Bowers & Wilkins Shipping 7th Version of Most 'Democratic' Speaker Line

Bowers & Wilkins refreshed its 600 series speakers for the 25th anniversary of the company’s most “democratic” speaker line that starts at $699 a pair, Andy Kerr, director-product marketing, told a media briefing. The seventh-generation line has the same Continuum cone technology used in the company’s 805 series, said Kerr. The 600s don’t have the cabinet quality or polished finish of the higher end speaker lines, Kerr said, noting the 805s are used as studio monitor speakers in Abbey Road Studios in London.

The seventh-gen version of the 600 series adds aesthetic and technical improvements, said Kerr. New tweeter surrounds have 25th Anniversary Edition etched lettering in dark and light versions depending on cabinet finish. B&W added oak and cherry to join the matte black and white finishes from the previous generation.

Models include the 607 S2 ($699 a pair) bookshelf speaker with a decoupled double dome aluminum tweeter and 5-inch midbass driver; the 606 S2, with the same tweeter and 6.5-inch midbass driver ($899 per pair), and the 603 S2 floor-standing speaker ($1,999 per pair), adding to the tweeter a 6-inch midrange driver and two 6.5-inch paper-cone bass drivers.

B&W’s step-up 707 series starts at $1,500 a pair. James Krakowski, executive vice president-Americas, compared the price-to-feature difference between the series to the TV world, “where you start seeing some of the componentry or logarithms in [higher end] TVs trickling down” into lower priced sets. “We take the learnings of the crossovers … of the decoupled tweeters and we filter those down,” he told us Monday.

For home theater applications, the 600 series includes the HTM6 S2 center-channel speaker, which had a $50 price increase over the previous version to $799 each. Prices remained the same for the other models. The SW608, SW610 and SW610XP subwoofers carry over from the previous line, available in matte black or white. An Anniversary Edition theater package combines 603 S2, 607 S2 and HTM6 S2 speakers in a $4,299 set.

B&W isn’t looking to expand distribution of the 600 series today, but it did expand channels starting with the end-of-life 600 series, Krakowski said. Nebraska Furniture Mart is one of the recent retail additions, he said.