Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S2

Bowers & Wilkins has taken its highly impressive Px7 headphones and set out to make them even better. Ed Selley studies the incremental gains

-  Ed Selley

WHEN IT COMES to fixing things that weren’t particularly broken, audio brand Bowers & Wilkins is something of a master. Its Px7 wireless headphones (reviewed HCC #308) were a completely competitive device right up until the moment production ceased. Nevertheless, the Px7 S2s are here to replace them and, despite the name suggesting they're more of the same, a surprising amount has been changed.

B&W says the cans make use of an ‘all-new acoustic platform,’ including freshly minted 40mm drivers – actually slightly smaller than before – that are angled inside the earcups (in fact, the Px7's 43mm units were also angled, but Bowers & Wilkins made less of a ‘thing’ about it). The thinking here is that this helps with the perception of a stereo image.

These new drivers are combined with a Bluetooth v5.2 wireless connection, with aptX Adaptive and AAC codec support, an uptick on the previous design's v5.0 spec. And B&W's active noise cancelling (ANC) system now uses six microphones rather than four to better evaluate the difference in noise levels inside and outside the enclosures.

Rated battery life is similar in capacity (30 hours) to the first-gen Px7, which is no bad thing as it was very good. A new trick is the ability to give you seven hours of playback from a 15-minute burst charge.