Review: Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S2 Headphones

It’s one thing to pick a fight with the biggest kid in the playground. It’s quite another to attempt to do it on your own terms. But with its new Px7 S2 wireless over-ear headphones, Bowers & Wilkins has basically squared up to Sony and enquired as to whether or not the Japanese behemoth would like some. Bold? Reckless? A bit of both? 

A couple of years ago, Bowers & Wilkins launched its original Px7 wireless noise-canceling on-ear headphones and priced them to meet the incumbent class leader, Sony’s WH-1000XM4, head on. And by playing on its heritage as well as to its strengths, Bowers & Wilkins delivered a pair of headphones able to compete where the fundamentals of sound quality were concerned. Yes, they were a bit chintzy, a bit try-hard in appearance, but they had it where it counted, and they were a valid audio-focused alternative to the all-singing, all-dancing, all-conquering Sony option.

Last month, Sony launched its WH-1000XM5. The price is up a bit, the weight is down a bit, the list of features and functionality remains as long as your arm. And so here comes Bowers & Wilkins with a new model. The price is up a bit, the weight is down a bit, the emphasis on sound quality and rather self-conscious “sophistication” remains exactly the same.

Photograph: Bowers & Wilkins

What that means for the outside of the Px7 S2, then, is a look that’s both premium and understated, delivered by deploying high-quality and tactile materials. At least, that’s true of our black review sample. The $399 (£379) Px7 S2 is also available in gray or blue, but we’d be surprised if those finishes undermine the impression of quality. 

A combination of soft, pliant, memory-foam-filled leather at the contact points, flawlessly applied fabric on the outer parts of the headband and ear cups, high-quality and silent plastics for the arms and hinges, and a sky-high overall standard of build helps the Px7 S2 look and feel good. Even the case in which they travel feels a cut above the norm. 

Bowers & Wilkins has finessed the headband hanger arrangement and reassessed the clamping force in an effort to make these headphones more comfortable than the model they replace. And assisted by shaving a percentage point off the weight (307 g against the 310 g of the old Px7), it’s actually worked. The Px7 S2 are no burden to wear, and they stay comfortable even through long listening sessions. It helps that the ear pads resist returning your own body heat to the sides of your head for an impressively long time.

Photograph: Bowers & Wilkins

There have been revisions on the inside too. But what hasn’t altered is Bowers & Wilkins’ determination for these headphones to be the choice for customers who value sound quality more highly than, say, adaptive active noise cancellation. The Px7 S2 use Bluetooth 5.0 for wireless connectivity and are compatible with SBC, AAC, and aptX Adaptive codecs—so 24-bit high-resolution audio quality is available. The sound itself is delivered by a pair of 40-mm full-range, free-edge dynamic drivers. This is an all-new bio-cellulose design with lower total harmonic distortion figures than the driver it supersedes. 

The company is claiming improvements to its active noise-cancellation performance, but it remains a binary on-or-off system, which may not impress those customers used to the extensive adjustment available from a pair of Sonys. There have also been changes to the mic array in an effort to improve call quality and to offer a more convincing pass-through function when you want to hear what’s going on around you.

Battery life is unchanged, at 30 hours from full to flat—but it’s an eminently achievable figure, and so remains competitive if hardly groundbreaking. What has been improved, though, is charging time: The Px7 S2 can be brimmed from empty in two hours (the old model took three) and will play for seven hours after just a quarter of an hour on the power.

Photograph: Bowers & Wilkins

Control options aren’t the most extensive, but those available are well implemented. Bowers & Wilkins has ignored the option of touch control, and there’s no voice-assistant built into the Px7 S2 either. Instead, control is available via a combination of physical controls and the company’s Music app. 

Arranged around the edge of the right ear cup are buttons covering power on/off/Bluetooth pairing, volume up/down, and a multifunction button that can handle play/pause and skip forward/backward depending on the number of pushes it receives. These controls are quite small, quite close together, and quite similarly shaped—but they don’t take too long to get used to. 

There’s also a USB-C socket on this ear cup too. It can be used for charging or hard-wired listening. Indeed, the Px7 S2 are supplied with USB-C-to-USB-C and USB-C-to-3.5 mm cables for these purposes.

On the other ear cup there’s a single multifunction button, which can either scroll through your limited noise-canceling options (on/off/pass-through) or wake your source player’s native voice assistant. You can decide which of these functions you prefer in the Music app, which is also where you’ll find access to EQ adjustment, integrate your favorite music streaming services, and so on. Compared to the Sony Headphones control app, options in Music are in short supply, but it’s a useful and effective app as far as it goes.   

Photograph: Bowers & Wilkins

It doesn’t take all that much of a listen to confirm that the Px7 S2 picks up where the original Px7 left off—and as far as pure sound quality goes, that’s unequivocally a good thing. Playing Chris Page’s intimate, spacious version of Car Seat Headrest’s “Destroyed by Hippie Powers,” there’s a lovely sense of immediacy and directness to the sound. Organization and focus is excellent, with each element of the recording secure in its own area of the large and well-defined soundstage. Despite the spaciousness and definition of the sound, though, the Bowers & Wilkins manage to present it as a single piece, a unified entity in which each element relates to and responds to every other element. And so it sounds authentically like a performance.

Throughout the frequency range, tonality is beautifully consistent and convincing. Low frequencies are deep and textured, nicely shaped and utterly without the overstatement or lack of rigor that quite a few alternative designs seem to have mistaken for “excitement.” 

The top end is crisp and substantial, equally detailed and equally disinclined to favor shock and awe over fidelity. And in between, singers of all kinds will benefit from the naturalistic, nuanced and gratifyingly detailed Px7 S2 presentation. On a technical level, the midrange reproduction is nicely realized, with transient response and depth of insight really impressing—but it’s the positivity and realism of these headphones that is really striking. They sound capable of allowing a vocalist to present themselves with all their character, attitude, and technique accounted for.

Switching to a high-resolution file of Aphex Twin’s “Start As You Mean to Go On” allows the Px7 S2 to demonstrate mastery of even the grimiest, filthiest analog keyboard distortion and a pleasantly unfussy approach to rhythms and tempos. Other similarly priced alternatives demonstrate a little more certainty where rhythmic expression is concerned, but the Bowers & Wilkins are no slouch in this regard—we’re talking increments. It seems unlikely you’ll listen to some rhythm-centric dance-floor-based recordings through the Px7 S2 and wonder if they have two left feet.

The same recording allows these headphones to demonstrate considerable dynamic potency too. The low-level harmonic variations are identified and delivered, while the big drops and volume changes most EDM indulges in are given full expression. 

The revised active noise cancellation works well. The Px7 S2 are able to deal with the majority of external sounds this side of a motorcycle speeding past. And, what’s more, they do so without leaving any kind of audio aftertaste or corruption of their performance. Some rivals can do a more complete job of throwing a blanket over the outside world, but the Bowers & Wilkins are accomplished nevertheless. And they’re similarly improved where pass-through and call quality is concerned. The amplification of external sounds is vigorous but controlled, and both end of calls are crisp and coherent.

So we go out the way we came in, by observing that Bowers & Wilkins is attempting to take on Sony, but not entirely at its own game. If you want super-light, exhaustively specified headphones with a stack of functionality, impressive eco-credentials, and very decent sound, the Sony WH-1000XM5 are undoubtedly the way forward. But if you want to put the emphasis squarely on sound quality (without sacrificing the most important peripheral functionality as you do so), build quality, and straightforward pride of ownership, cast your glance in the direction of Bowers & Wilkins.