Bowers & Wilkins (B&W) is arguably one of the top audiophile brand British company, in particular for loudspeakers. B&W has introduced Formation Suite as their belated, entry to premium Multiroom wireless speaker market in 2019.

Bowers & Wilkins

B&W started in 1966 in the workshop of John Bower’s electronics shop in Worthing, South England. While B&W is still based on Worthing, the B&W was acquired by a startup company EVA Automation in 2016; therefore, the headquarter is now located in Menlo Park, California USA.

The best loudspeaker isn’t the one that gives the most, it’s the one that loses the least.
John Bowers

Based on the founder’s motto, B&W speakers are often considered to produce purest sound/what original artist/recorder intended.

Abbey Road Studios is proud to partner with Bowers & Wilkins to deliver the most accurate level of audio fidelity and create true to sound recording and listening experiences. Bowers & Wilkins has long been the preferred speaker of Abbey Road’s studio engineers due to the precision they offer.
Bowers & Wilkins at Abbey Road

Abbey Road Studios, formerly EMI Recording Studios is well known recoding studio, including client such as The Beatles.

Research and development has been a core activity within B&W. Taking with a grain of salt, Ranker currently ranks B&W as the best speaker brand.

In 2019, Multiroom Wireless Speaker platform, Formation suite was introduced.

B&W Formation suite

Formation suite consists of standard list of products including 3 speakers, 1 sound bar, 1 subwoofer unit and 1 passive system/input interface unit.

All units are quite a bit more expensive than their counterpart from brand like Sonos; however, Formation line are HiFi premium range. The quality comes at cost. The flagship stereo pair speaker, Formation Duo, costs $3999.99. Even the entry-level/budget friendly model, Formation Flex, costs $449, and similar to the price of Sonos flagship speaker unit, Sonos Play: 5 ($499).

Hardware

	Duo	Bar	Wedge	Flex	Audio	Bass
Airplay 2	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	N/A
Chromecast built-in	N	N	N	N	N	N/A
Bluetooth 4.1 Apt-X HD	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	N/A
UPnP	N	N	N	N	N	N/A
Digital Input (Toslink)	N	Y	N	N	Y	N/A
Digital Out (1 x RCA)	N	N	N	N	Y	N/A
Analog Input (2 x RCA)	N	N	N	N	Y	N/A
Analog output (2 x RCA)	N	N	N	N	Y	N/A
HDMI	N	N	N	N	N	N/A
Spotify Connect	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	N/A
Roon Ready	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	N/A
Price (US$)	$3999.99	$1199.99	$899.99	$449.99	$699.99	$999.99

The formation range have 3 distinct speaker products ranging from $449.99 to $3999.99.

All speaker units support, Airplay 2, Hi-Res, Bluetooth AptX HD and Roon-Ready. There is no chromecast support.

Hi-Res

Formation line supports up to 24-bit/96kHz Hi-Res audio play. For decoding capability, Formation suite can support up to 32-bit 192 kHz audio files, which means anything for any imaginable future.

Inside the Wedge, there’s a sophisticated DAC with the capability to decode audio files up to 32-bit 192kHz.
Forbes: B&W’s Formation Wedge Sounds Awesome But Needs Some Polish

Bluetooth

Other than the Sonos, bluetooth support are fairly common and standard for Wireless speakers. In Formation line, there is Apt-X HD support. This allows Hi-Res audio streaming via bluetooth so partly makes up the lack of Chromecast support.

Formation Duo

This is the flagship stereo speaker pair in the Formation line. This pair of speakers cost $3999.99, which may be out of reach for many; however, this is the unit showing B&W’s dedication of uncompromised Audiophile quality wireless speaker unit. Home Theater Hi Fidelity awarded Formation Duo the Best Wireless Speaker of 2019.

The Formation Duo is a wireless no-compromise design, and I truly mean no compromise. Other wireless systems have generally given up something just to be wireless.
Home Theater High Fidelity B&W Formation Duo Wireless Speakers Review

Formation Wedge

This is the representative one box stereo speaker system in Formation line. Although the unit is still quite expensive, this unit sound quality is considered class-leading by several review sites and some even states this has edge over, Naim Mu-so 2nd gen system ($1599.00).

so while you’ll get more bass clout from the Mu-so 2, there’s greater refinement, detail and clarity with the Wedge, which offers a more layered, hi-fi sound by comparison.”
What Hi*Fi Bowers & Wilkins Formation Wedge review

Unlike other competitor ecosystems, Formation Wedge cannot be used in stereo pair nor surround speakers in a home theater setup. Ecosystem like HEOS, Sonos or Bluesound allows any of their speaker products to be paired in stereo mode as long as the same model. For these purposes, one need Formation Flex instead.

Unlike other competitor ecosystems, Formation Wedge cannot be used in stereo pair nor surround speakers in a home theater setup.

