Bowers & Wilkins Panorama 3 Soundbar Review

The Bowers & Wilkins Panorama 3 is a stylish and sleek-looking soundbar. It's all-black with a slightly hexagonal design that wraps around the edges of the bar. The top of the bar is made of mesh-style plastic with small holes, and there's a tight fabric wrapping around the sides. The back and the bottom are made of plastic, too.

There are two subwoofers integrated into the Bowers & Wilkins Panorama 3.

The Bowers & Wilkins Panorama 3 is a wide soundbar that doesn't fit between the legs of a 55" TV stand. It's not very tall, though, so it doesn't obscure your TV screen.

The back of the Bowers & Wilkins Panorama 3 has an opening for the inputs and the power cable. You can also mount the bar to your wall using the included proprietary mounting bracket. You just need to remove the silicone cover on the left and the right in order to attach it to the mounting point.

The Bowers & Wilkins Panorama 3 has a good build quality. The back and the bottom of the bar are made of solid plastic, and there's a tight fabric that wraps around the sides. The plastic-looking top of the bar seems sturdy and premium, though the small holes in its mesh-like design are prone to trapping debris like dust. It's not easy to remove the debris once it's stuck inside, unfortunately.

• Manuals
• Mounting bracket
• Power cable
• HDMI cable
• Hex allen key
• Screws

The Bowers & Wilkins Panorama 3 has an okay frequency response. It has a dark sound due to the recessed treble, and the peak in the low-mids muddies voices and lead instruments, resulting in a muffled sound. It lacks bass, so you don't feel the thump in bass-heavy genres like EDM and hip-hop. While there are bass and treble adjustments to tweak its sound, there aren't more comprehensive customization features like a graphic EQ to give you more control over its sound.

Note: These results reflect the bar's performance with stereo content. However, if you tend to switch between different formats - like PCM to Dolby Digital to Dolby Atmos - you may come across a bug that causes the bar to stop playing audio. We experienced this issue during our testing, and several other users have reported the same problem. We had to perform multiple factory resets and restarts of the bar to get it to work again.

The only customization features available for the Bowers & Wilkins Panorama 3 are bass and treble adjustments - and with the bass set to '-1' and the treble set to '4', the bar's performance improves slightly. It has a more neutral sound, and instruments and voices in the treble range are more clear and detailed in the mix. However, there's still a muddy quality to the audio due to the peak in the low-mids, and bass adjustment features can't make up for the lack of thump and rumble in the low-bass range.

The Bowers & Wilkins Panorama 3 has a fair soundstage performance. Its soundstage isn't perceived to be very wide - in fact, it seems a little bit smaller than the bar itself. The focus is only decent, and sound objects like instruments in an orchestra seem to come from a more general area instead of a pinpoint location that matches their position on the stage.

The Bowers & Wilkins Panorama 3 gets very loud, so it easily fills up large and open living rooms with sound. Unfortunately, it has quite a bit of compression when you push it to max volume, so audio isn't reproduced with clarity when it gets loud. Especially with bass-heavy audio like EDM and hip-hop, you notice compression and pumping artifacts.

The Bowers & Wilkins Panorama 3 has a great stereo THD performance. At a normal listening volume, there isn't a lot of distortion present, so audio reproduction is clean and pure. There's a slight jump in distortion across the range when you push the bar to max volume, though. It's not noticeable to most casual listeners, but if you're an audiophile looking for an accurate reproduction of your audio, it's most evident in the bass range.

The Bowers & Wilkins Panorama 3 has a great center channel performance. It's a 3.1.2 setup, meaning that it comes with a discrete center channel that helps to accurately localize voices to pinpoint locations in the soundstage. The frequency response is a bit dark due to the dip in the treble range, and the peak in the low-mids adds a muddy quality to the mix. As a result, voices don't reproduce with complete clarity.

