It’s 9 p.m. on a Monday, and Chelsea rain is tapping sixteenth notes on the skylights. Down on King’s Road, black cabs scribble wet S-curves, their windshield wipers keeping time with an imaginary drum loop. I’m in London, at least mentally. My head is nestled in a pair of Onyx Black Bowers & Wilkins Px8 S2 over-ear noise-canceling Bluetooth headphones, “Retrograde” by James Blake pouring in. My body is in row 23, somewhere over the Atlantic. As the song stretches, tenderness becomes architecture, forming air pockets and exposed beams between long pauses. I drift toward the thin edge of morning in a gravity well of weightless ache.
A day later I’m in a black coach winding its way north from Shepherd’s Bush to North Kensington. I step out at Ladbroke Hall—actual West London brick and iron, an Edwardian shell remade as an exhibition space that tonight feels part celebration, part sacrament. Inside, Bowers & Wilkins is consecrating the Px8 S2, the company’s upgraded flagship wireless headphones. James Blake sits at a Steinway, fingers feathering the keys and falsetto rising like steam off stone. The stage is small, and the span between each hushed consonant and piano hammer cathedral-sized.
Blake and David Beckham attend as brand ambassadors—the soundtrack and face of the Px8 S2’s “For the Journey” ad campaign mapping the sonic and solitary topography of travel. I’m on an actual journey, a one-night London layover while running the Px8 S2 through JFK bustle and Heathrow hustle, not to mention CDG chaos. The question is simple: Is this audacious $799 update worthy of topping the already acclaimed Px7 S3 released earlier in 2025?
Tony Ware
On stage before the performance, B&W Director of Product Marketing & Communications Andy Kerr declares the Px8 S2 is the result of 15 years of trial, error, “but there’s been an awful lot of brilliance, as well.” The company’s advantage, he isn’t shy to say, is that its headphones can be referenced not only against world-class loudspeakers playing music, but against loudspeakers used to help create music in the first place (as I saw on a previous tour of Abbey Road studios, where B&W 801 D4 speakers are control room monitors).
A fireside chat on shared loves and longing follows, and Blake reveals that, after relocating from LA to London, he’s installed B&W speakers in his personal studio. He adds that he wrote “Make Something Up,” the track that scores the Px8 S2’s transitory freedom, on a guitar he barely knew how to play, an experiment unlocking new patterns. And this is doubly fitting for the Px8 S2: headphones, like guitars a familiar source, capable of releasing fresh expressions when revisited.
The build
The Px8 S2 builds on a platform introduced with the Px7 S3 (a set from April 2025 we quickly awarded top honors in our best headphones for travel roundup). The Px7 S3 is a savvy starter. It’s chic, energetic, and at $479 more affordable. But the Px8 S2 wraps an even more refined finish around this optimized architecture, while also enhancing internal components.
The Px7 S3 established itself with an overhauled engine: voice coil, suspension, magnet layout all reengineered for more nimble transients and lower-distortion depths. It placed all of this behind a 40mm bio-cellulose driver purposefully angled under acoustically transparent fabric within a slimmer chamber to improve fit and imaging. Buttons were tactile, felt not faked, a quiet resistance to ghost-swipe UIs. The Px8 S2 is that snug hug of a chassis even more finely chiseled.
The Px8, released in September 2022, already turned heads with its leather-clad, metal-accented confidence. And the Px8 S2 doubles down on the specifics both pretty and practical. There’s still Nappa leather along the serviceable ear pads and headband, in contrast to the Px7 S3’s fabric and leatherette. But the Px8 S2’s profile is both stylistically trimmed and electronically embellished, with a new eight-mic array embedded so gate agents and conference calls sound human, not like talking into a fan.
