With conventional radiofrequency pulses, flip angle variation with RF field strength can limit the types of experiments that can be performed with an inhomogeneous RF coil, such as a surface coil. As an alternative, composite and adiabatic pulses can induce constant rotations even when the RF amplitude varies by >I 0-fold. Unfortunately, these pulses generally afford compensation for RF inhomogeneity at the expense of greatly increased RF power and reduced bandwidth (off resonance performance). In this paper, a procedure is described for constructing symmetric composite and adiabatic pulses which provide compensation for RF inhomogeneity while maintaining wide and symmetric bandwidths. Using this procedure, a symmetric adiabatic pulse, BIR-4, is derived which can induce a constant rotation of any desired flip angle despite RF inhomogeneity and resonance offset. In comparison to adiabatic half-passage, the 90° BIR-4 has a wider bandwidth over a similar operational range of RF amplitudes (or power). These new pulses are evaluated by numerical calculations and by surface-coil phantom experiments.