The Bowers & Wilkins Panorama 3 has a poor surrounds performance. It's a 3.1.2 setup, meaning that it has to downmix surround content into stereo to play it. The resulting sound isn't quite as immersive as the experience offered by setups with discrete satellites - sound objects like voices or moving vehicles seem like they're just coming from in front of you rather than from accurate locations that match the action on screen.

The Bowers & Wilkins Panorama 3 has two up-firing drivers built into the bar, which ricochet sound off the ceiling to create the illusion of height. These drivers offer balanced mids, but the peak in the low-treble means that audio sounds a bit bright with some content. There's a noticeable lack of bass, too, so you don't feel the rumble in action-packed scenes.

We also subjectively evaluate the bar when listening to Atmos content, and unfortunately, its performance is disappointing. Its soundstage performance is a bit better than with stereo content like music, and it seems wider with scenes where the action is taking place around you. However, it struggles to achieve height in the soundstage, especially compared to other premium standalone bars like the Sonos Arc and the Bose Smart Soundbar 900. It can't replicate sounds that are meant to come from behind you, like cars racing past you in a chase scene, though this is pretty typical for standalone setups.

The Bowers & Wilkins Panorama 3 is designed to be easy to use, so there aren't a lot of sound enhancement features available by design. You can adjust its bass and its treble using the app, but compared to other premium bars, it lacks other features like room correction. Given its uneven sound right out of the box, it's pretty disappointing that there aren't more customization tools on hand to improve its performance.

You can connect the Bowers & Wilkins Panorama 3 to your TV using either an HDMI or a more traditional Optical connection. There's no Full HDMI In port, though, so you can't use the bar as a hub between different devices, like your TV and your gaming console.

The Bowers & Wilkins Panorama 3 has eARC support, and it can playback common surround sound formats like Dolby Digital. It also supports lossless and object-based formats like Dolby Atmos.

The Bowers & Wilkins Panorama 3 supports Dolby Digital via Optical. Dolby Digital is the most common surround sound format, so you'll find it on lots of different streaming services and Blu-rays. There's no DTS support, but this format isn't very common on its own.

The Bowers & Wilkins Panorama 3 has an excellent latency performance. It has fairly low latency, so the video on screen is in sync with the audio you hear. You don't notice delays, even with lip-synching. Some apps and TVs compensate for latency differently, so your real-world experience can vary.

The Bowers & Wilkins Panorama 3 has an incredible selection of wireless playback options. You can wirelessly stream audio to the bar via Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and Apple AirPlay 2. You can set up Wi-Fi connectivity using the Bowers & Wilkins Music app.

There's no display, but the multi-function button on top of the bar changes color depending on the bar's status. For example, it turns blue when a Bluetooth connection is established. Depending on where you place your bar, the light might not be visible, especially if you're sitting down.

There are some touch-sensitive controls on top of the bar that let you adjust the volume, play/pause your audio, and activate the Alexa voice assistant. The multi-function button cycles through the different sources and streams available, like different music streaming platforms that you can set up through the app. Unfortunately, the surface is prone to collecting fingerprints, and it reflects the light from your TV screen, which is distracting if the screen is below eye level, especially if you watch content with subtitles.

The Bowers & Wilkins Panorama 3 doesn't come with a remote. However, you can use its app to set up your TV remote to control the bar.

The Bowers & Wilkins Panorama 3 has built-in support for Amazon Alexa, meaning you can control the bar with your voice. If you have a third-party Alexa device like an Amazon Echo, you can also link it to the bar using the Bowers & Wilkins Music app.

Compared to the Bowers & Wilkins Formation Bar, you only need one app to manage this soundbar. The Bowers & Wilkins Music app acts as a remote and lets you control all of the bar's settings from the comfort of your couch. For example, you can control the volume, adjust the bass and the treble, set up Amazon Alexa, and update the firmware. You can also stream audio to the bar using different music services.

The Bowers & Wilkins Panorama 3 goes into standby mode after twenty minutes of inactivity. There's also HDMI CEC support, so you can use your TV remote to control the bar's basic settings.