Unwired for Sound

BLAME IT ON SONOS. In the early 2000s, at what was then the Los Angeles headquarters of the Stereophile Guide to Home Theater, we were visited by a gentleman from that then largely unknown company who had a product he was eager to promote: a wireless speaker in a single, relatively compact box. I politely declined.

- Thomas J. Norton

It wasn’t a good fit for our publication at the time, but I should have at least asked him about stock options!

Since then, wireless audio has exploded. Streaming has grabbed the public’s attention, though many traditional audio hardware companies have bided their time to avoid the snags that often afflict those who rush to jump on the Next Big Thing.

Bowers & Wilkins counts among that old guard. But while it remains firmly tied to making conventional, wired audio products, the company has been quietly working away in the dark recesses of its Worthing, England headquarters for the past few years on its first contribution to the wireless audio revolution. The result is Formation, a family of wireless audio products that emphasize both style and performance.

Formation includes a soundbar (cleverly named the Formation Bar), a small subwoofer (the Formation Bass), a pair of bookshelf speakers (the Formation Duo—are we sensing a pattern here?), a wireless hub to bring other sources, including analog ones, to the wireless party (the Formation Audio), a one-piece music system (the Formation Wedge) and a compact speaker (the Formation Flex). While the Flex lacks the voice-activated features of other compact wireless speakers such as those from Amazon and Google, it’s otherwise quite...um...flexible, and can be used as a single speaker, in a stereo pair, or as a surround speaker in a Formation 5.1 home theater setup.

DESCRIPTION AND FEATURES