Bowers and Wilkins Panorama Integrated A/V Sound System
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Product Feature
- Nautilus� � tube loaded aluminium dome tweeter
- Flowport ��
- Digital Signal Processing
- Digital amplifier
- Switch mode power supply
Product Description
Bring the excitement of cinema-like surround sound to your living room with Panorama - the best TV sound bar money can buy. Easy to install, and simple to connect to a whole range of home entertainment devices, Panorama will transform your TV into a powerful home theater system, making movies, music and games sound better than ever before. And all from just one streamlined speaker.Bowers and Wilkins Panorama Integrated A/V Sound System Review
To begin, I am a bit of an audiophile, ranging from the Mark Levinson sound system in my car -- probably one of the best audio systems I've heard, aside from home high end electrostatic MartinLogan electrostatic speakers and B&W's flagship speakers.Having just got the chance to demo this Panorama system in an A/V store nearby, this is a really solid product. The cabinet (casing) on the unit is rock solid, it really is well crafted. After comparing to other products in the sound bar category, this is by far the best *one-piece* systems out there. I also demoed side by side the MartinLogan Motion Vision (around $700 less than this unit at $1500), and it really pales in comparison to this B&W unit. It's really only about half the sound of the B&W Panorama.
I try to remain unbiased in my review, but this does live up to B&W's goal of natural and neutral sound... While there are other units that have a separate sub-woofer, you can add this as an option. But you can't take back bad quality tweeters, and I venture to bet that the B&W Panorama's tweeters are some of the best tweeters in once piece out there. A comment about the remote -- they have figured out how to make the same remote across many of their devices -- the familiar egg shaped device sits comfortably in your hand and gives you access to the device in a clean and simple interface. I will probably be picking up one of these on my next visit, as it seems to be best suited for my requirements of the best sounding speaker in one unit.
I only dock the item one star because I would prefer the unit to have a completely clean front, with the LCD/button panel hidden underneath the front speaker grill. Additionally, having a universal wireless sub-woofer technology built-in "ready" to go out of the box would be a nice addition (though adding a subwoofer is counter to B&W's design purpose in the first place, and is unnecessary unless you really wanted to make it a home theater centerpiece).
UPDATE: I recently purchased the unit, and the sound is even better when set up at home. The bass response is so good that I had to turn it down a bit as to not disturb others (keeping in mind there is no separate sub-woofer). I should also add that there are somewhat limited inputs on the back of the unit. While you get 2 Toslink digital optical audio ports and 1 RCA digital audio, the other 2 ports are analog audio. It would be nice to have 2 additional digital inputs as we seem to have more and more home entertainment devices to connect these days. Onboard, I would also like to see a few more things: 1) Higher bitrate decoders (Dolby Digital+, DTS-HD High Resolution) and lossless decoders (Dolby TrueHD, or DTS-HD Master Audio), though most may not notice the extra difference. 2) HDMI connections for audio pass-through, allowing audio to be "in sync" with the devices (as HDMI is 2-way communication vs. 1-way optical audio requiring a stock/universal remote for all-in-one access). 3) Finally, (while not quite fully baked yet and would be great in a future revision), wireless home entertainment standards built in (i.e. Apple AirPlay, Wireless HD, 3DHD, WiSA-certified) to connect devices to it without cables!
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