp and full, while the music in the scene has some ominous deep bass that is delivered with solid depth, but it is not a subwoofer-like depth.

Similarly, in Star Wars: A New Hope, the mega rumble you might expect when a massive ship passes the screen or there's an enormous explosion is more implied than fully delivered.

The clarity of dialogue is top-notch, and music is delivered with a wonderful richness, but the thunder isn't as present here as some will wish, particularly when the Death Star gets obliterated.

Music Performance

On music with intense sub-bass content, like The Knife's "Silent Shout," there's a more palpable sense of power and bass—the drivers seem louder at top volumes, and the bass depth is more profound.

However, at maximum volumes, DSP (digital signal processing) kicks in and dials the bass back.

Again, you can tell that the additional subwoofer would roll in the rumble where the Formation Bar begins to rein it in.

Bill Callahan's "Drover," a track with far less deep bass in the mix, gives us a better sense of the Formation Bar's general sound signature.

The drums on this track are delivered with solid presence, but they lack the depth and body a subwoofer would provide.

Instead, it's Callahan's baritone vocals that get the bulk of the bass richness here, because it's mostly in the lows and low-mids, and not really in the sub-bass realm.

The higher register percussive hits and acoustic strums on this track are delivered with a lovely clarity, and the stereo separation is quite apparent—the length of the Formation Bar, and the location of the left/right tweeters, allows for a full, wide stereo image.

On Jay-Z and Kanye West's "No Church in the Wild," the kick drum loop receives a solid high-mid presence, allowing its attack to retain its punchiness, while the sub-bass synth hits that punctuate the beat are again more implied than fully delivered.

The drum loop does get some low-frequency boosting, however, and the vocal performances on this track are delivered with excellent clarity—there's a hint of added sibilance at times, but the overall sound signature is balanced, with a focus on clarity throughout the frequency range.

Orchestral tracks, like the opening scene from John Adams' The Gospel According to the Other Mary, sound excellent through the Formation Bar.

The higher register brass, strings, and vocals have a lovely brightness to them, and things are nicely complemented by the rich, subtly boosted lows and low-mids.

At high volumes, this mix sounds glorious—vibrant, rich, bright, and with a wide stereo image.

On its own, the Formation Bar is that rare soundbar that sounds better on music than it does on films.

Sure, with the addition of a $1,000 subwoofer, I'm sure the movie experience is also killer, but music doesn't really need the extra help nearly as much.

Of course, bass fiends might disagree—they might also miss the serious bass depth on music—but I do think that most people will miss the bass depth on films.

Conclusions

The Bowers & Wilkins Formation Bar isn't the first soundbar that we that we think would sound far more compelling with a subwoofer in the mix.

But it's the first to receive this criticism while costing $1,200.

There's lovely clarity here, and a beautiful design to match, but at the end of the day, the pricing seems almost absurdly exclusive.

There are lots of soundbars out there that offer plenty of bass depth, or ship with a subwoofer, or can be combined with a subwoofer, for far less than $1,200.

Check out the JBL Bar 3.1, the Sonos Beam, the LG SJ7, and the Philips Fidelio B5 for some solid options.

The Formation is gorgeous and capable, but it's being sold for a pro gear/audiophile price, and it isn't in that club.