The Bowers & Wilkins Px8 S2 Wireless Headphones offer top tier sound in an elegant design. If you’re seeking the best in wireless audio and don’t mind paying a little more for it then the Px8 S2’s are worth considering.
These headphones can feel pricey but in the spectrum of expensive headphones, it’s still a modest price point when you consider headphones like the Sennheiser HD 820 or Audeze MM-500‘s that ring in at around $2,200 / $1,700 respectively. Let’s take a gander at the specs on the Px8 S2’s.
Specs
The Px8 S2’s feature large 40mm dynamic full range carbon drivers with 24-bit DSP with a frequency range of 40Hz – 20,000Hz give the full spectrum of sound. Measure 177mm W x 60mm D x 234mm H or 6.97″ W x 2.36″ D x 9.21″ H.
The headphones weigh just 0.31 kg or 0.683433 lbs, which is just over a half a pound. Lightweight enough to wear for longer duration without the fatigue.
High performance DSP with dedicated amplifier/DAC
True 24-bit audio connection
5 band customizable EQ + TrueSound™ mode
Bluetooth 5.3 with aptX™ Lossless technology
Multi-point connectivity
Active Noise Cancellation (ANC)
USB-C charging and audio interface
Fast charging support
Apple MFi Made For iPhone support
Google Fast Pair
Supported Bluetooth Codecs: aptX Lossless, aptX Adaptive, aptX HD, aptX Classic, AAC, SBC
These were tested and reviewed with the 1.3.0 and 6.14.3.19 software.
“Spatial audio upgrade will be released later this year, with LE Audio to follow” but this doesn’t seemed to have happened yet.
Bowers & Wilkins has provided us with the Px8 S2’s so that we could provide hands on review coverage of the wireless headphones and our experience with them to our readers.
Battery Life and Recharging
Total runtime is about 30 hours but reports indicate that battery life depletes a bit quicker than that. We might agree. Runtime does seem to go by quickly but maybe it’s because we’re having fun? Recharge time feels quite fast. As per the specs the recharge time “plus 15-minute fast recharge for seven hours’ listening”.
Build Quality & Fit
The B&W Px8 S2’s feel amazing and inspire confidence when you pick them up. They may be slightly snug/small for larger head sizes but for us they are incredibly comfortable. They’re made with aluminum and Nappa leather covers for a very pleasant wearing experience. Each ear cup rotates 180 degrees for a good fit even when you move one or both cups off of your ears.
Each 40mm driver is positioned at an angle to more evenly disperse sound and contoured to your ears for a better more comfortable fit. You can see the angle when you look in the cup.
Plenty of cushion to feel good but still feels like it maintains somewhat of a modest footprint. The streamlined design feels sleek and sexy with the braided lines snaked through the headphone arms. I still feel relatively agile with them on my head.
Ergonomically these feel amazing when you put them on and while there is no magical set of headphones that don’t give fatigue, but the Px8 S2’s are pleasantly comfortable for long work and/or game sessions. They have exceptional cushion and these beautiful set of cans do seem to seal up the ears quite well for good passive noise cancellation.
Physical Controls
On the Right side ear cup is the Volume up, Multi-function, Volume down which doubles as controls for your phone calls. On the left earcup is the Pass-through & ANC on/off button which doubles as the Voice assistant button. Just under that is the Power and Bluetooth pairing toggle/button. Slide it up to turn the headphones on, hold it up for 5 seconds to being pairing your device or slide the toggle down to turn the headphones off.
Features
A mostly convenient feature lets you pause media without touching any function buttons. When you move one of the cans off your ear the media playing automatically stops and will start again when put them back on. If you want to let it continue without putting the ear cup back on you’ll need to hit play on whatever device you’re listening on. Alternatively, you can reach up and press the button on the left can to turn pass-through sound on. This way you can hear the outside the world without having to stop the media or physically remove your headphones.
The ANC or Active Noise Cancellation is engaged with the same pass-through button. ANC does work very well, although we are detecting a bit of hiss that is faintly noticeable. However it is removing a very significant amount of background noise when it is turned on. The good still far outweighs the bad in this case and it’s beneficial to have the feature.
Bluetooth connectivity is very good. We’re able to pair the Px8 S2’s with just about anything that supports Bluetooth from iPhone to Galaxy devices to Windows 10/11, Mac OS 26.2, PS5. Dual Pairing with both the Galaxy S23 Ultra and Windows 11 works very well. The audio will switch back and forth pretty well to hear both phone and Windows audio. It will do its best to alternate sound, you cannot hear both audio simultaneously.
On Windows 10/11 initially there was a pairing issue and audio stuttering issue. The solution is to connect your wireless antenna even if you are not using it. This was posted by a Reddit user and it works. Apparently there’s something to that theory that the Bluetooth connectivity is spotty when the WiFi antenna is not attached.
Active Noise Cancellation (ANC)
The ANC on the Px8 S2 headphones performs very well. We use it often. The ANC will mostly negate any additional background noise that makes it through the passive noise cancellation of the cans themselves. The ear cups do a great job of conforming to your head to create a good seal but they aren’t completely silent like you might find for shooting ear protection.
What this ANC does incredibly well is to remove those overpowering low level noises. Yes it helps sound that is more in the forefront but the hum of my PC case fans running at full speed under load is nearly non-existent. As mentioned there are 8 microphones total, 6 of which are used for ANC.
Audio Quality
Bluetooth APTx codec has come a long way and in tandem with the large 40mm dynamic drivers the Px8 S2’s enhanced audio quality is hard to overlook. Even some of the lower quality studio recordings on YouTube sound quite good on these. When used with the iPhone 15 pro max and Galaxy s23 Ultra the sound is robust and impressive. We don’t usually run Soundblaster cards these days so whatever is on the motherboard audio wise is typically what live with on the desktop machine.
