Formation Flex

$749

The B&W Flex arrived late to the Formation party, smaller and more affordable than its brethren, though still a premium proposition for its size compared with rivals. It’s a silky black cylinder more than 21cm tall with a brushed metal base, the kitchen/bedroom speaker of the range, reassuringly heavy at 2.3kg. The top is a black touch-sensitive surface controlling volume and pause/play, plus the Formation icon for use in set-up, input selection and stereo pairing. Physical connections are limited to power and Ethernet (there’s no auxiliary input), and it’s mono, with B&W squeezing in a 25mm decoupled double-dome tweeter and a 10cm woven-glass-fibre bass/midrange driver.

As with the other units, initial set-up is easy, the app guiding you through pairing via Bluetooth, then hooking up to a wireless network. Thereafter you’re on your own, using other apps on your device to make the music.

For a small form, the Flex can certainly belt it out, going remarkably loud without distortion. Perhaps that’s why the bass has been kept understated — it’s not the weightiest of sounds, B&W going for something tighter. The dynamics and timing are good for a speaker of this size, and the Flex certainly delivers a more hi-fi type of sound here than you’ll get from the Sonos One, for example. And it avoids the flaw of many small wireless speakers which push out a wodge of overly thick emphasised bass to overcome their dimensions; there’s none of that here — if anything the bass is too discreet. We found wall positioning was useful to fill out the sound with some warmth.

The Flex can be set up as a stereo pair if you have two, or two can be added to the Formation Bar and Bass to work as the rears of a 5.1 set-up. We tried it as a stereo pair and, as usual when doubled up, the sound was more impressively room-filling. On surround duties, it was a fine performer, its low-end in this configuration being supported by the Formation Bass.