Bowers & Wilkins Formation Flex Speaker Review - to read the entire review, click here: bit.ly/2k9z2Kp
The Flex speaker has a look that is similar to the other new Formation products with its sculpted grille. It is 8 ½” tall, 5” wide, and has a pretty hefty 5-pound weight. The bottom of the speaker has a gold ring with the Bowers & Wilkins logo across the bottom. The top of the Flex has a shiny black finish that will reveal some touch-sensitive controls for play/pause and volume up/down. In our opinion, the Flex is the best looking speaker in the all in one category. You might think it came out of an art museum!
The underside of the Flex has a recessed connection for its power cord, an ethernet jack should you want to hardwire it, and a reset button.
Needless to say, build quality on all Bowers & Wilkins products is outstanding. These have the fit and finish you would expect from a premium product.
Formation products are very easy to set up. The first piece takes about 2 minutes and the others you add, just take seconds. The Formation app will find your first unit, then find your wireless network. All you do is enter your WiFi password and it completes everything in about a minute.
You’ll have a multitude of easy ways to send music to your Formation product. Apple Airplay 2, Bluetooth® with aptX™ HD, and Spotify Connect cover just about everything. Plus for the music enthusiast, all Formation products are Roon Ready. Formation products are also Hi-Res Audio ready with 24/96 capability.
Bowers & Wilkins used a very similar tweeter in the Flex as their 600 series home speakers. It is a decoupled dome tweeter. A 4” woven glass fiber cone bass/midrange driver covers the critical midrange and bass frequencies. Each driver has its own 50-watt power amp with digital signal processing to get the most out of each driver. There are no passive crossover components like a typical home speaker with the crossover to each driver taking place in the digital domain, then routing the signal to the individual amp for each speaker driver. This type of design is used in most good powered speakers and does allow the designer to squeeze a whole lot more performance out of the speakers.
The Flex as the name implies also gives you many flexible use options. Obviously, it can be used all by itself. In addition, you can assign one as left and one right for a stereo pair. You can also use a pair of them as rear speakers with the Formation Bar (their soundbar). And finally, you can pair any of these combinations with the Formation Sub. Now that is flexible!
Performance
The first thing that stood out to us was how big a sound this little speaker threw out into the room. It sounded far larger than it’s size!
We then put it in a position where we could walk around from all sides and were very impressed with the dispersion of the tweeter. While you get a little bit of high-frequency roll-off as you get way off-axis, its much less than most conventional speakers. This means the little Flex will give you detailed sound in just about any spot in the room its placed in.
Voices are very clear and the top end is super open and extended. This little guy sounds like a decent home speaker. The bottom end is what is the most impressive though. Most speakers with this kind of footprint have bass, but it is more of the one-note variety where it is hard to hear tonal differences and is bloated in the midbass. We do have to say, we needed to play around with the distance the Flex was off the nearest wall to optimize the bass. About 4” to 6” off the wall gave us the best results. When you get it dialed in, the bass impact is big and tuneful. That little 4” glass fiber woofer coupled with the dedicated amp and DSP reaches down quite low. But you do not sacrifice anything in the midrange/midbass as voices and acoustic instruments sound very natural.
As a final test, we put on some big rock and roll and cranked the volume up to the max, just to see how much room-filling sound the Flex could provide. We happened to be doing this test at home which resulted in much shouting from across the house to turn down the really loud music. In other words, Flex can rock! Bowers & Wilkins have done a good job of making sure even when you push the Flex to 100% there was no sign of strain or break up either.
Bowers & Wilkins has put their DNA inside the Flex. It has that classic sound that does not add anything to the music. It simply enables you to become more connected to your favorite music in a way you just have to experience.
The Flex brings great Bowers & Wilkins sound down to a much more affordable price point and it takes up less space than a CD case sitting on your desk. Flex can be the beginning point of a great whole-house wireless music system that is fun to use and a joy to the eyes and ears!