Bowers & Wilkins Panorama

Bowers & Wilkins continues to weave its web in the world of multimedia hardware. 

Since starting out in the world of high-end audio products-read: big, expensive, and normally incredibly powerful-the British company has managed a successful transition to digital, but not without a few mistakes along the way.  The Panorama is a great example.

Hardware: easy, effective set-up

Even before you get the packaging open, the Panorama oozes class.  As so often with Bowers, the finish is excellent and it manges to look great without being showy.  We especially liked the cable support which helps keep the whole set-up looking neat.  We're also glad to see that a micro-fibre cloth is included, because all that glossy black plastic looks less impressive with a few greasy fingerprints.

B & W haven't stinted with the number of inputs, adding coaxial to a pair of optical S/PDIF inputs, alongside several analogue inputs.  But where has HDMI gone?  It's conspicuous by its absence and represents a huge error on the part of the manufacturer.  Missing it out is inexplicable on a product of this quality, which is why it loses a star in this section.  We weren't far from stripping it of its fifth star overall because of this ...  We're hoping that a second version of the Panorama will correct this problem for good.

The remote control, which we had already seen on the Zeppelin series, is a marvellous example of usability that several other manufacturers would do well to take note of.  We were less impressed by the display, as we were hoping for slightly more than a simple LCD display with a few red LEDs.

A wall mount is included, but you'll need to supply the screws and plugs yourself as they're not included.

Audio Quality: it's a shame there's no room correction

Yamaha set the bar high by including automatic calibration across all of its sound bars.  Given how complicated these products can be, it's an indispensable step.  Bowers & Wilkins haven't gone that far, clearly imagining that their own sound bar is good enough to dispense with the procedure.  We'll see about that ...

The audio produced by the Panorama is excellent.  It's as soft as you like, faithful to the brand's own unique 'sound', and listening to music on it is a real treat.  The treble is as audible and accurate as ever, while the power packed into the bass is impressive, so much so that you can do without the sub-woofer.  Adding one really isn't necessary if you have the Panorama.

It offers two different spatialisation modes which are very different.  The first, 'Wide', really opens up stereo without adding too much distortion to the original signal and is well-suited to music.  The second, 'Surround', is surprisingly effective, as long as you set it up in the standard configuration.  If you put it an a corner, for instance, sounds coming from either side have a harder job reaching your ears, which is why it's worth having real room correction.

The Bowers & Wilkins Panorama is a great demonstration of what you can do with a sound bar.  Unfortunately, the manufacturer has still neglected a couple of important areas, including WiFi and room correction.