Free Shipping on US orders above $49
Recommended Component 2025 - Stereophile
Editor's Choice Award 2024 – hi-fi+ Magazine
No-Compromise Bookshelf Speaker with Tweeter-on- Top
Don't compromise when it comes to a bookshelf speaker. Even if you are short of space, you can enjoy big sound with the Bowers & Wilkins 705 S3.
This uncompromising two-way speaker reveals subtle nuances in music others miss. Even challenging instruments such as the piano are conveyed with uncanny realism, presence, and transparency. As the top-performing stand mount speaker in the series, 705 S3 features studio-inspired technologies for immaculate sound quality.
"Recommended Component" Honors
Stereophile honored the 705 S3 by awarding it the magazine's coveted Recommend Component status for 2025.
According to Stereophile, "[KR, Kalman Rubinson] commented that three qualities of the 705s were evident: satisfying bass output (belied by their size); great detail and presence; and a wall-to-wall soundstage. 'Their midrange and treble resolution is outstanding, and their bass is musically satisfying,' KR concluded."
"Astonishing Clarity and Detail"
"As you can probably tell, I absolutely love the B&W 705 S3, which brought me closer to finding the absolute sound in my room than any other speaker I've reviewed," reports Aaron Jenkins in his August 7, 2025 video review for The Absolute Sound channel on youtube.com. "From their astonishing clarity and detail to their large sound space and pinpoint imaging, to their mighty-for-the-size bass output, I think these are just fantastic speakers."
"They deliver a significant step up in terms of musical realism from the $1000-ish to $2000-ish speakers I've reviewed in the past… And, in addition, their fit and finish are superb. They just exude quality."
Award-Winning Performance
England's hi-fi+ magazine honored the 705 S3 with an Editor's Choice Award for 2024.
"The soundstage is large and convincing, with robust and textured bass, clear and detailed highs, and articulate midrange. The speakers excel at reproducing vocals and revealing fine details in the music. The tonality is consistent and natural, and the speakers easily handle powerful dynamics."
"The Bowers & Wilkins 705 S3 stand-mount speakers offer a high-quality listening experience for anyone who appreciates a balanced and detailed sound reproduction."
Technology from Series Diamond
The 705 S3 draws on design and technology from the Bowers & Wilkins 800 Series Diamond, resulting in a bounty of upgrades. The Carbon Dome tweeter is housed in a Solid Body Tweeter-on-Top enclosure evolved from the latest generation of 800 Series Diamond. That joins a new and subtly curved baffle endowed with an all-new 'pod' housing for its Continuum Cone bass/midrange driver. The driver motors, chassis, and crossover have also been upgraded.
The 705 S3 uses a redesigned 1” decoupled Carbon Dome™ tweeter, the company's highly regarded 6.5” Continuum™ cone midrange driver, and the vented Flowport™ cabinet.
A "Very High-End Experience
"If you want to hear what’s on the master tape without any veiled sonic effects, the Bowers & Wilkins 705 S3s will not let you down," notes Jerry Del Colliano, futureaudiophile.com, May 28, 2025.
"They don’t try to make anything sound better, as much as they deliver you the information that’s on your vinyl records, silver discs or, more likely, streaming into your system from any number of good music streaming companies. You get so much of the very high-end experience for the money that it is hard to not appreciate the performance and value of a speaker like the Bowers & Wilkins 705 S3."
Solid Body Tweeter Housing
The 700 S3 Series features the latest generation of Bowers & Wilkins iconic Solid Body Tweeter-on-Top housing. Its new, more elongated form incorporates a longer tube-loading system to produce an even more free and open sound with high frequencies. The carefully decoupled housing is milled from a single solid block of aluminum to better resist resonance.
The solid body tweeters are a high-performance design feature found previously only on the 800 Series Diamond. Designers often argue that a product's functional and aesthetic qualities are closely related. Bowers & Wilkins couldn't agree more. The solid body tweeter is engineered first and foremost for acoustic performance. But in its minimal simplicity, it's also undeniably beautiful. It's a philosophy that runs deep in the DNA of the 700 Series – a speaker range that's music to your ears and very easy on your eyes.
Carbon Dome™ Tweeter
Carbon Dome tweeters are purpose-built for the 700 Series. Delivering a dramatic improvement on the aluminum double dome tweeter, they raise the breakup threshold to 47kHz, for pinpoint imaging accuracy and detail.
Continuum™ Cone Midrange Driver
Every three-way loudspeaker in the new 700 S3 Series has a dedicated midrange cone using four key Bowers & Wilkins technologies: the Continuum cone, FST™, Biomimetic Suspension, and midrange decoupling, the latter ensuring minimal interference from the operation of the loudspeaker's bass drivers.
Thanks to its composite construction, the Continuum™ cone avoids the abrupt transitions in behavior that can impair the performance of a conventional drive unit. The result is a more open, neutral performance that delivers voices and instruments with precision and transparency.
First introduced with the 800 Series Diamond, the Continuum cone represents the biggest upgrade in midrange performance since Kevlar®. Its woven coated material provides highly controlled break-up. The midrange drivers in the floorstanders also feature a decoupled design, adapted from a similar system in the 800 Series Diamond. Decoupling reduces cabinet coloration, and further improves midrange clarity.
The floorstanding loudspeakers in the series employ a new FEA-optimized aluminum chassis for the midrange drivers. This new design is stiffer than the zinc chassis of the CM Series, for improved control and cleaner midrange presentation.
700 S3 Series Upgrades
Offering outstanding performance at an attainable price, the Bowers & Wilkins 700 Series gives you exceptional capability for a real-world price-tag with an easy-to-accommodate footprint.
Packaged with advanced technology, the new 700 Series S3 range includes more overt celebrations of the 700 Series' relationship to the Bowers & Wilkins 800 Series Diamond. The first and most obvious change is the introduction of a new and longer tweeter-on-top form, inspired by the design introduced in 2021 for the new 800 Series Diamond.
The second notable change is the introduction of curved front sections to each speaker cabinet, with drive units mounted in distinct 'pods', as per 800 Series Diamond. Alongside this curvature, all new models feature slimmer front elevations than before, which reduces the cabinet baffling effect for even better sound than ever before.
The new S3 line also introduces new plinths, new grilles, a new tweeter grille mesh, and a new finish–Mocha Wood. This joins the existing finish mix of Gloss Black and White.
Studio Sound Comes Home
The 700 Series provides a class-leading combination of beautiful design and supreme performance. Featuring a wealth of state-of-the-art technologies, many derived from the 800 Series Diamond range, the 700 Series provides true Bowers & Wilkins performance in a class-leading yet accessible package.
With two center channel speakers and a subwoofer to choose from, the 700 Series also performs brilliantly in any home cinema set-up. It is a particularly strong aspect of the range's appeal. The updated design means that the 700 S3 line looks every bit as good as it sounds. It's the perfect combination of elegance and performance.
