Bowers & Wilkins’ Px8 S2 headphones land with comprehensive hi-res Bluetooth codec support, USB audio and a better noise-cancellation setup

• Px8 S2 is ‘the best headphone Bowers & Wilkins has ever made’
• aptX Lossless and Adaptive; 8 mics (rather than 6 in Px8)
• Available today, 24 September, priced $799 / £629 (around AU$1,289)

Well now. When a firm like Bowers & Wilkins tell us that its just created a set of over-ear headphones that set “a new benchmark for performance and design in the wireless over-ear category” it’s worth taking notice. Why? Oh, because both the Bowers & Wilkins Px8^[1] and newer (even better) Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S3^[2] upon which these are built are such stunningly good headphones.

So how has B&W outdone itself with the Px8 S2 – or to put it another way, what’s their chief bid for entry into our best headphones^[3] buying guide? Often, it’s a case of minor tweaks and incremental gains with these things, but there are a few nuggets of information on B&W’s spec sheet this time around that make the upgrades between iterations obvious.

Firstly, there’s a new Bluetooth chipset in the Px8 S2 built on Bluetooth 5.3 rather than 5.2, to offer “true 24-bit/96kHz audio connection” over USB plus aptX Lossless and Adaptive at 24/96 (rather than aptX HD in the older set).

There’s also an eight-mic array where all mics are used for telephony and six are used for active noise cancellation (six of the mics are external; two monitor internal audio) which is quite the upgrade from the six-mic array in the Px8, where four of the mics took care of ANC and only two helped with call-handling.

Bowers & Wilkins Px8 S2: what you need to know

Elsewhere, there’s a new voice call quality algorithm, and although the same 40mm dynamic cone driver reappears in each ear cup, B&W has upgraded the chassis and motor powering it to help eke more nuance and precision from your music.

Battery life is still a claimed 30 hours (which is no improvement on the older model and may prove a slight sticking point given the 100-hour battery of the sonically-splendid Cambridge Melomania P100^[4]) but you now get a five-band EQ tab for tweaking the sound signature to your liking, which is a solid step up from the two band bass/treble tweaks available in the older Px8.

Luxurious Nappa leather covers pretty much all of the classy build, but the aluminum arm^[5] mechanism has a new exposed cable detail. Do these metal accents make them heavier? Actually no, the headphones are a tiny bit smaller and lighter than the original Px8, but B&W has definitely slimmed down the case to make them easier to fit into your bag.

But what B&W really wants you to know is that these headphones feature a high-performance audio processing setup with dedicated DSP and amplifier/DAC (read: not the digital-to-analog-converter built into the chipset – B&W doesn’t trust anything other than its own solution to do the job there), because if you take nothing else away from this missive, know that I have met with the makers, and Bowers & Wilkins really wants to make the best-sounding pair of headphones in the world.

Has the UK firm achieved its goal? We’re working on a full review – I have a pair (see the attached images) and we’ll get that verdict to you as soon as we can. For now, know that the Bowers & Wilkins Px8 S2 launch today (September 24) in your choice of ‘Onyx Black’ or ‘Warm Stone’, priced $799 / £629 (around AU$1,289).

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