Bowers & Wilkins Nautilus

It’s obvious that Nautilus is no ordinary loudspeaker, even before you listen to it. That’s because it’s the product of no ordinary speaker manufacturer. The Nautilus is the end result of the most ambitious research and development project Bowers & Wilkins has ever undertaken – to create, as near as possible, the perfect loudspeaker.

When Bowers & Wilkins set out to create the world’s best loudspeaker, we asked ourselves some fundamental questions. Is it possible to create a theoretically perfect speaker – one that produces next to no distortion? Does a speaker have to be a box? If you remove the box, what would a speaker look like? More importantly, what would it sound like? The result was Nautilus.

Nautilus is an icon of speaker design. Form followed function in a quest for audio perfection; design awards followed. Nautilus was accorded a Millennium Award and has been seen at the Design Council and the Design Museum London.



Crucial drive unit components are made using a mix of hand-assembly techniques and semi-automatic production. For example, voice coils are wet-wound with high-temperature resin, then baked in a special oven to ensure enhanced performance and durability. This perfectionism makes for a slow production process, but ensures we consistently reach world-class levels of quality.

In a world where the latest gadget or technology is seemingly capable of replacing predecessors no matter how tenuous the ‘improvements’ on offer are, it’s reassuring that truly groundbreaking technology and breathtaking performance can still combine to achieve timeless appeal. The Nautilus loudspeaker offers just such a combination and, 25 years after it first became available, this iconic statement of technological excellence remains popular.

Many of the innovations discovered during the five years of development that went into Nautilus are now to be seen not just in all the brand’s loudspeakers, but in many other high-end speaker manufacturers’ products as well. John Bowers, the founder of Bowers & Wilkins, set the Nautilus project in motion as part of his desire to produce the perfect loudspeaker – even if it didn’t make lots of money or sell in vast numbers. His vision of taking loudspeaker technology to new heights put in place a legacy still very much in evidence today.

These technologies include the famous tube-loaded tweeter, which can even be found in an adapted form on Bowers & Wilkins’s latest 700 S2 speaker range, as well as their in-ceiling, in-wall and home theatre speakers. And the lessons learned regarding drive unit design have improved the performance of everything from the high-end 800 Series to the incredibly popular 600 Series.