Customer Ratings & Reviews

The sound is amazing when it works. The app is awful and the speaker and sub disconnect all of the time. I have had it for a year and a half. At this price I would expect a much better product. Extremely disappointed with Best Buy and B & W. I reached out to Best Buy they said contact the manufacturer. Reach out to B & W they say box it up and send it in for service. Absolute joke for this kind of money. Really wished I had purchased the Sonos

I love this sound bar! I had bought 2 other sound bars but could only hear sounds not much verbiage. I was looking for a soundbar that you could clearly hear people speaking, not so much birds or music and this one is the best. It projects clear spoken audio, works great for music also, but the spoken audio for older folks like myself is perfect. The app is easy to use and once you set it up you're good to go. I would highly recommend this sound bar to anyone looking for not so much a movie theater experience (it does give that too) but to hear the television clear without a lot of base and booming.

Style over substance. Among the most stylish and well designed speaker in at any price point the series falls short on performance and or support from B&W. When it works it sounds great,

Great sounds, no HDMI ARC. I bought two years ago, but if I would buy it now, i would wait for a new generation speaker.

Clear sound, however, pairing it with the subwoofer doesn’t give the full theater sound experience like the Sonos bar and subwoofer speakers provide. I regret purchasing the set. The Sonos bar and subwoofer is more user friendly and the app is easy to use. The B&W app does not provide as many options for the users preferred sound quality and does not have the ability to connect in a variety of ways. I can only control the volume through my phone or iPad, not through my remote control, ughh. I hate that.

We kept spending money on affordable sound bar systems and were never satisfied. B+W has been a long time favorite of mine (so a little partial) but extremely happy to own this instead of 6 or 7 other systems because constantly replacing looking for something better. This is the best on the market and worth the money if you want something to satisfy you for a long time. Adding the sub (also pricey) completes your system for long term satisfaction. Pros Sound is the best (especially streaming music) Ease of set up Sleek design Formation software linking products (if you wish to add) Customer Support Solid brand name (also used by Lucas Studios) Cons No equalizer (they could’ve done a much better job but instead simplified and only offer treble and bass slide controls - maybe they can upgrade) No remote

I've been shopping at Best Buy for over a decade and this is my 1st review but I felt it was important to provide a review of the Formation Bar. I have extensive experience with Bowers & Wilkins and have used their products for years. Here are a few of my takeaways: 1. I had a pair of the Formation Flex speakers when they first came out and for the price they were riddled with problems, therefore I returned them. Since then, these products have come a long way and many of the issues have been resolved. 2. I have a pair of Sonos 5's and a sub, but I wanted to try something new that had higher end sound. The sound from this Bar blows those away, you are treated to a level of detail that few audio products can faithfully reproduce. The music app for the Formation line has come a long way, however if the overall experience using the app is important, Sonos is better. 3. I'm hoping moving forward, Bowers adds support for Apple Music, Amazon Music and Sirius XM for use in their app like Sonos has. Right now they support Tidal, Deezer, TuneIn Radio, Qobuz, Soundcloud & NTS. Set Up overall was a breeze, it took literally 45 seconds to set up the bar and the bass. This was much easier actually than Sonos which I had issues initially setting up. 4. For the price, the app should be better, however I prioritize audio quality over the app experience and the sound does not disappoint. I would assume over the coming months support will be added for a number of the services I listed above because Apple has now made HiFi standard almost overnight and Amazon has offered it for awhile and Spotify will be adding support soon. In conclusion, if you desire the finest in truly wireless HiFi, you need look no further. The Formation app still has ground to cover to catch up with Sonos but the sound that these products provide is something that Sonos cannot touch!

Often I feel reviewers are a little harsh, not in this case. The unit is well made, beautiful and aesthetically pleasing but will not connect. After deleting the app several times and rebooting my router I finally got to hear B&W quality sound by connecting the supplied optical cable directly to my tv’s optical output port. Although the remote control would only link to my Sony tv remote and not the Apple Remote which is what we use 95% of the time. I really really wanted to keep this beautiful piece of artwork on my wall especially considering I purchased it at the insane clearance price of $520 but no Bluetooth, WiFi, or last the improbability it would work next week smartly made me return the unit. As I was returning the unit, I realized I had exact same problem with my ARCAM streaming amplifier. This made me believe it’s a British app thing. Bad food worse weather terrible apps.

