Bowers & Wilkins PX Bluetooth Wireless Headphones, Noise Cancelling - Space Grey

Product Information

The earcups are fairly chunky, but inside the drivers are at an angle, so that they're parallel to your ears, not to the outside of the earcups. This is designed to help with timing and precision in the sound. READ NEXT: The best Bluetooth headphones to buy this year Bowers & Wilkins Pi7 S2 review: What did we like about them? Now on to what we can tell you: these over-ears offer agility, gazelle-like dynamic grace and surgical precision. And they do all of it in spades. Deadmau5's 4X4=12 is weighty, precise and textured through the difficult and intentionally bloated bassline. But then, the PX8 opens out to reveal a wide soundstage marked with stark synths. It's as if these over-ears are hellbent on exposing jagged, angular sonic diamonds in the rough – in the best way. PS: try to listen "Game of throne" Main title to compare these 3 headphone and you will find out why. This is a refined listen too without sounding overly smooth. The Px8 are certainly revealing enough to show up shortcomings in the source or recording, so you’ll need to make sure the signal feed into them is good enough to allow them to shine. A slightly cool tonal balance doesn’t help them to be forgiving either, though they won’t go out of their way to make things sound worse than they are.

Generally, the Px7 S2 put in a strong noise-cancelling performance, with consistency and minimal sound colouration across the different settings. Low droning noises, such as those you hear when onboard a train, are well rejected, though we find that higher frequencies – including vacuum cleaners or even birdsong – creep through to a greater extent than they do through the WH-1000XM5. These are headphones you'll want to be seen in. Their ideal environment might be a business-class flight to Milan or the Maldives. The build here is all die-cast aluminum arms, diamond-cut bright metal detailing and Nappa leather trim. Think all that metal means they'll be heavy? Actually no –the weight is perfect for us. While they feel secure, there's no overly strong clamping force either. The comfort levels are fantastic across the course of our listening too, with ample padding on the underside of the headband and a clamping force that's as perfect as we've ever felt; not too tight but reassuringly secure.

Px8 McLaren Edition wireless headphones

The PX8's two strongest suits are glorious looks and exemplary sound quality. If these two features are of paramount importance to you, the PX8 represent some of the best noise cancelling headphones you can buy –but you do have to pay top dollar for the privilege of ownership. The main upgrades from the original Pi7 are to Bluetooth connectivity and battery life. The Bluetooth antennas have been redesigned to improve connection stability, and connection range has been extended to a very impressive 25 metres. On the battery life front, the buds now last up to five hours with ANC turned on, up from the four hours delivered by their predecessors. The capacity of the charging case, which can be topped up wirelessly or via USB-C, is unchanged, however, with a further 16 hours available. But we want to focus on sound and style here. The on-ear controls feel premium, cool and luxurious. The aluminum headband slides silently, and those new drivers are angled so that every bit of your ear gets the right treatment – B&W really has thought of everything. Often, a set of over-ear headphones can be described as "fun" rather than "analytical", or "precise and refined" rather than "zealous and exciting". Bowers & Wilkins has aimed to be both here, and almost succeeded. But not quite.

The PX7s are clear evolutions of their predecessors, with a branded badge and fabric finish on the elliptical earcups. There have also been some revisions to the design in the name of improved comfort. Elsewhere, the cables are now hidden within the band, and the earcup’s central oval badge is now flush against the new, softer fabric for a more streamlined aesthetic. The Space Grey finish survives, although the PXs’ Soft Gold has been swapped for a sophisticated Silver. We’re pleased to see big ‘L’ and ‘R’ graphics inside the respective ear cups, too. Their price tag won’t be easy to swallow for many, but the detail, dynamic and organisational improvements these offer over the rest of the B&W headphones range, makes them worthy of their price, not to mention their flagship status. A nice touch here is the ability to set the streaming quality (using your mobile data or Wi-Fi) and also the wearer sensor, the latter at low, normal, or high. If the PX8 fail to pause when you lift an ear cup to talk to a colleague, switch it to high. Find them pausing unexpectedly during use? Switch it to low.

Anyone familiar with recent efforts from Bowers & Wilkins won’t be surprised with what the Px8 deliver in sound quality, but they will still be impressed. There is a level of clarity and insight here that we haven’t heard bettered at this level. Performance is a clear step ahead of talented but cheaper alternatives such as the aforementioned Sonys or the new Sennheiser Momentum 4 in pretty much every area. There is more precision and clarity than the Apple AirPods Max too. For the first time in a pair of B&W headphones, the PX7 S2 features support for the Bowers & Wilkins Music app. This not only supplies useful information about your headphones and offers scope for tweaking the EQ (bass and treble bands), but also seeks to corral the music you regularly listen to. It's well-designed and easy to use, plus you can actually set the wearer sensor to either 'low', 'normal' or 'high' depending upon how well the headphones seem to respond to the presence of your noggin. It all adds value, and even during long listening sessions, the extra cushioning on the ear pads here feels high-end and proves supremely comfortable. There’s never any harshness or hardness that you might hear on lesser headphones, and everything sounds as it should, as if it were being played right in front of you. Not always easy with sounds like this. The rest of their feature set is very similar, too, with noise cancellation and Bluetooth retransmission the major attractions. Noise cancellation comes in two forms: static attenuation, and automatic attenuation based on the amount of ambient noise in your environment. There’s also a transparency option that lets you control how much of the outside world is piped in, and you can adjust this on a 15-point scale. Stream Stormzy's Vossi Bop and it's a similar story; the bass just feels a tad overstated and we're losing the upper midrange –which includes Stormzy's emotive lyrics. Bloated is too strong a word, but it's just a little too hot and heavy in the mix.