Formation Flex

This is the entry level speaker in Formation line. It can be used as a stand-alone speaker, paired with another Flex for stereo setup, extend with a bass unit, and even be surround speakers for 5.1 channel system. The versatility or flexility of this unit is the reason why it’s called Flex.

Formation Bar

In addition to 3 speaker products, Formation suite has a dedicated 3 channel sound bar unit, Formation Bar. Bar has optical/Toslink connection for input. B&W claims there is sub 1ms delay in the connection.

The optical connection on the Bar was designed to playback TV audio where a delay would be detrimental to the sync between picture and sound so in this case while there is a delay it is the sub 1ms standard. There is also no perceptible delay with regards to the audio being sent from the Bar to the Surrounds as they are again meant to be in time with the picture, the same is true for the Formation Bass when used with the Bar.
B&W Rep

One of the major disappointment, and to some surprise in the formation line is absence of HDMI on Formation Bar.

[Toslink] can decode two channels of uncompressed lossless PCM audio or compressed 5.1/7.1 surround sound such as Dolby Digital or DTS Surround System. Unlike HDMI, TOSLINK does not have the bandwidth to carry the lossless versions of Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD Master Audio, or more than two channels of PCM audio.
Wikipedia Toslink

Competitor brand Bang & Olufsen’s Beosound Stage ($1750.00) with EARC supports Dolby Atmos and Dolby TrueHD.

During AVforums interview at 2:05, there is mentions about design decision of the omission of HDMI port from soundbar and potential hint of eARC HDMI someday.

B&W Formation Suite Launch Event AVForums

Formation Bass

Not surprisingly, formation suite has a bass unit for those looking for adding real bass. Obviously, this won’t be useful as a standalone unit but rather be used in pair with other Formation unit to extend bass range.

No wired input

One of the design decision that could look to be a major mistake on Formation line at first glance is omission of wired input options. This is indeed one of the main reason Formation gets less point on several review site than otherwise that they should be deserving. AV Forum for instance gave 6/10 on connectivity for Formation Wedge while build quality, sound quality and ease of use getting 9/10.

If we take the Naim Mu-So 2^nd Generation, this is £400 more than the Wedge but you get the physical inputs (plus HDMI ARC) included and it has its own UPnP app and Chromecast (and it’s still Roon ready if you wish). To bring the Wedge to a similar level of compatibility, by adding an Audio and a year’s Roon subscription, will take the price to a rather lively £1,600 (and that doesn’t include any hardware to run Roon).
AV Forum B&W Formation Wedge Review

Other than Toslink on Formation Bar, speakers have essentially no wired input except for ethernet and service USB ports. It is true that these devices are for wireless use and that is the whole reason why we all paying premium tax; otherwise, we can save quite a bit money and far more selections. However, the complete omission of wired input appear a bit too extreme.

This is; however, not the first attempt of restricted/limited connectivity approach in the multi-room wireless speaker. Sonos had chosen to take this path and up until recently, its product line did not have HDMI input nor bluetooth support, and only Play 5 as a speaker had Aux input. However, they have decided to change this with new products. Sonos Beam (soundbar) now has HDMI port and the newest addition in the product line, Sonos Move is the first Sonos product with Bluetooth support.

Other than HDMI option, we are not entirely out of luck in the Formation product line as long as one is willing to pay extra $699.99 i.e. Formation Audio.

Formation Audio

Many of complete multi-room wireless audio system allows existing passive system to be part of the ecosystem via add-on like this.

In case of formation line, Formation Audio can be more than that. Because all speakers lack wired input connection, Formation Audio can be seen as modular wired input unit addition to the speaker unit(s). This is practical only if the input lag between Formation Audio and the target Speaker unit is compatible to built in wired input. In this regard, B&W states impressive, unbelievable (lack of) input lag numbers.

The Formation audio’s optical input has a 2 ms local delay meaning that the input to output delay is only 2 ms for that source on that device.
If you were streaming that optical input to another Formation device setup to be in the same room then that delay would be about 40 ms
B&W Rep

Although I cannot test this myself as I do not own Formation Audio, but subjective statement from AVforum as below is very promising.

watching TV via the Audio and Wedge, the latency with the LG OLED is perfect. Not, ‘pretty good’ or ‘near perfect’ but ‘perfect.’
AV Forum Bowers & Wilkins Formation Wedge Review

In reference, speakers like SONOS Play:5 with built in Aux input introduces 70 ms delay. Bluesound reportedly have similar delay. HEOSBar with optical input also has over 60 ms delay. Formation Audio input + Formation Speaker wireless connection combo is not just as good as competitor’s wired input, but better.

Formation Audio input + Formation Speaker wireless connection combo is not just as good as competitor’s wired input from the performance perspective, but better.

