Bowers & Wilkins Px8 vs. AirPods Max: redefining luxury headphones

Back in 2017, Bowers & Wilkins convinced me that wireless audio had reached a point of excellence.

I no longer own the P7, but today their distant successors, the Bowers & Wilkins Px8, are perched on my head as I write this—prompting me to reflect on what a successful upgrade entails. When I buy audio equipment, my goal is simple: to move the goalpost. The new item needs to be better than what came before it on most—if not all—fronts. It should become the new benchmark by which I judge its peers.

These days, somewhat reluctantly, the Apple AirPods Max are my benchmark for Bluetooth headphones with ANC (Active Noise Cancellation). It’s time to see if Bowers & Wilkins can usurp them.

How do they sound?

The Bowers & Wilkins Px8 sound brilliant. Once you put them on, they’re impossible not to pay attention to.

To be honest, I struggle to multi-task while listening to music. My brain is wired to latch onto any music I hear and either immerse in it fully, or deconstruct it into a kaleidoscope of inspiration. Hazards of being a composer. But to the extent that I can manage it (usually with something like Endel’s vapid drones), it’s even harder than usual for me to multi-task with the Px8. There’s so much sound here that I’m compelled to focus on all the wonderful nuances they reveal. I’m seduced.

But it’s quite a different sound signature from the AirPods Max.

Out of the box, the bass hits hard—too hard. The excess energy down low was overshadowing the higher frequencies, collapsing the sense of sonic width and smothering the poise and precision I later came to love. Luckily, as with most modern Bluetooth headphones, you can control the character of the sound using an app. With Bowers & Wilkins, this control comes in the form of Low/High EQ sliders. Each slider adjusts a gentle shelving filter. The lack of granularity makes these controls hard to get wrong, which hopefully encourages more people to make use of them—because these headphones really benefit from a few small adjustments to the stock tuning.

I found that setting the treble slider around +1 and the bass around -3 creates a balance that feels more natural to my ears. This re-balancing doesn’t negate the lively, engaging attitude that drew me to these headphones in the first place.With those adjustments made, I settled in to appreciate the magnificent portable hi-fi experience that was hiding under the wonky stock tuning. These headphones are engrossing and flat-out entertaining to listen to. I’m not sure they’re the first pair I’d reach for when critically evaluating my mixes, but they put a smile on my face every time I listen to a favourite piece of music through them.

I find myself compulsively looking for time to cruise through new music discoveries—I love this feeling!

Bowers & Wilkins Px8 vs. Apple AirPods Max

Throughout this review, I’ll compare the Px8 with the Apple AirPods Max. Not only because I have both on hand for direct A/B testing, but also because I suspect many of you are cross-shopping these models.

I tested both pairs back to back following my usual method, which is intended to overcome the brain’s poor audio memory. It’s worth noting that my AirPods Max have Personalized Spatial Audio configured, even though I mostly listen to music with Spatial Audio turned off. I also want to stress that what I’m about to describe are nuanced differences that matter to me. Whether you would care about—or even notice—any of these things only you can say for certain.

For starters, the Px8 can get a lot louder than the AirPods Max. I appreciate my hearing and want to protect it, so I keep the volume below the midpoint most of the time and find it’s plenty loud enough. Of course…it’s exhilarating to push it up for those brief moments when you crave a bit more. Like with a performance car, there’s lots of headroom here.

At higher volumes, the uppermost frequencies on the AirPods Max sound slightly harsher, even though the Px8 have more detail retrieval up there. There’s a tiny sense of graininess or brittleness in the AirPods that the Px8 simply don’t have.

The AirPods Max offer solid soundstage width for closed-back headphones. That’s especially true with Spatial Audio active on the right recording, but can be the case even in stereo. Despite other reviews priming me to expect differently, the Px8 do indeed beat the AirPods Max here. Not only in horizontal width, but also in the sense of depth and sound positioning. You get an ever-so-slightly more “smeared” impression of instrument placement on the AirPods.

Let me draw from another hobby to offer you an analogy: imagine looking at a photograph of the musicians playing in front of you. With the AirPods Max, the photo’s a bit blurry; you can still tell where everyone is, but you can’t make out the details, so the boundaries between them are hazy. On the Px8, it’s a sharper picture. You can tell what watch the bassist’s wearing. Heck, with the right quality of recording, you could probably hear it ticking.

The Px8 are more dynamic as well. On headphones with poor dynamic range, the gap between the loudest and quietest sound is compressed, as though everything is being squeezed together. When you read reviews where people talk about a headphone sounding “processed”, this is often part of the problem they’re referring to. Very dynamic mixes, common in music with acoustic instruments, can sound artificially flattened, even tame on the AirPods in a direct comparison against the Px8.

The Px8 whispers and roars. Listening to a quality recording can be transcendental. But by the same token, bad mixes have nowhere to hide. If you want safe, go with the AirPods. If you want special, you’ll want to hear the Bowers & Wilkins.

