Although not as recognisable as Sony or Apple, Bowers & Wilkins is a brand known for speakers and an expertise in sound that it first brought to the headphone market five years ago. Three years after the debut of its excellent PX7 wireless headphones, the PX8 are finally here, and while they cost $US700 overseas, Aussies will need to pay $1,149.
You have to really go out of your way to find reputable wireless headphones or earbuds that don’t include active noise cancellation functionality today, but back in 2019, it was a feature that helped differentiate premium headphone offerings and justify their steeper price tags. At the time, we may have bemoaned Bowers & Wilkins moving away from materials like leather and polished chrome for its PX7, which used carbon fibre and fabrics instead, but the cans a lightweight design with impressive ANC performance that helped justify a $699 price tag.
Fast-forward three years through a global pandemic that still isn’t over, and Bowers & Wilkins is finally ready to introduce a follow-up to its PX7 that brings back premium materials like diecast aluminium (in the arms), memory foam earcups, and a Nappa leather trim in a black or tan finish.
The new PX8 wireless headphones actually use the same active noise cancelling technology introduced in the company’s Px7 S2 headphones released earlier this year, but up the ante with new 40-millimetre Carbon Cone drivers featuring a design borrowed from Bowers & Wilkins’ 700 Series speakers. What that means to the average consumer is “low distortion throughout the frequency range” and “the best sound quality Bowers & Wilkins has ever delivered from a pair of wireless headphones,” or so the company claims.
The PX8 includes Qualcomm’s aptXTM Adaptive Bluetooth technology but also supports analogue cable connections through a USB-C port and/or a 3.5-millimetre headphone jack adaptor. Battery life is promised to be up to 30 hours, although it’s not specified if that’s with or without ANC turned on, and while a full charge takes two hours, a shortened 15-minute top-off can provide an additional seven hours of listening.
We haven’t had a chance to go ears-on with the new Bowers & Wilkins PX8 headphones yet, but the big question is how they’ll compare to the $800 Apple AirPods Max, or the $549 Sony WH-1000XM5s, given the new PX8 are available for $1,149. That’s quite a lot more than 2019’s PX7, and even the Px7 S2 from earlier this year: a steep price increase that can’t all be attributed to pandemic supply chain woes.