Super sound! We bought ours open box as my wife wanted a smaller system in our living room, this fit the bill. 1/2 price made it worth while. My wife listed to several sound bars and liked the sound of the B&W over all the others. The bass is what amazes me. We don't have the sub just the sound bar but in our apartment this sound bar almost has too much bass. It was a bit of a pain to set up, it didn't like our Sony remote so we bought a cheap RCA remote and it works like a champ. I had it wroking with Alexa but that stopped after a month and I havent been able to get it to work since. Not a big deal to me.

Sound bar is good, loved with sound, but connectivity is biggest issue, wish they had better ways to resolve this issues, poor app, i was trying not to return, but felt helpless as they have no customer support if you run with any issue,

Normally I’d give high marks to all of my B&W products but this has not been a smooth sailing. This speaker has given me numerous problems since purchase. The latest issue is my formation bar light flashes red and will not create the mesh network, so my formation bass is currently useless because the bar will not communicate with it. I have to find a Best Buy that has one in stock and try to get an exchange. It’s a shame the sound is excellent but the speaker is plagued with reliability issues.

I purchased this soundbar and had for about two months. I constantly had to reset it atleast every week. The sound was pretty good but that’s about it. I was really disappointed in this one. Beware that it’s the first time bowers has come out with wireless. Back to the drawing boards.

This is an absolutely awesome sound system that blows away anything from Sonos or Bose. Whether you are listening to the TV or just high fidelity audio, this system does it all. It's easy to set up, sounds great, modular so you can add additional components and has a very cool and unique design.

Great sound bar; however, rather pricey when compared to the competition. I would also highly suggest only getting this soundbar if you have the budget for subwoofer as well, which is also pricey. The soundbar is high quality and sounds great, with great highs and mids, but really must be paried up with the B&W subwoofer

Sounbar is good quality and very stylish, but their app is pain the ... But after googling the problem to connect it to Verizon TV remote was solved. Overall is ok. Not sure if it worth full price but we got an open box model.

Absolutely epic speakers. Infuriatingly glitchy app interface. It is truly shocking and disappointing that Bowers would release this incredible lineup of speakers with an app this unreliable. Set up is clunky and that’s the highlight of the interface. Once you’re up and running, if you ever get there you’ll want to prepare yourself for perpetual speed bumps. Sometimes the sub engages with the sound bar and sometimes it decides it wants to stay asleep. Switching a speaker from Bluetooth to WiFi requires you “reset” the speaker through the app, which is like taking a 5 minute recess from recess. And if you don’t do a reset after connecting via Bluetooth the speaker will simply remain “on” for all perpetuity, which is nice. Of course this is assuming you can connect to the speaker(s) at all, which is not a mathematical certainty. As superior as these speakers are to something like Sonos I’m offended that Bowers would have the audacity to charge the kind of money they’re peddling these things for knowing full well how embarrassingly unreliable this interface is. My mind is blown.

excellent quality speaker but having issues with the app so will see... there's a long delay after tv is turned and volume on tv does not work consistently.

high quality but not compatible with Samsung TV .only uses optical cable which caused issues with our tv

After several hours of trying to set up and going online with BOWERS & WILKINS Web site I never could get the audio to be consistent to operate on it's own without running with the Smart TV audio or not at all. BLUETOOTH was always jumping in and out of PAIRING. Then not to have a remote and Loading the B & W APP it was a terrible time to get the app to pair the TV remote with the SOUNDBAR. I have had B&W speakers in the past with truly the best audio sounds from my home theater system with their speakers, thus the reason for purchasing B&W's FORMATION SOUNDBAR....I wanted so desperately for their soundbar to work because of BOWERS and WILKINS noted for being a leader in the AUDIO INDUSTRY.

This is my second review of this garbage. So I have had B&W look at my product. I told them exactly what’s wrong with the speaker getting too warm, sound cutting out, and the speaker creating loud static noise. Because the support people didn’t hear it when they got it they automatically shipped it back. Support is terrible. Support keeps blaming my WiFi for the sound cutting out when I have the latest router and it’s fully updated. I don’t recommend this to anyone. At this point I want my money back for this whole system. It’s complete trash for the price!! If I could post a video of the static and issues I would. I highly recommend go with Sonos, or any other brand. Don’t spend your money on this garbage!!