Bowers & Wilkins made one of the best wireless headphones currently in the market with the Px7 S2e, a stellar-sounding and feature-packed powerhouse that’s received much acclaim in the category. Its successor, the Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S3, vows to deliver even better performance.
They call it their “most advanced wireless headphone yet” and we’re inclined to agree. Boasting all-new driver units with dedicated headphone amps, improved noise canceling, and a reimagined industrial design, the headphones look set to deliver a much-improved listening experience over its predecessors.
The Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S3 are equipped with 40mm biocellulose drivers that are nearly a complete overhaul from the last generation, with a new chassis, voice coil, magnet, and suspension, reprising only the cone material from the last generation and nothing else. The updated drivers are designed to deliver less coloration and distortion, while providing improved resolution and dynamics. For the first time ever in the outfit’s over-ear headphones, the drive units are powered by discrete headphone amplifiers in each earcup, which, the outfit claims, allow it to bring more scale and energy to the resulting overall sound. Combine that with support for aptX Adaptive and aptX Lossless codecs for handling files up to 24-bit/96kHz and you’ve got a pair of cans ready to deliver detailed and refined sound on par with the best in the category.
The adaptive noise cancellation (ANC) has been updated to use an eight-microphone array located around the periphery of each ear cup. Two mics measure the output of each drive unit, while four are positioned at opposite ends of each earcup to ensure comprehensive pickup of any ambient noises in the vicinity. For voice calls, it relies on ADI Pure Voice, a voice processing technology that prioritizes voice preservation and noise suppression to elevate the quality of your voice calls.
The Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S3 has a battery rated for 30 hours of runtime with full ANC running, ensuring you can use it all day and go home with plenty of juice to spare. In case the battery drains out in the middle of listening, you can plug in for a 15-minute quick charge to replenish enough juice for seven hours of additional listening time. Physical buttons are available for easy control of playback and ANC settings, sparing you from having to launch the app to make minor adjustments. If you want a more thorough romp through the settings, though, you can open the B&W Music app, where you can access the five-band EQ, choose presets, tweak the ANC transparency mode, and more.
If you like those spatial audio features now available in some headphones, they got some of that here, too. It appears to be a custom proprietary solution from the outfit and will be rolled out later in the year as an over-the-air update. Another later update is set to bring Bluetooth LE Audio support, complete with Auracast broadcast functionality for easy music sharing.
The Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S3 is now available in the UK, EU, and other territories, priced at €429. US release date nor pricing have not been confirmed yet.