Some sites compare the sound quality of Formation Wedge to that of Naim Mu-so 2, flagship model of Naim Mu-So line. Since Mu-so 2 costs $1599, Wedge ($899) + Formation Audio ($449) is technically cheaper. Let’s take a closer look for features between these two.

	B&W Wedge + Audio	Naim Mu-so v2
Airplay 2	Y	Y
Chromecast built-in	N	Y
Bluetooth	Y	Y
UPnP*	N	Y
USB	Y	Y
Digital Input	Y	Y
Analog Input (3.5mm jack)	Y	Y
HDMI	N	Y
Digital Output	Y	N
Spotify Connect	Y	Y
Roon Ready	Y	Y
Price (US$)	$1349.98	$1599.00

It is no longer as bad value as we originally thought. The missing features are, Chromecast built-in, UPnP and HDMI. UPnP is most likely be added with updated Home App in Q2 of 2020. There is $250 saving when compared to Mu-so V2.

Aesthetics

This is very subjective matter. When I first saw Formation Wedge on review site, I thought who would buy such an ugly looking speaker. However, after reading multiple reviews about its feature and sound quality, I’ve decided to take an actual look at local store. It looked better than I had initially thought. However, when I actually purchased and received the item and set it up in house, this is the best premium looking speaker I have ever owned. Up until this, I had a little thing against fabric covered speaker (I do not like my HEOS speaker’s aesthetics). I would not say Sonos looks that much better, but I preferred their look. However, Formation Wedge’s fabric cover has a shiny look to it and fit into room nicely as a premium object.

Software

Multiroom Audio

Formation uses patented mesh network system to achieve in-room 1 microsecond sync between speakers.

One of the formation unit connects to home WiFi network via 2.4GHz. The rest of Formation units creates own mesh network, which runs independently from home WiFi network, allowing the maximum performance between speakers.

Sonos have similar option, but latency are not officially advertised.

Stereo Pairing & 5.1 Home Theater Setup

Just like many of its competitors, Formation suite supports stereo pairing and 5.1 home theater setup.

The entry level speaker, Formation Flex can be paired in stereo mode. If someone is looking for the best stereo pairing wireless speaker, the flagship speaker, Formation Duo, is indeed stereo pair. However, you can not stereo pair Formation Wedge.

5.1 home theater set up can be created by combination of formation bar, bass, and two Flex. Here Formation Duo nor Wedge can be used.

Home App

B&W Home app for Formation is fast, clean and simple. Currently rated 3.8/5 on Apple App Store based on 35 ratings. 3.6/5 on Google Play Store based on 35 ratings.

The setup of formation device using Home App is one of the simplest/fastest. It literally takes less than 2 minutes. I’ve done this for HEOS, Sonos and Bluesound in the past. B&W Formation was by far the easiest and HEOS is the hardest despite I’ve done the setup most number of times. So far it sounds good. However, the power of the App really ends here.

In fact, many review sites are taking points/stars off of Formation products due to the lack of real Home App.

What Hi*Fi gave 4/5 on Feature of Formation Wedge with Against point being Expensive and Limited B&W App. AVforums gives 7/10 in features.

The B&W Home app is surprisingly ill-suited to handling your day-to-day music, though – especially if you’ve investing in several Formation products.
What Hi*Fi? Bowers & Wilkins Formation Wedge Review

Unlike other platforms, there is no way to play music directly from B&W Home App. One relies on Airplay 2, Bluetooth Apt-X, Spotify Connect or Roon.

B&W is aware of this limitation and published following statement on their blog early this month.

Bowers & Wilkins is also excited to introduce an enhanced version of the “Bowers and Wilkins Home” app that will allow users to broaden access to streaming music sites including Tidal, Qobuz and Deezer. Content will be aggregated through the app, enabling the listener to easily browse tracks, albums, playlists, radio stations across multiple services including personal libraries and collections, along with other high-resolution content. This will enable the suite of Formation devices to access content directly from the music providers which will improve overall user experience. The enhanced version of the App will be available in early Q2 2020.
B&W Blog Formation products now Alexa ready

Roon-Ready

All formation products are Roon-ready, which is great for audiophile; however, in order to get full power of Formation suite i.e. playing local music at Hi-Res quality, Roon is currently the requirement for Apple device users. This is because Airplay 2 is limited to 24 bits/44.1kHz. Formation product include 60 days of trial key for Roon. After that if you want to continue, Roon will cost $119/year subscription or $699 lifetime fee. These cost do not include device that act as Roon server.

For Android users, Bluetooth Apt-X HD will allow Hi-Res audio play, which is limited at 24 bits/48kHz.

However, once updated (real) Home app is released, Roon becomes optional and Apple users can elect to play music just via Airplay 2 or hold off buying Formation product until then.

