Bowers & Wilkins 702 S2 LOUDSPEAKER

Bowers & Wilkins 702 S2 LOUDSPEAKER

Late in the summer of 2015, I was one of the press representatives invited by Bowers & Wilkins to visit their R&D center in Steyning, West Sussex, England, and be given a detailed preview of the upcoming revision of their entire 800 series of loudspeaker models. Both the technical presentation and the tours impressively demonstrated the comprehensive redesign process that resulted in speakers that were superficially similar but entirely different from their predecessors. Of the new series, I reviewed the 802 D3 Diamond, a pair of which now sit in my listening room as my current reference speakers. 

In late summer 2017, following the sale of Bowers & Wilkins to EVA Automation, a group of US press were invited to B&W’s US office, which was then near Boston, for a presentation intended to reassure the audio world that B&W would continue to produce the sorts of products that had brought the company to prominence. What was presented was an entirely new series of loudspeakers: the 700 S2 models. The original 700 series, priced between the flagship 800 and midpriced 600 series, had disappeared some years before, that slot filled in 2008 by the CM series. But from the get-go, the CM models seemed a discontinuity in B&W’s product line. To me, the CMs seemed like somewhat glitzy adaptations of the 600 series, and had too little in common with the 800 series. Happily, the new 700 S2 line is a more suitable replacement for the old 700 line.