It’s 9 p.m. on a Monday, and Chelsea rainfall is tapping 16th notes at the skylights. I’m sick on King’s Highway, dull cabs write rainy S-curves, their windshield wipers preserving presen with an imaginary drum loop. I’m in London, a minimum of mentally. My head is nestled in a couple of Onyx Black Bowers & Wilkins Px8 S2 over-ear noise-canceling Bluetooth headphones, “Retrograde” by means of James Blake pouring in. My frame is in row 23, someplace over the Atlantic. Because the music stretches, tenderness turns into structure, creation wind wallet and uncovered beams between lengthy pauses. I float towards the slim fringe of morning in a gravity nicely of weightless pain.
A time then, I’m in a dull teacher winding its approach north from Shepherd’s Bush to North Kensington. I step out at Ladbroke Corridor—fresh West London brick and iron, an Edwardian shell remade as an exhibition dimension that this night feels phase birthday celebration, phase sacrament. Within, Bowers & Wilkins is consecrating the Px8 S2, the corporate’s upgraded flagship wi-fi headphones. James Blake sits at a Steinway, arms feathering the keys and falsetto emerging like steam off stone. The degree is petite, and the span between each and every hushed consonant and piano hammer is cathedral-sized.
Blake and David Beckham attend as emblem ambassadors—the soundtrack and face of the Px8 S2’s “For the Journey” ad campaign mapping the sonic and solitary topography of progress. I’m on an fresh progress, a one-night London layover month working the Px8 S2 thru JFK bustle and Heathrow hustle, to not point out CDG chaos. The query is modest: Is that this audacious $799 replace valuable of topping the already acclaimed Px7 S3 released earlier in 2025?
Tony Ware
On degree ahead of the functionality, B&W Director of Product Advertising & Communications Andy Kerr proclaims the Px8 S2 is the results of 15 years of trial, error, “but there’s been an awful lot of brilliance, as well.” The corporate’s benefit, he isn’t shy to mention, is that its headphones can also be referenced no longer best towards world-class loudspeakers taking part in track, however towards loudspeakers worn to assistance form track within the first park (as I noticed on a previous tour of Abbey Road studios, the place B&W 801 D4 audio system are keep watch over room displays).
A hearth chat on shared loves and longing follows, and Blake finds that, later relocating from LA to London, he’s put in B&W audio system in his private studio. He provides that he wrote “Make Something Up,” the monitor that rankings the Px8 S2’s transitory self-government, on a guitar he slightly knew how you can play games, an experiment unlocking fresh patterns. And that is doubly becoming for the Px8 S2: headphones, like guitars, are a habitual supply in a position to freeing untouched expressions when revisited.
The develop
The Px8 S2 builds on a platform offered with the Px7 S3 (a collection from April 2025 that we briefly awarded supremacy honors in our best headphones for travel roundup). The Px7 S3 is a savvy starter. It’s elegant, lively, and at $479 more affordable. However the Px8 S2 wraps an much more subtle end round this optimized structure, month additionally improving inner elements.
The Px7 S3 established itself with an overhauled engine: the tonality coil, postponed, magnet form all reengineered for extra nimble transients and lower-distortion depths. It positioned all of this overdue a 40mm bio-cellulose driving force purposefully angled beneath acoustically clear material inside a slimmer chamber to support are compatible and imaging. Buttons had been tactile, felt no longer fauxed, a peace resistance to ghost-swipe UIs. The Px8 S2 is that cosy hug of a chassis much more finely chiseled.
The Px8, exempt in September 2022, already grew to become heads with its leather-clad, metal-accented self belief. And the Px8 S2 doubles i’m sick at the specifics each lovely and sensible. There’s nonetheless Nappa leather-based alongside the serviceable ear pads and headscarf, against this to the Px7 S3’s material and leatherette. However the Px8 S2’s profile is each stylistically trimmed and electronically decorated, with a fresh eight-mic array embedded so gate brokers and convention yelps tone human, no longer like speaking right into a fan.