However, once updated (real) Home app is released, Roon becomes optional and Apple users can elect to play music just via Airplay 2 or hold off buying Formation product until then.

Alexa (Soon)

Works with Alexa

As of today, there is no voice assistant support on Formation product line. However, this is going to change very soon.

Bowers & Wilkins, the leading global performance audio brand known for its innovative technology is excited to announce the introduction of Alexa Skills that can be used on all Formation Suite products. This enables people to use voice via an Alexa enabled device (e.g. Amazon Echo) to control their speakers, creating easy access to Amazon Music Unlimited, Amazon Prime Music, Pandora, SiriusXM, iHeartradio, and TuneIn, with several more added in the coming months. The Introduction of Alexa into the Formation suite of products will be done via an Over The Air update that will be made available in early Q1 2020.
B&W Blog Formation products now Alexa ready

This is different from microphone built-in like SONOS One. The voice recognition may be interfered by speaker’s music if Echo device is placed next to the speaker. The advantage here is that it will be fully featured Alexa with features like routine and drop-in.

Currently, there has been no announcement in regarding to the Google Assistant support.

Sound Quality

Formation product line’s major strength is the sound quality. Whether the premium price worth or not really comes down to the importance of the sound quality to the specific consumer. Overall, Formation product line receive compliment of clear sound with detail, but some may consider lacking bass without addition of Formation Bass.

In fact, detail levels are impressive across the board. The B&W can make the difference between a steel guitar string and a nylon equivalent absolutely plain, and the difference between it being picked by a fingernail or a plectrum equally obvious.
For so powerful a product there’s a slight shortage of headroom to big dynamic shifts – the difference between ‘very quiet’ and ‘very loud’ could perhaps be more pronounced. But the Wedge deals with dynamic variances rapidly, and has an overall tonality that’s pitched towards ‘engaging’ rather than out-and-out ‘exciting’. Which, on balance, is probably the sensible way to approach things.
WIRED: So you want to blow £1,000 on a serious one-box hi-fi. Good call. Here’s what you should go for

Formation Wedge

Formation Wedge is highly praised for its sound quality across the board. Techspot meta-review score currently sits at respectable 92 with 8 reviews.

Hometheater review.com gives 5/5 for performance.

Audio performance is on par with traditional form factor speakers.
The Formation Wedge never sounded bright, shrill, or weak–even when pushed hard. Simply put, as with everything I threw at it, the system deliver audiophile grade performance even when pumping out decidedly non-audiophile music.
Sonically, you probably want to add the Formation Bass subwoofer to the Formation Wedge speaker for an even more satisfying listening experience. That does drive the cost of the system up substantially.
home theater review – B&W Formation Wedge Wireless speaker reviewed

AV Forum gives 9/10 for its sound quality.

Given the lossless feed from a streaming service, the Wedge is a genuinely excellent performer and one of the very best single chassis speakers I’ve listened to.
AV Forum Bowers & Wilkins Formation Wedge Review

What Hi*Fi? gives 5/5 for Sound and compare this to Naim Mu-so 2 ($1599) and currently, What Hi*Fi ranks Formation Wedge #3 best wireless speaker 2020.

Yes, it’s expensive, but the B&W Formation Wedge offers the kind of detailed, balanced, cohesive sound that cannot be ignored – making it a class-leader in its category.
What Hi*Fi? Best wireless speakers 2020

Despite the fact that the Mu-so 2 has a greater array of embedded playback options and doesn’t require a third-party subscription to reap the benefits of locally-stored music, the B&W Formation Wedge offers the kind of detailed, balanced, cohesive sound that cannot be ignored – making it a class-leader in its category.
What Hi*Fi? Bowers & Wilkins Formation Wedge Review

Wired.co.uk calls “The best wireless speaker between £800 and £1,000.”

B&W has used all its know-how to come up with a five-speaker array that fires outwards and upwards from the Wedge’s multifaceted grille, to deliver a sound that spreads way wider than you expect without losing any of its focus or detail. Add in significant bass presence, a positive relish for tonal complexity, and a very specific kind of grown-up enthusiasm for music of all kinds, and B&W is back with a bang. Want to fill a big room without filling it with big speakers? Wedge could well be the one.
WIRED: These are the best wireless speakers in 2020

Forbe mentions possible lack of bass but clarity is once again praised.

Some people might find it a slightly light in the bass department at lower volumes, but crank things up and this speaker sings its heart out with bags of rich bass. It has superb clarity and integrity of sound where none of the drivers sonically interfere with one another and the music sounds as clear as a bell. There’s volume here aplenty and although there are a treble and bass controls in the app, B&W has pitched the tone of the Wedge perfectly. It can play all genres of music with dynamism and a stunning level of precision.
Forbes: B&W’s Formation Wedge Sounds Awesome But Needs Some Polish