Bowers & Wilkins Px8 hands-on: a luxurious alternative to Sony and Sennheiser’s flagship headphones
The Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S2 headphones have been a mainstay of our best headphones since their launch earlier this year, and received top honours in the Tom’s Guide Awards 2022 as the best audiophile headphone. We loved the sound delivery the next-gen S2 achieved, with its all-new and repositioned drive units, so you can imagine how happy we were to see that these design upgrades have been further enhanced in the newly announced Bowers & Wilkins Px8.
With bespoke 40mm Carbon Cone drive units for an even more detailed sound across all parts of the frequency range, and sumptuous materials to further aid comfort, the Bowers & Wilkins Px8 are going to be a real competitor for the top noise-cancelling headphones from Sennheiser and Sony.
The Bowers & Wilkins Px8 flagship ANC headphones go on sale today (September 28), and Tom’s Guide got to try out the specialist audio company’s “most advanced noise-cancelling headphone to date,” ahead of their official launch.
Bowers & Wilkins Px8 hands-on: Price and availability
The Bowers & Wilkins Px8 headphones are on sale now (September 28) with an MSRP of $699 / £599 / AU$1,150. They are available from the Bowers & Wilkins website (opens in new tab) and select dealers, and come in two finishes: black leather or tan leather. Both versions have a cast-aluminium arm structure and alloy accents and trims to the earcups.
Bowers & Wilkins Px8 review: Design and comfort
Having held the Px8 in one hand along with the Px7 S2 in the other, it is easy to get a feel and appreciate where the extra money is going on the new flagship. Bowers & Wilkins says the earcups, memory-foam cushions and headband are trimmed in Nappa leather, and the combination of the alloy and soft leather assert the Px8 as the more premium product — which really is remarkable when I consider the outstanding build standards and quality feel attributed to the Px7 S2.
The soft leather certainly felt like it aided comfort levels during a short listening session we managed to grab, and the soft headband and ear cushions felt feather-light with only a mild clamping force applied. Although we’ve yet to see the specification list, the overall weight of the Px8 is certainly no greater than the 10.8 ounces specified for the Px7 S2, and they felt evenly distributed and lighter than some wireless headphones we’ve experienced.
Bowers & Wilkins Px8 hands-on: Controls and connectivity
As with the Px7 S2, the Px8 don’t use touch controls for playback navigation. Instead, the rear edge of the right earcup carries a selection of physical control buttons that provide play/pause, volume up/down, skip forwards/backwards, and power on/off/Bluetooth pairing.
The Bowers & Wilkins Music App has been upgraded to coincide with the launch of the Px8 for seamless wireless streaming from mobile playback devices, and provide adjustable EQ, noise-cancelling modes, and displays charge levels.
Wireless connectivity is via Bluetooth 5.0 and there’s aptX Adaptive codec support with compatible playback devices. It’s disappointing that there’s no aptX Lossless Audio support, but there are USB-C and 3.5mm analog cable connections with cables included in the supplied headphone carry case.
Bowers & Wilkins Px8 hands-on: Sound quality
Holding the all-new bespoke 40mm Carbon Cone driver used inside the Px8, we were impressed by just how light and responsive the new driver felt compared to its predecessor. The new ultra-lightweight cone material is said to have been inspired by the Carbon Dome drive units used in the company’s 700 Series loudspeaker range, and Bowers & Wilkins says that the new driver delivers greater resolution, detail and timing that surpasses the high bar set by the Px7 S2.
Although we’ve yet to carry out our full review and in-depth listening test, we were very impressed by what I heard from the headphones during the short listening time we had. As with Px7 S2, the Carbon Cone drive units in Px8 are carefully angled inside each earcup to ensure a consistent distance relative to the listener’s ear from every point across the surface of each driver, and John Martyn’s “Go Easy” track had a highly accurate soundstage.
Bowers & Wilkins Px8 hands-on: Active noise cancellation
The soft Nappa leather ear cushions did an effective job of passively reducing noise during the Px8 presentation, cutting the sound of the Bowers & Wilkins representative’s voice running the demo by at least half it’s normal level when ANC was turned on. The noise cancellation tech did an effective job of shutting out any further noise to the point where we needed to activate transparency model to ensure that we didn’t miss out on the presentation continuing around us.
Bowers & Wilkins says that the Px8 uses six high-performance microphones working together: two measure the output of each drive unit, two react to ambient noise from the outside world, while the remaining two provide outstanding voice clarity for call handling. As with Px7 S2, the two external microphones are placed closer together and repositioned to improve voice capture and reduce wind noise interference.
Bowers & Wilkins Px8 hands-on: Battery life
With 30 hours of battery life, the Px8 matches the Px7 S2, as well as its closest rival the Sony WH-1000XM5, but has some way to go to beat the 60-hour playback with ANC capabilities of the Sennheiser Momentum 4 Wireless.
As with the Px7 S2, a 15-minute quick recharge is sufficient for up to 7 hours listening time, but we’ll confirm our own real-world battery life findings in our full review coming soon.
Bowers & Wilkins Px8 hands-on: Outlook
Based on my brief time with the Bowers & Wilkins Px8, we were very impressed by the design and luxury feel of the audio specialist’s new flagship over-ear headphone. We’ve yet to accurately evaluate their noise-cancelling and sound quality capabilities, but from my first impressions the Px8 have a good balance of credentials for luxury headphone buyers and audiophiles alike.
Stay tuned for our full Bowers & Wilkins Px8 review, where we’ll go into greater detail on their performance when it comes to music playback, comfort, and noise cancelling to find out where they rank on our list of the best audiophile headphones and best wireless headphones overall.
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