The Bowers and Wilkins Bookshelf is a speaker that stuns a lot of first time listeners. It puts a lot of R8k - R9k ($950 - $1100) speakers to shame, even coming close to make the Bowers and Wilkins 684 Floorstanding speaker seem much less impressive.
It is a decent big bookshelf, with a decent size mid-bass driver, it weights 7kg and has two finishes (black ash and red cherry). It does not have striking looks (which you can expect from a R5000.00 ($595.00)), but the workmanship is of high European standard and has not been assembled by a drug mule in Hillbrow, Johannesburg. The grill is a standard cloth grill that clips in which can also be easily broken, so it is wise to keep itching finger from the grill. With the grill off there is a yellow kevlar driver starring back at you, but I will rather not refer it to anything Hillbrow at this time. Over all build quality is good and you won't feel ashamed having it in your house when your mother-in-law visits.
I have a nice quiet listening room where I demo all stereo speakers. My set up is a standard stereo set up. In my set up I have the Rotel RCD1520 cd-player, RC1580 pre amplifier and RB1582 200w Class AB Amplifier.
I left it to punishment with music that is diverse, some happy and some dark, some overly busy and some just very technical.
Piano piece it plays back with a breeze, a chill might follow for a first time listener, it really sounds very good. It is very accurate, it gives the recording's every intention back to you. You can hear as the pianist runs his fingers over the keys. When it pitches the high notes, it is controlled.
I then pushed a heavy bombardment of drums with a real crazy drum solo. Within the rumble of toms and double bass kicks you still hear the distinct sounds of the cymbals and the "tssst tssst" from the hi hat. Very impressive indeed.
Had some Diana Krall on it, plays temptation back very nicely, this is where you start to miss your 3-way speaker for your stereo. The speaker does handle most parts very nice, but just some places where the music starts to get technical it does seem to get less defined.
Classical music is brilliant. It plays the violin beautifully, the high note which the fat lady sings (not to say the nice CD I listened to was fat) is controlled and no problem could be found. Only problem I did find was with the double bass pieces. The B&W 685 can go as low as 42Hz, but it cannot accurately give over the very low ends and once again this is where you would miss a proper 3-way speaker.
Conclusion
The B&W 685 is a very impressive bookshelfs speaker. It is a brilliant stereo speaker at the price. What I have found with my testing of this bookshelf is that it is power hungry, it loves high current amplifiers. Sure it will run on your more entry amplifiers, but put a decent amplifier on it and you might not even miss the B&W 684 floorstanders or most floorstanders twice the price of the B&W 685.
I would comfortably rate this speaker as follows:
Looks and build quality: 8/10
Performance: 9/10
Value for Money: 10/10
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