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Bowers & Wilkins: new Panorama, new ownership
Bowers & Wilkins has always delivered something special with its soundbars — the original Panorama in 2009 and the upgraded Panorama 2 in 2013. Now comes a complete redesign in the significantly cheaper $1599 Panorama 3, a 121cm-wide bar which again requires no supporting subwoofer. And for the first time Bowers & Wilkins has included Atmos height speakers among the 13-strong driver collection in the new bar.
The new design eschews the curves and chrome of the original for a more understated (and dark-room-friendly) black bar with bulging angles and a central strip across the centre for indicators and control; these are capacitive-touch ‘hidden until lit’ buttons.
The number of connections has dropped drastically from three HDMI inputs and one output on the previous version to just a single HDMI out socket on the new Panorama 3, recognising the relative simplicity of HDMI eARC in letting your TV be the connection hub, then providing full-quality soundtracks down the HDMI connection to the bar.
There’s an optical digital audio fallback connection for anyone without an HDMI ARC or eARC-equipped TV; if connected this way, the Panorama 3 can usefully learn control commands from your TV remote. If connected via HDMI ARC/eARC, TV commands will be passed to the bar anyway.
The Panorama 3 also has Alexa built in, allowing voice commands and other Alexa smart operations without the need for an external Alexa device. The Alexa mike can be turned off for those with privacy concerns.
As noted the new model continues the company’s preference for having no separate subwoofer, leaving the bar itself to make all the noise using a grand total of 13 drivers. These include three sets of drivers firing forward for left, centre and right channels (see image below right), each channel given identical twin 50mm midrange drivers partnered by decoupled 19mm titanium-dome tweeters. The top surface (below left) hosts the two 50mm drivers angled up and forward to deliver the height information of Atmos, and finally there are twin 100mm bass drivers apparently firing downwards, and allowed much of the bar’s internal volume to promise So this combination allows the bar to deliver native 3.1.2-channel audio. The bar’s decoder and processor handle Dolby Atmos, Dolby Digital and Dolby TrueHD audio streams where present; but That seems a realistic approach to us, and an interest pointer to the decline of DTS.
