First impressions of the Bowers & Wilkins PX Wireless headphones
We recently met with Bowers & Wilkins head of marketing, Jeff Connors, to learn more about the brand new Bowers & Wilkins PX Wireless headphones which the company released earlier last month. It was a little over a year ago that the storied audio company was acquired by a Silicon Valley home automation company called Eva Automation which was founded by former Facebook CFO (and San Francisco 49ers co-owner), Gideon Yu. I have to admit, I was a bit concerned about the acquisition when I first heard about it, but those concerns have been put to rest after meeting with Jeff and seeing the latest product release, the PX Wireless headphones.
The acquisition has led to some really interesting synergies, the fact the B&W now has an experienced Silicon Valley team behind them allowed them to build their own Digital Signal Processor (DSP) for the brand new PX headphones. According to Connors, the team built their own DSP from scratch, which allowed them to fine tune the sound they wanted to achieve. The company also released an app that allows you to control certain functionality on the PX headphones such as the three noise cancelling options and different levels of audio pass-through.
Initial Impressions of Bowers & Wilkins PX Wireless
Comfort–The PX headphones are incredibly comfortable in my short time with them so far. The headphones have a secure feeling on your head which is in part to the build quality and also because the ear cups wrap around your ears, so they’re not the kind of headphones you can forget you’re wearing, but they certainly haven’t bothered me in an extended listening session.
Sound–Wow, the soundstage on these headphones is incredible, it’s really big. In large part that’s thanks to the use of the same driver used for the P9 Signature headphones which is implemented on an angle directing the sound nicely into your ear canal. The PX also use the latest aptX HD Bluetooth technology allowing for up to 24-bit audio resolution.
Battery life–The Bowers & Wilkins PX Wireless headphones claim to offer 22 hours of battery life in wireless noise cancelation mode, and that can be increased to 33 hours of battery life if you decide to use the included 3.5mm headphone cable. I haven’t had a enough time to fully test the battery life but so far, so good.
Noise Cancellation–I haven’t had a chance to test this too extensively yet, but in my initial tests the three different modes (City, Office, Flight) work well at removing background noises while allowing through what they’re designed to (e.g. Office mode lets coworkers voices through when they’re talking to you and City will let through traffic noise).