Bowers & Wilkins PX7 Wireless Over Ear Headphones with Active Noise Cancellation - Space Grey

Product Information

There are no such niggles with the Px8. They offer a level of clarity and insight that's unbeaten 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 Wireless in pretty much every area. There is more precision and clarity than the Apple AirPods Max too. Nappa leather takes pride of place, featuring on the headband, earcups and earpads – it's velvety smooth, and soft to the touch.

If you really want the best ANC this money can buy though, there are better, more personalized options out there, and here we might point you to the Sony XM5 or (likely to be discounted) WH-1000XM4 over-ears. Bowers & Wilkins Music app now features an EQ mode. This lets you tailor the sound to precisely how you like it. For a bassier response, brighter treble or more pronounced mid-range, simply adjust the settings to suit. The app also has a range of other handy features, including ANC level control, battery life indicator and standby timer.There’s a shared sonic DNA between the PX7s and their predecessors, with a solid, detailed and tonally balanced sound that prioritises rhythmic precision and communicates music in an entertaining way. But B&W’s engineers clearly haven’t been resting on their laurels in the past two years, as they strive to meet the standards set by the arrival of fresh competition in the market. How the headphones render lower frequencies remains a highlight too, with bass depth and punch in head-bopping supply here. The pulsing beat underpinning Gunship's Empress Of The Damned throbs away beneath the accompanying synths and pop vocals by Canadian singer Lights, which come through with a lushness that laps up the electropop production. Bowers has not only aired out the soundstage slightly here for added openness and coherency but also smoothed the presentation somewhat. It’s sweeter and easier to listen, and none of their predecessor’s clarity and tonal balance has been relinquished either. Really, about the only area of performance which is deserving of a less-than-flattering mention concerns the top of the frequency range. Give the PX7 the right stuff to work with (a big hi-res file, in other words) and treble sounds are rapid, substantial and nicely balanced. Let the quality of your digital audio file drop, though, and the Bowers & Wilkins become noticeably less tolerant. The top end can get just a little spiky and unforgiving, and this hardness only gets more pronounced as you ramp up the volume. Bowers & Wilkins PX7 review: Battery life The codec essentially promises a smoother, glitch-free experience by overcoming potentially disruptive, busy radio frequency environments, and by automatically adjusting the streaming bitrate based on the content you’re playing.

Bowers says that its latest efforts here boast "significant advances in overall sound quality" compared to the outgoing Px7 S2, a key contributor to that progression being "extensively upgraded DSP" thanks to the learnings from the flagship Px8. The company says it took our (very minor) criticisms of the Px7 S2 onboard to refine the sonic formula, too, and believes it has opened the sound up a little. My take is somewhere in the middle. I love its sturdiness, but dislike that it attracts hand oils and has an unpolished matte finish. Don’t get me wrong; I’ll take it over the Bose 700 and WH-1000XM4’s predominantly plastic designs any day. I can also see why many would prefer the cleaner, refined presence of the original. Something else that makes this version more distinctive is the diamond-cut detailing around the plates that complement the raised metallic B&W logo. The Music app also offers direct access to music streaming service libraries you’re signed up to (currently Deezer, Qobuz, Tidal and TuneIn are supported, with more due to be "added soon"), though as nice and familiar as the integrated Tidal interface is on the Music app, we can’t see many people preferring it to Tidal’s own. The Headphones app is a simple affair with options for noise cancelling and Ambient pass-through mode. You can also adjust the proclivity of the wear sensor, add another device for the multi-point pairing feature and listen to soundscapes from the natural world. I’m not sure how much use that will get, but perhaps people will use it for more relaxing moments. If the headphones require an update, you’ll receive a prompt in the app.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.

The build quality is a testament to luxury, featuring a sleek, minimalist design and top-notch materials for long-lasting durability. Both the B&W Px7 S2e vs B&W Px8 are truly high-grade headphones, boasting gorgeous designs crafted from premium-end materials, impressive feature sets and the sort of elegant, intuitive sound that has made Bowers such a respected name across the audio world.The quality of the materials and the design style says premium and that also applies to the sound quality. Out of the box, the Bowers & Wilkins PX7 is extremely bassy and has rather odd areas of under-emphasis leading to bizarre-sounding music. Bass emphasis is pretty consistently 10dB higher than it should be, making the sub-bass and bass twice as loud as they would on headphones that follow the SoundGuys headphone preference curve. Additionally, that peak between 6-9kHz does a decent job of making highs stand out in the cacophony of modern pop mixes, but it can make those sounds especially grating at times. Lows, mids, and highs The P5 were the acclaimed British hi-fi brand’s first headphones, and I worked them to the bone. I wore through the leather on the magnetic earpads while discovering my love of '90s hip-hop, idolized the trumpet lines of Booker Little, and repeated the same songs over and over (and over) until I could play them just how my teachers wanted. Go down the manual route by actually taking the headphones off, and thanks to proximity sensors, your music is automatically paused, only to come to life again once they’re returned to your head. Cranked up to full volume for the experience the detail doesn’t disappear, though bass becomes a little more prominent. They go far louder than I could stand for a long time.