Bass output feels well balanced and impactful. This is where the they shine. They’re able to seamlessly handle ringing base from electronic music to thick awe inspiring meaty heavy metal bass. It’s both loud and clean provided your source is. The bass is a defining characteristic of how B&W tunes their sound. Often the powerful bass is enhancing the clean highs. You do lose some of the mids but most people for general feel good music won’t notice it much as the bass thickens it all up and provides a fully enveloping sound experience. If you’re more of an audiophile who is used to studio headphones you may find the Px8 S2’s to be a bit less desirable without more EQ options.
Call Quality
While these will not be the go to earpiece for phone calls, the situation where we are on the keys, listening to music and a phone call comes in is quite frequent. Voice clarity is excellent and ANC only enhances the ability to clearly hear the person on the other end. There are a total of 8 microphones that are utilized for phone calls. There’s no boom mic but you don’t really need one.
Movies
The Px8 S2’s don’t have their firmware update yet. The rollout was delayed probably due to the displeasure of Px8 owners when their spatial audio update was rolled out and then promptly hot fixed and tweaked effectively rolling back the sound profile a bit. The response wasn’t good.
Movies don’t sound badly but the lack of spatial audio when watching a movie is obvious and things sound flat. We’ll come back and update the review once they do roll out the firmware update.
For now you can lean on your device for virtual surround sound enhancements. For example on the Galaxy devices you can turn on Dolby Atmos support or use your phone’s EQ use the Px8 S2 app EQ. Players like VLC player offer virtual surround sound settings that you can also try.
When watching movies the audio was a bit clearer and more crisp with the ANC turned off.
Music
Px8 S2’s Shine with Music. The bass output is able to handle a wide array of music like they were made for them. You can use the B&W mobile app EQ to set the sound profile. The Px8 S2’s are great out of the box too and are tuned to sound their best for the majority of things. While this isn’t the most eclectic list of music, we try to stick to some standard tunes from which to gauge headphone performance.
Something a bit more gritty like G n R’s It’s So Easy is apologetically in your face.
Nicki Minaj Truffle butter like the Px8 S2’s were made for this song
Pink Floyd’s Young Lust live recorded Aug 9th 1980, hearing this song like it’s the first time, sounds incredible.
Jason Nevin’s RUN-DMC remix of It’s like that, All bass and Rhythm like you’re standing in the middle of the Paladium in the 90’s.
Metallica Moth Into Flame sounds thick and meaty with plenty of clean crunch
Studio version of Pantera I’m Broken It’s Loud the way this song is meant to be heard.
Van Halen’s Mean Street blows your hair back.
The App and Equalizer
There are 2 EQ modes, True Sound where nothing is enhanced for a pure audio experience. There’s also a “Custom” which allows you to save presets that you can label for quick swapping.
The EQ can be accessed and set from the mobile app. There is a five-band EQ for lows, mids and highs with a range of +6/-6 for each of the bands. While this may seem a bit minimal it seems quite adequate for the avg everyday user. Sometimes too many choices make it difficult for the average consumer.
We are able to tweak out any sort of music from live to Studio, Electronic to Rock to Rap and Hip Hop sufficiently enough. Although you can actively connect to 2 devices you don’t have to stay paired to the phone for the EQ. You can tweak the EQ the way you want and close the app.
Our Overall Experience
We have been living, breathing and eating these for a couple of months now and our overall the experience has been a very pleasant one. The fit of the Px8 S2’s is quite good and comfortable. According to helmet sizes, my head is a medium across many different hat, helmets, head gear. That said, the fit on the Px8 S2’s feel slightly tight to me. They do need to be extended a bit before I can get them comfortably on my noggin for full out listening position. Once they are adjusted they feel snug but not uncomfortably so. I’m able to wear them for an hour or more but I can’t really wear over-the-ears any more than that for any brand.
The look and feel of the design is very attractive to us. The Px8 S2’s feel like quality and it makes you want to take care of them. Like all headphone cushions, I cringe thinking about the day they deteriorate and start to fall apart. These don’t feel much different but they are very nice and they’re fabricated with soft Nappa Leather which should age much better than pleather.
At the end of the day it’s all about audio quality and comfort and these hit the mark. They’ll appeal very well for the consumer as well as the prosumer with excellent balanced sound. Some may argue the mids are lacking but the EQ as limited as it may seem, does justice to round out everything you really want to hear. They are however tuned by default to have a focus on the pronounced bass and nice clean highs which really is a good average for making most music sound great typically.
The Px8 S2’s come in a ballistic nylon zippered case. The case is molded and padded with soft felt lined molded interior with a contoured fit in the case. You’ll just need to lay the earcups flat and retract the arms when you place it in the case. When you pay that much for headphones it’s nice to have a case to safely place them in when they’re not in use. At the center of the case is a magnetic door/compartment for the included 3.5mm audio jack to usb-c cable and usb-c to usb-c charge cable.
Conclusion
The audio quality on the Px8 S2’s ventures into the prosumer market. These are however not studio headphones, although they do have settings for pure sound unaltered sound within the EQ on the app. The Px8 S2’s feature fantastic Active Noise Cancellation coupled with a balanced and robust sound signature for a listening experience that will envelope you. They work very well as daily drivers for movies, music, phone calls and general listening. Hopefully a better movie experience once the spatial audio firmware is launched. If you have the extra flow, we recommend the B&W Px8 S2’s for great sound, convenient functionality and a pleasant overall experience.
$799.00 Bowers & Wilkins Px8 S2 Over-the-Ear Wireless Headphones
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