We have been excitedly waiting for the latest B&W 800 series for a while now.

In due course, a 5.1 array culled from the 15-model strong 800 series arrived, with the newest of the subwoofers and the most gigantic centre enclosure I have probably ever seen.

In terms of ranking, this collection sits just below the B&W's Signature Diamond range, where the brand sell tweeters made with – get this – vapour deposited diamonds.

High-end honeys

Comprising a pair of floorstanding 804S three-ways with two 805Ss at the rear (a sort of sawn-off version with the same teardrop cross sectional shape and area as the bigger 804S), plus the aforesaid oversized centre, (the HTM3S) and the medium-sized but mighty ASW825 KiloWatt-in-a-box subwoofer, the total cost of the system, including stands, comes to £8,250.

Aimed squarely at the high-end enthusiast, this is still, oddly enough, one of those ranges that represents good value for money.

The £44,000-per-pair price tag of Bowers & Wilkins' Nautilus loudspeaker almost certainly includes an element of the R&D cost that went into creating them; I suspect the tubery things on top of these 800 series speakers are derived from the tech, but they don't cost nearly as much.

Hefty system

The loudspeakers arrive in nice, posh, boxes and all but the rear-use 805S are a serious two-man
unpacking job.

Not because they are particularly huge, but because the tweeter tube on the top is very easy to damage; they're also difficult to get a grip on, because they're smooth and rounded.

They're weighty, too. The construction quality of these speakers is immense. B&W has to use a big vacuum-lifter on its production line so that normal folk can work on them.

Well, it's either that or they'd have to employ audiophile-savvy gorillas. So yes, they are really hard to handle – but as you'll only have do it once it isn't a major problem. But I digress.

Beautifully made

The 800 series are as beautifully well put together as any speakers I've ever reviewed.

If I hadn't got cats, I would always play them grille-free, as they bear an extra B&W badge on their plush woodwork as well as on the grille.

In fact the single sole 'improvement' I could conceive of is a move to embedding tiny but strong Neodymium magnets in the speakers and the grilles so they would stay put, but when pulled off would reveal a speaker without ugly grille fixing holes in its face.

Simple installation

Each cabinet comes complete with a cute, small microfibre polishing cloth, a set of spike assemblies and a set of rubbery feet (for the towers; spikes under the subwoofer).

As each has two sets of the very best speaker wire terminals on the rear, they are also sold with a set of two neatly-soldered plug-terminated wires. These accessories are mounted on plastic blister cards in each carton.

A fork on one end and a 4mm plug on the other is used to join the sets of terminals up until you can bi-wire or even bi-amplify them. Interestingly, Bowers & Wilkins recommend bi-wiring wherever possible.

In truth, this is an utterly simple system to set up once you have it carefully unpacked. There's none of the cunning supports needed for those extruded aluminium arrays that are so trendy these days, and even the woofer is pretty easy to master.

Its controls are limited to just crossover, gain and phase, and a brace of preset EQ offerings, either 'A' or 'B'.