Bowers & Wilkins’ Px8 S2 Noise-Canceling Headphones Just Dropped

“An effortlessly desirable headphone that pairs exceptional sound with luxurious and elegant design.” Well, shoot. Usually, my eyes gloss over and bypass marketing speak, regardless of how handsome the product in question is, but Bowers & Wilkins is telling the truth there.

The Px8 S2 are beautiful headphones. The ear cups are Nappa leather, the arms are solid aluminum, and the exposed cabling has been routed for a touch of faux-retro, analog edginess.

heady improvements

The Px8 S2’s Carbon Cone drive units have been “optimized to further reduce distortion and enhance audio resolution at up to 24-bit/96kHz quality,” says Bowers & Wilkins, which is good news if you want to take advantage of music streaming apps’ highest-quality lossless audio tracks.

At 30 hours of juice between recharges, the Px8 S2 runs right down the middle in terms of headphones’ battery life. Not bad, not great. Just fine. If you need a quick charge, you can get seven hours’ worth of listening time from just 15 minutes of charging.

Bowers & Wilkins has added a new five-band EQ to its app, which you can pair with the headphones to tweak their listening settings. Of course, there’s active noise cancellation, which (in layman’s terms) uses software to detect and then cancel out incoming sound waves.

There’s also a passive noise cancellation mode and a transparency mode that uses the Px8 S2’s eight microphones to pick up ambient noises, such as people talking or gate announcements at the airport, and transmit them through the headphones’ speakers. At the same time, you listen to your podcast, audiobook, or music.

You hear more than just a passive set of headphones, or when the Px8 S2 is turned off, which is ideal for when you want to listen to your tunes but not be oblivious to the world around you.

Available in black and a kind of gravely, off-white named Warm Stone that’s not quite beige, the Px8 S2 are a pricey investment at $799.