Bowers & Wilkins Px8 vs. Focal Bathys

My fellow audiophiles might be wondering why I chose the Px8 over their biggest competition, the Focal Bathys? When I did my usual obsessive cross-shopping, I noted that many reviews favoured the Bathys. In fact, I was surprised to see a number of reviews criticizing the sound of the Px8 quite harshly.

This didn’t fit with my experience of Bowers & Wilkins. Every product of theirs I’ve owned has felt like it set a new benchmark for what I expect of consumer hi-fi products going forward. Specifically, the aforementioned P7 Wireless and a very early version of their unmistakable Zeppelin home speaker both felt substantially better in their respective categories than what I’d heard before them.

Still, every company makes missteps. I visited my favourite local hi-fi store and listened to the two pairs back to back for a while to gauge the differences for myself. This isn’t a review of the Focal Bathys, and I didn’t spend enough time with that pair to give you a fair evaluation. But I can tell you this: in that initial listening session, the Bathys left me impressed, but...unmoved. They’re excellent, just not distinctive.

When it came time to put down the cash, it’s the Px8 that came home with me.

If looks could thrill

After unboxing, my pair took an extraordinarily long time to perform their first firmware update—we’re talking like thirty minutes. They didn’t force me to apply it, at least; I chose to.

But I didn’t mind the delay too much because I spent the first few minutes admiring how these headphones look. The Bowers & Wilkins Px8 are beautiful, and I’m glad I took a chance on one of the bolder colours. This may be the most gorgeous green hue on a consumer electronics product. I literally said “wow” out loud to myself when I pulled the case (a real case!) out of the box, and then “damn” when I pulled the headphones out of that case.

The way the Px8’s distinctively squared-off earcups attach, via backward-slung arm joints, is perhaps the focal point of the design. These arms look sculpted with pride, unlike like the nesting pool noodles of the AirPods.

On the other hand, the Px8’s visual profile when worn will be wider than with the AirPods Max, with more obvious gaps between the headband arms and the side of your head. This isn’t a big deal to me, but it’s worth noting for those who might mind.

Though both headphones feature impressive industrial design, the Px8 are mid-century modern to the AirPods’ minimalism. Others like the look of the AirPods Max, and I can appreciate it too, to an extent. The shapes are certainly striking…but everything is cold.Conversely, Bowers & Wilkins have drawn from their profound experience with high-end materials to assemble these headphones from a blend of metals, synthetics, and leathers that impart a warmer, more sophisticated impression of luxury.It’s not just a matter of aesthetics, though. Bowers & Wilkins have considered how their material and design choices impact daily use.

For instance, the earcups are soft and plush against the skin of my face, not scratchy. Inside, the Px8 leaves more room for my ears, and the reduced contact there helps ward off the sense of itchiness that I often get from the AirPods Max. As someone who uses over-ear headphones mostly indoors in climate-controlled environments and never while exercising (pro tip: don’t wear over-ear headphones while exercising), I encounter the itchiness problem way more often than sweaty ears, so this material choice makes more sense for me.

Still, the design isn’t without its flaws.

For one thing, the headband could use more width. The cushioning is good, don’t get me wrong, and the headphones don’t create a hotspot on the top of my head as readily as the Sony XM5s did, but they’re more prone to it than the AirPods Max, which benefit from the broad mesh hammock in their headband. What this amounts to is me having to adjust the position of the Px8 on my head over the course of longer listening sessions. Unfortunate? Sure. Deal-breaker? No.

The other thing that bothers me is the logo, which is unnecessarily prominent. Bowers & Wilkins’ headphone designs are recognizable enough that they didn’t need to place their logo so ostentatiously. It comes off as insecure in an otherwise confident design.

Living with the Px8

Since we’re talking about Bluetooth headphones, there’s more to the story than just how they sound and feel.

When people talk about the advantages of AirPods, they usually mention how Apple has built some proprietary software enhancements into their operating systems that make connecting AirPods and switching between devices with them more pleasant. This is not as big an advantage as they would like you to believe.

The Px8 can connect to multiple devices too, and they can stay actively connected to any two at the same time, allowing for seamless hand-off between your laptop and phone, or tablet and TV, or whatever combination you need. For my uses, this turns out to be plenty.

If you’re not immersed in the Apple ecosystem, you’ll also benefit from access to more advanced Bluetooth codecs that unlock higher-resolution audio, lower latency, and other advantages.

In terms of environmental audio processing, your expectations are likely correct: noise cancelling and transparency (Bowers & Wilkins calls it “Pass-through”) performance on the Px8 aren’t as good as on the AirPods. That AirPods transparency mode really does spoil you. The noise cancellation, however, isn’t that far off and is more than sufficient for flights and transit trips.

Those two features rely on the array of six microphones built into these headphones, which are also used for calls. I expected more of a gap between the Px8 and the AirPods Max on this front, but the truth is they trade blows: neither sound amazing, but in ideal conditions the Px8 retain more of the overall body and character of my voice. Similarly, higher frequency sounds, especially sibilant phonemes like “s”, “t”, “sh”, etc. don’t get quite as badly damaged on the Px8 as on the AirPods Max.

