Bowers and Wilkins Panorama Soundbar Int

It hard to believe in this day and age an audio component that CANNOT be programed into most common universal remotes. This is a really expensive system that I'm sure has top notch engineering, but they can't engineer remote programming?

This unit has great sound but not outstanding lower bass. You need to hook up a sub woofer. Here is the issue. Opened the box and all I got was a two page 1st. grade drawing of installation NO INSTRUCTIONS WHATSOEVER. OK........no big deal it was a simple set up. Remote looks like an oval bug. Totally not intuitive unless your understand British symbols. Nothing of on screen information and it is hooked up to HDMI correctly. Get on Bowers and Wilkens website. Well..........there is the operators manual. Have to down load it. Talks about on screen instructions. What....no on screen instructions for me. Check out FAQ's on web site. TV has to be set to 750 or 1080 to view on screen instructions for set up and operation. NOW YOU TELL ME!!! For the money this is totally unacceptable. No operators manual and no on screen set up instructions. NOT what I paid for by a mile. Sound is great once you can figure out how to set it up by altering you TV to view operations on screen. OH, and if you have a Panasonic TV like me you have to click on VISTA to see any thing. Again nothing in instructions about this.

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!

I am both surprised and pleased by the quality of the sound that comes from this B&W product. B&W has always had a top drawer reputation, but could they really make a sound bar that has ooomph as well as the ability to project sound for surround sound-like perception? Answer is clearly yes. I added a sub-woofer to my system, but the amount of bass that comes out of the box itself is quite satisfying. This is clearly another case of you get what you pay for. If it is quality sound you want without stringing wires all over the house, this may be the best choice available.

Got the Panorama 1 as an open box a month ago and works just fine. For 1k, I think I've got my money's worth ( Im an audiophile). Straight out from the box, they sounds pretty good. However, I did not hook it straight from the TV's audio output. I used the TV optical audio output then run it through the Arcam Solo rLink DAC ( to clean up and enhance the signal from tv digital output) then to the Panorama input.