Date B&W claims that the ear cup measurements are the similar between the Px7 S3 and Px8 S2 and that the foams and stylistic fabrics selected don’t increase or attenuate the headphones whatsoever, the Px8 S2 feels each reasonably roomier and reasonably extra separating. And, at a well-distributed 310g, comfy for lengthy listening classes. An uncovered nylon-sheathed cable runs from the laser-etched logo-adorned ear cups alongside a cultured trench within the die-cast aluminum fingers. It’s a distinguishing aesthetic extra couture than client … unique, a nod to B&W headphone design parts from a decade in the past, although divisive to a few. Like several issues luxurious, the develop is tight tolerances, refuse flex, refuse fuss.
Within, a 40mm Carbon Cone driving force and bespoke 24-bit DSP effort to show scurry pace into a personal blending suite. Bluetooth 5.3 with aid for AAC and aptX Adaptive/Lossless supplies wi-fi answer as much as 24/96 with a suitable supply, however it’s nonetheless lossy. A USB-C connection guarantees constancy by no means falters. On paper, this may learn incremental; at the head, it’s enormous. Within the thoughts of Bowers & Wilkins, it’s the leap from high-performance to reference, sonic tailoring that wears fantastically.
The Px8 S2 (photographs one and two), compared to the Px7 S3 (photographs 3 and 4) and the actual Px8 (photographs 5 and 6).
The tone
Seven a.m. on a late-September time, and the luminous can block you mid-step because it hits at an entrancing perspective that’s the best ratio of glow and shade. Neatly-tuned headphones too can put across that influence. The Px8 S2 captures that belief.
It’s the way it renders dimension, no longer simply items. Transients come on blank; cymbals and hi-hats grow to be to sighs ahead of they are able to flip bright … wind, refuse glare. In comparison to the actual Px8, which had a touch of undisciplined heat blanketing the bass-to-mids transition, there’s audible tightening and extra articulate timing around the spectrum. Bass remains to be ample, anchoring, simply higher contoured. The mids ask over you in, instead than beg to be set free. Up supremacy, microdetails create songs really feel inhabited, instead than exhibited.
Put the Px8 S2 towards the Px7 S3, and the S2 showcases a fatigue-free composure. The Px7 S3 democratizes just right style, however has a extra amusing curve. The Px8 S2 has extra nuanced range. It’s no longer analytical, simply extra resolving … the type of eloquence-first, forensics-second manner that wins over 15 tracks, no longer 15 seconds.
Remove a monitor like James Blake’s “Limit To Your Love,” a sparse, singular defend of the Feist actual with its subterranean wobble and treble hail. The Px8 S2 places its under-voiced, extensively spaced chords on an intimate, luminously textured degree. It we could the plank and cord breathe during the shuddering tone. Quitness-to-loud arcs really feel steady. A luminous dip within the upper-bass/lower-mids of the 5-band EQ within the B&W Track app can provide a little bit extra openness, however a behind-the-board immediacy residue the core intent.
Ladbroke Corridor, host to James Blake acting.
The realization
Around the Atlantic and again, the Px8 S2 proved it would saving sound and offer protection to calm. And the upgraded active noise cancellation is magnificient, although no longer absolutist. It doesn’t restrain the sector like a Bose QuietComfort Ultra (2nd Gen.), and even the AirPods Pro 3. It gained’t have you ever vibin’ in a vacuum just like the extra bass-enriched, ANC-reinforced Sony WH-1000XM6. The Px8 S2 effectively (re)directs your focal point to cleanly layered tone towards a pitch-black background. It helps to keep timbre tidy, whether or not taking part in songs piled with 808s or plastered with reverb. And the 30-hour battery guarantees dynamics persevere.
There are headphones with a personality and readability that may deal an supplementary for individuals who need punch with much more incisive treble reaction, such because the Focal Bathys MG. However that upper-band front-row edge prices virtually two times as a lot. There’s a drawing close fidelity-first flagship from some other emblem for individuals who prioritize clean, spacious vocals and surgical sound keep watch over.
The place the Px8 S2 in reality excelled used to be with a personality related to James Blake’s functionality: the facility to position presence ahead of show, to seize consideration with out difficult it. B&W says a late-2025 OTA replace will convey a proprietary immersive method, with out converting the core voicing. At this pace, the Bowers & Wilkins Px8 S2 headphones be on one?s feet out for an plain command of texture and timing.
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