Bowers & Wilkins’ $700 PX8 Headphones Want to Take on the AirPods Max

Although not as recognizable as Sony or Apple, Bowers & Wilkins is a model recognized for audio system and an experience in sound that it first dropped at the headphone market 5 years in the past. Three years after the debut of its wonderful PX7 wi-fi headphones, the PX8 are lastly right here, they usually price $700.

You have to essentially exit of your option to discover respected wi-fi headphones or earbuds that don’t embrace lively noise cancellation performance right now, however again in 2019, it was a characteristic that helped differentiate premium headphone choices and justify their steeper worth tags. At the time, we might have bemoaned Bowers & Wilkins transferring away from supplies like leather-based and polished chrome for its PX7, which used carbon fiber and materials as a substitute, however the cans a light-weight design with spectacular ANC efficiency that helped justify a $400 price ticket.

Fast-forward three years by way of a world pandemic that also isn’t over, and Bowers & Wilkins is lastly able to introduce a follow-up to its PX7 that brings again premium supplies like diecast aluminum (within the arms), reminiscence foam earcups, and a Nappa leather-based trim in a black or tan end.

The new PX8 wi-fi headphones truly use the identical lively noise cancelling know-how launched within the firm’s Px7 S2 headphones launched earlier this 12 months, however up the ante with new 40-millimeter Carbon Cone drivers that includes a design borrowed from Bowers & Wilkins’ 700 Series audio system. What which means to the common client 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 corporate claims.

The PX8 contains Qualcomm’s aptXTM Adaptive Bluetooth know-how but in addition helps analogue cable connections by way of a USB-C port and/or a 3.5-millimeter headphone jack adapter. Battery life is promised to be as much as 30 hours, though it’s not specified if that’s with or with out ANC turned on, and whereas a full cost takes two hours, a shortened 15-minute high off can present an extra seven hours of listening.

We haven’t had an opportunity to go ears-on with the brand new Bowers & Wilkins PX8 headphones but, however the massive query is how they’ll examine to the $550 Apple AirPods Max, or the $400 Sony WH-1000XM5, given the brand new PX8 can be found right now for $700. That’s $300 greater than 2019’s PX7, and even the Px7 S2 from earlier this 12 months: a steep worth enhance that may’t all be attributed to pandemic provide chain woes.