While comparing the waveforms of recorded audio snippets, I noticed that the AirPods Max retain more of the original dynamics of my voice. Quieter sounds stay quieter and louder sounds get louder and can even distort. For listening, you want as much dynamic range as possible, but for mic input it’s not necessarily a good thing. The Px8 perform a bit of dynamic range compression, which is typical for professional vocal recordings because it keeps you consistently audible to the listener. If you speak quietly, it’ll make sure you’re still heard, and if you yell it’ll attenuate the levels. The overall effect is a slightly quieter but more predictable, less fatiguing experience for those on the other end of the call.

While using the Bowers & Wilkins on calls, you’ll notice a bit of sidetone, too—that’s the ability to hear what you sound like to the other person. This is a nice touch, especially when you have ANC active, as it helps you avoid speaking more loudly than you need to.

Perhaps the most significant upgrade over my AirPods Max has been battery life.

Since you can switch them off, the Bowers & Wilkins Px8 aren’t constantly draining charge when you aren’t using them. And the difference is staggering: I typically charge my AirPods Max every three days or so, depending on usage, but despite using them more it took me over a week just to get the Px8 to 50%. Between that and USB-C charging (my AirPods Max are the original Lightning variety), living with these headphones has been significantly more pleasant from a power perspective.

Besides the power switch, the Px8 also have volume up/down buttons straddling a multifunction control that performs the usual play/pause tasks, plus a single button on the left earcup for switching between noise cancelling, pass-through, and an “off” mode that disables any environmental processing. Having physical buttons is great, especially here in Canada where winter can make touch controls unpleasant and unreliable. But I slightly prefer adjusting volume on the AirPods Max with a spin of the Digital Crown. It gives me more granular control from a simpler movement, though admittedly it can be harder to land on a precise spot.

The Px8 feature a wired listening mode that works with any USB-C cable, unlike the terrible and expensive Lightning-to-3.5mm cable my AirPods Max require for wired listening (now discontinued). Is the difference between wired and wireless listening large? No—and that’s the remarkable part.

Wired or not, you can enjoy perceptually lossless, high-resolution music on these headphones. It’s a testament to the engineering prowess of Bowers & Wilkins, and advancements in Bluetooth technology that you can stream up to 24-bit/48kHz audio on these (using the AptX Adaptive or AptX HD codecs on supported source devices—sorry, Apple friends). That’s significantly higher fidelity than CD audio being transmitted, and it’s happening wirelessly.

This is by no means unique to the Bowers & Wilkins Px8, but I appreciate and celebrate it nonetheless. Wireless audio has come a long way, and it’s wonderful to see.

I didn’t want to read that much, can you summarize?

Here’s what you need to know:

• The Bowers & Wilkins Px8 are supremely enjoyable headphones, with an immersive and exciting sound...provided you make some EQ tweaks.
• They outshine the AirPods Max in sound, design, and comfort, though a wider headband and subtler logo placement would be welcome improvements.
• Battery life is a game-changer. A charge can last me two weeks on these, compared to the 3 days or so I get from my AirPods Max.
• ANC and Transparency modes are both worse than on the AirPods Max. The former by a little and the latter by a lot. But I prefer how the Px8 handle microphone input for calls.
• Even connected via Bluetooth to an iPhone (so listening to them at their worst, technically), the Px8 are consistently and noticeably better sounding than any competing products I’ve tried thus far. Listening over a better Bluetooth connection, or wired, they’re simply sublime.

Moving the goalpost

Do I recommend the Bowers & Wilkins Px8? Yes, absolutely. Are they the first pair I’d recommend to the average person asking me for advice? Unlikely.

These are specialized. Expensive. They’re a premium choice in a category where you’re already paying extra for the convenience of Bluetooth connectivity. With the AirPods Max, the extra money buys you things like Spatial Audio, best-in-class transparency, and a few proprietary Bluetooth tricks. With the Px8, you’re buying a more mature sound, better materials, and a number of quality-of-life improvements like superior battery life and a solid case.

Which flavour of luxury do you prefer?

Ask yourself why you’re interested in the first place. Do you use headphones mostly as a utility to cancel or drown out the sounds around you while you do other things? That describes most people, and to them I’d say don’t waste your money on the Px8. The ways in which they’re better than the competition aren’t likely to impact you, and that’s perfectly fine. Save your money for things that matter. Do you appreciate those benefits but care about getting a hi-fi sound that rewards active listening, in a form factor that looks and feels sophisticated? Then the Px8 should be on your shortlist of contenders.

After I reviewed the Sony XM5 last year, despite enjoying the experience overall, I didn’t keep them. Like I said at the start: to earn a place on my desk, a new piece of audio equipment has to move the goalpost. It has to improve upon basically every aspect of what came before them. The Sonys didn’t.

But the Px8? Oh yeah, these aren’t going anywhere. Anyone want to buy a pair of AirPods Max?