B&W 802D3

Word of mouth reviews are generally useless.  Especially if they come form someone who has auditioned the speaker at Magnolia, which in my experience does a poor job of setting up a high quality full range speaker like the 802D3.  My local Magnolia has them pushed up right against the front wall of a small room with a hard tile floor with no rugs anywhere and a small diffuser on the back wall.  They just sound OK, far from their potentially great sound if they are properly positioned in a properly sized and treated room.  I own the 802D3, driven by Bryston 7BSTs, and it is not bright in my rig, and many visitors to my home have had a “Wow! event” after hearing them.  I love ‘em.

Maybe they don't have anything else comparable in price to compare to and comparing them to their basic receiver set up at home.  

Agreed that demoing or auditioning at Magnolia/Best Buy is far from ideal. I wouldn’t go to Magnolia/Best Buy to demo or audition to anything. Even in their reference 2ch room they use Sonos streamer as a digital front end source for their high end setups/systems eg B&W 802 D3, 803 D3, some huge Martin Logan electrostats paired with some McIntosh monoblock and stereo amps.
Come on, you could do better than Sonos streamer to stream music from to feed digital front end source signal to these expensive setups/systems.

And their speaker placements are awful and they have too many setups & systems (too many large footprint speakers) in that somewhat small to medium size listening room. They literally have 4 different setups & systems cramped together in that reference 2ch listening room (somewhat small to mid size listening room). They also place a tall audio racks right in the middle of the speakers and won’t even bother pulling the speakers out cause that kind of placement will ruin the imaging and soundstage depth.

I have heard the B&W 802 D3 and IMO they weren’t bright or harsh at all but forward yes and are definite improvements from their prodecessors (802 D2) however I prefer other brands such as Sonus Faber, Vienna Acoustics, Harbeth, PMC, etc that are in similar price range as these B&W 802 D3 or even cheaper and found them to be more musically engaging and involving than these 802 D3. However, these B&W truly shine when used for high end HT system and their matching HTML1 D3 center channel speaker is very good.
I still think these 802 D3 are pretty good and will pair well with your McIntosh MC 1.2kw monoblock amps.
You will have to listen to them yourself.

I have had the B&W 802d's for about 12 years. I think they are great speakers.  You have realize that this speaker doesn't make any sound of its own...just meticulously reproduces what it is given. If you have a bad recording then these speaker will not hide it...if you have a great recording you will be rewarded.  They love/need power.  I have 600 watts a side with a 14bsst and these speaker breath their best, even at very low volume. Some commenters said they are bright...I have never experienced that except on very bad recordings. I am currently looking to upgrade to the new 802D3's which I understand have a new driver and some new crossover caps, etc...plus I like the new cabinet design.

Can be be bright with some material, and very unimpressive bass, even with 1000 watt monoblocks...

Been auditioning them.. I like them except  the bass really sucks.so another 6 grand in subs required.