B&W revamps its flagship floorstanding speaker, demands your annual salary

Expensive kit is nothing new for audiophiles. But it takes serious sonic commitment to shell out the average annual salary on a set of speakers. Styled like a Dalek’s Art Deco cousin, the B&W 801 D4 (£30,000) will do plenty to exterminate your bank balance. But that expenditure does bag you some properly premium components: instead of the familiar fabric rings which support the cones in most speaker systems, the 801 D4 deploys a minimalist composite frame to eliminate unpredictable air movements. You also get an all-aluminium Turbine Head, steel base plate and solid aluminium plinth for extreme stiffness and damping. Too much metal for your coin? The updated 800 series features a range of floorstanding and stand-mounted units, with something for every budget. Provided your budget starts at £4750.

Chris Rowlands Freelance contributor

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For more than a decade, Chris has been finding and featuring the best kit you can carry. When he's not writing about his favourite things for Stuff, you'll find Chris field-testing the latest gear for TechRadar. From cameras to classic cars, he appreciates anything that gets better with age.

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