While B&W claims that the ear cup measurements are the same between the Px7 S3 and Px8 S2 and that the foams and stylistic materials chosen don’t augment or attenuate the headphones in any way, the Px8 S2 feels both slightly roomier and slightly more isolating. And, at a well-distributed 310g, comfortable for long listening sessions. An exposed nylon-sheathed cable runs from the laser-etched logo adorned ear cups along a polished trench in the die-cast aluminum arms. It’s a distinguishing aesthetic more couture than consumer … distinctive, a nod to B&W headphone design elements from a decade ago, though divisive to some. Like all things luxury, the build is tight tolerances, no flex, no fuss.
Inside, a 40mm Carbon Cone driver and bespoke 24-bit DSP aim to turn rush hour into a private mixing suite. Bluetooth 5.3 with support for AAC and aptX Adaptive/Lossless provides wireless resolution up to 24/96 with a compatible source, but it’s still lossy. A USB-C connection ensures fidelity never falters. On paper, this might read incremental; on the head it’s monumental. In the mind of Bowers & Wilkins, it’s the jump from high-performance to reference, sonic tailoring that wears beautifully.
The Px8 S2 (images one and two), in comparison to the Px7 S3 (images three and four) and the original Px8 (images five and six).
The sound
Seven a.m. on a late-September day and the light can stop you mid-step then entrance as it hits at an angle that’s the ideal ratio of shine and shadow. Well-tuned headphones can also convey that impression. The Px8 S2 captures that perception.
It’s how it renders space, not just objects. Transients come on clean; cymbals and hi-hats transform to sighs before they can turn sharp … air, no glare. Compared to the original Px8, which had a hint of undisciplined warmth blanketing the bass-to-mids transition, there’s audible tightening and more articulate timing across the spectrum. Bass is still abundant, anchoring, just better contoured. The mids invite you in, rather than beg to be let out. Up top, microdetails make songs feel inhabited, rather than exhibited.
Put the Px8 S2 against the Px7 S3, and the S2 showcases a fatigue-free composure. The Px7 S3 democratizes good taste, but has a more fun curve. The Px8 S2 has more nuanced dimension. It’s not analytical, just more resolving … the kind of eloquence-first, forensics-second approach that wins over 15 tracks, not 15 seconds.
Take a track like James Blake’s “Limit To Your Love,” a sparse, singular cover of the Feist original with its subterranean wobble and treble mist. The Px8 S2 puts its under-voiced, widely spaced chords on an intimate, luminously textured stage. It lets the wood and wire breathe through the shuddering resonance. Quiet-to-loud arcs feel continuous. A light dip in the upper-bass/lower-mids of the 5-band EQ in the B&W Music app can grant a bit more openness, but a behind-the-board immediacy remains the core intent.
Ladbroke Hall, host to James Blake performing.
The conclusion
Across the Atlantic and back, the Px8 S2 proved it could preserve tone and protect tranquility. And the upgraded active noise cancellation is excellent, though not absolutist. It doesn’t suppress the world like a Bose QuietComfort Ultra (2nd Gen.), or even the AirPods Pro 3. It won’t have you vibin’ in a vacuum like the more bass-enriched, ANC-reinforced Sony WH-1000XM6. The Px8 S2 successfully (re)directs your focus to cleanly layered sound against a pitch-black background. It keeps timbre tidy, whether playing songs piled with 808s or plastered with reverb. And the 30-hour battery ensures dynamics persevere.
There are headphones with a character and clarity that can offer an alternative for those who want punch with even more incisive treble response, such as the Focal Bathys MG. But that upper-band front-row edge costs almost twice as much. There is a forthcoming fidelity-first flagship from another brand for those who prioritize smooth, spacious vocals and surgical tone control.
Where the Px8 S2 truly excelled was with a character similar to James Blake’s performance: the ability to put presence before display, to capture attention without demanding it. B&W says a late-2025 OTA update will bring a proprietary immersive mode, without changing the core voicing. At this moment, the Bowers & Wilkins Px8 S2 headphones stand out for an undeniable command of texture and timing.
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