Comments Bowers & Wilkins Panorama Soundbar - Surround Sound System - review

Comments on Bowers & Wilkins Panorama Soundbar

More Photos

Forgive us for going all Sybil Fawlty and stating the bleedin’ obvious, but this is an expensive soundbar – you could get yourself a pretty good 5.1-channel speaker system for the same sort of money, or a rival soundbar for a fraction of the price. In order to justify it, Panorama needed to knock it out the park in terms of sound quality, and thankfully it does just that – for the most part, anyway. We’ve never heard a soundbar that musters this much bass, which means you don’t need to add a sub, plus the rest of the sound is polished and engaging. Only the unconvincing surround performance lets the side down sonically – Marantz’s ES7001 is much better on that score. But the biggest disappointment is the lack of HDMI inputs and HD audio decoding, which we would have expected at this price – particularly as typical B&W buyers are likely to have Blu-ray players anyway. It’s is a surprising oversight from a company normally at the cutting edge of audio technology.

Overall

8/10

Write your own review

Reviewed by Danny Phillips

08 June 2009

Price as reviewed

£1,495.00

Comments

Please wait while we process your request

Please wait while we retrieve the user's information

Bio

Your bio is currently empty. Now is a great time to fill in your profile.

This profile is private.

This profile is only shared with friends.

This profile is under review.

We were unable to request friendship with this user.

We were unable to request friendship with this user. Are you logged in?

Your friendship request has been sent to this user.

We were unable to terminate friendship with this user.

We were unable to terminate friendship with this user. Are you logged in?

You are no longer friends with this user.

We were unable to ignore this user.

We were unable to ignore this user. Are you logged in?

This user is now ignored.

We were unable to stop ignoring this user.

We were unable to stop ignoring this user. Are you logged in?

This user is no longer ignored.

pluck_user_mp-abuse_too_long_err

Name withheld

speedyuk

9:44 AM on 8 June, 2009

This comment is hidden because you have chosen to ignore speedyuk. Show Details Hide Details

The overall design of this unit, including front panel buttons and rear socket layout is uncannily similar to the Denon DHT-FS3 unit that I have, which can now be got for around £400.

Score:

Name withheld

TechnicalItch

7:36 PM on 8 June, 2009

This comment is hidden because you have chosen to ignore TechnicalItch. Show Details Hide Details

At around £400 you could also buy the B&W zeppelin, and hook it up to your tv, which at almost 1/4 of the price of the panorama now looks even better value for money considering the decent soundstage it produces. Is this soundbar really worth the extra?

Score:

Please wait while we file your abuse report.

We're sorry. We were unable to report abuse at this time.

We limit the number of reactions an individual user can submit over a given period for quality reasons. You have currently reached that limit. Please try resubmitting your abuse report again later.

Comment is too long. Enter 500 characters or less.