It’s nine o’clock on a Monday evening, and the Chelsea rain is tapping sixteenth notes on the skylights. Down King’s Road, black taxis scribble wet S-curves, their windshield wipers keeping time with an imaginary drum ring. I’m in London, at least mentally. My head falls into a pair of Onyx Black Powers & Wilkins Px8 S2 Noise Canceling Over-Ear Bluetooth Headphones, James Blake’s “Retrograde” Streams. My body is on row 23, somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean. As the song extends, the tenderness becomes architectural, forming air pockets and exposed rays between long pauses. Drift toward the thin edge of morning in a gravity well of weightless pain.
A day later, I was on a black bus heading north from Shepherd’s Bush to North Kensington. I walked out into Ladbroke Hall, a brick-and-iron hall in west London, an Edwardian shell reconstructed as an exhibition space that tonight seems part celebration, part sacred. Inside, Bowers & Wilkins is dedicating the Px8 S2, the company’s flagship wireless headphones. James Blake sits at the Steinway, his fingers touching the keys and the falsetto rising like steam off the stone. The stage is small, and the space between each consonant and the piano mallet is the size of a cathedral.
Blake and David Beckham Presence as brand ambassadors – the soundtrack and face of the Px8 S2 Advertising campaign “For the Journey”. Mapping the sonic and solitary terrain of travel. I’m on an actual flight, an overnight stop in London while running the Px8 S2 through the hustle and bustle of JFK and Heathrow, not to mention the chaos of CDG. The question is simple: Is this bold $799 update worthy of topping the already acclaimed Px7 S3 released earlier in 2025?
Tony Weir
On stage before the show, Andy Kerr, B&W’s director of product marketing and communications, declared that the Px8 S2 was the result of 15 years of trial and error, “but there was a tremendous amount of brilliance, too.” And he’s not shy about saying that the company’s advantage is that its headphones can be benchmarked against not only the world-class speakers that play the music, but also against the amplifiers used to help create the music in the first place (as I saw on a previous tour of Abbey Road Studios, where the B&W 801 D4 speakers are the control room monitors).
A side conversation about shared love and longing ensues, and Blake reveals that after moving from Los Angeles to London, he installed black-and-white speakers in his studio. He adds that he wrote “Make Something Up,” the song that chronicles the temporary freedom of the Px8 S2, on a guitar he barely knew how to play, an experience that opened up new styles. This is doubly appropriate for the Px8 S2: headphones, like guitars, are a familiar source capable of sparking new expressions when revisited.
Construction
The Px8 S2 is based on a platform introduced with the Px7 S3 (a range as of April 2025 which we quickly awarded top honors in our best headphones for travel roundup). The Px7 S3 is a smart start. It is elegant, lively and At $479 it’s more affordable. But the Px8 S2 features a more refined finish around this improved architecture, while also enhancing the internal components.
The Px7 S3 establishes itself with a revamped engine: the voice coil, suspension, and magnetic layout have been redesigned for smarter transitions and lower distortion depths. I placed all of this behind a 40mm bio-cellulose driver that was intentionally placed under acoustically transparent fabric within a slimmer chamber for improved fit and imaging. The buttons were tactile, they weren’t fake, and they were a quiet resistance to ghostly scrolling user interfaces. The Px8 S2 is that warm embrace of a more precisely sculpted chassis.
The Px8, released in September 2022, has already turned heads with its leather- and metallic-clad confidence. The Px8 S2 doubles down on beauty and practicality. There’s still Nappa leather along the earpads and serviceable headband, as opposed to the cloth and leather found on the Px7 S3. But the Px8 S2’s side profile has been stylistically trimmed and electronically embellished, with a new array of eight built-in microphones so gate agents and conference calls sound like human beings, rather than like talking to a fan.
While B&W claims that the earcup measurements are the same between the Px7 S3 and Px8 S2 and that the chosen foams and stylistic materials don’t bulk up or soften the headphones in any way, the Px8 S2 feels slightly roomier and more insulated. And with a well-distributed weight of 310g, it’s comfortable for long listening sessions. An exposed, nylon-coated cable runs from the ear cups adorned with the laser-etched logo along a polished trench in the die-cast aluminum temples. It’s a distinctly more consumer-grade aesthetic…distinctive, a nod to B&W headphone design elements from a decade ago, though divisive for some. Like all things luxury, the construction is very forgiving, no flex, no fuss.
Inside, a 40mm Carbon Cone driver and custom 24-bit DSP aim to turn Rush Hour into a private mixing suite. Bluetooth 5.3 with AAC and aptX Adaptive/Lossless support offers up to 24/96 wireless fidelity with a compatible source, but it’s still missing. USB-C connectivity ensures resolution never falters. On paper, this may be incremental; On the head, it’s huge. In Bowers & Wilkins’ mind, it’s the leap from high performance to reference design, and acoustic tailoring that wears beautifully.
Px8 S2 (1st and 2nd images), compared to Px7 S3 (3rd and 4th images) and the original Px8 (5th and 6th images).
Sound
At 7 a.m. in late September, the light can stop you mid-step as it reaches a stunning angle that is the perfect ratio of brightness and shade. Well-tuned headphones can also convey this impression. The Px8 S2 embodies this perception.
It’s the way he displays space, not just objects. Transients become clean. Cymbals and hi-hats turn into sighs before turning into sharp air, sans glare. Compared to the original Px8, which had a hint of uncontrolled warmth covering the transition from bass to mids, there is audible tightening and more pronounced timing across the spectrum. Bass is still plentiful, punchy, and better defined. Brokers invite you in rather than begging to be let out. Up top, fine detail makes the songs seem populated rather than staged.
Put the Px8 S2 against the Px7 S3, and the S2 displays fatigue-free composure. The Px7 S3 democratizes good taste, but has a more pleasant curve. The Px8 S2 has more precise dimensions. It’s not analytical, just more determined…the kind of rhetoric-first, forensics-second that wins over 15 tracks, not 15 seconds.
Take a track like James Blake’s “Limit To Your Love,” a sparse, unique cover of Feist’s original with its subterranean sway and treble haze. The Px8 S2 puts its low-pitched, widely spaced strings on an intimate, bright stage. It allows the wood and wires to breathe through quivering resonance. The quiet to loud arcs seem continuous. The subtle drop in upper bass/lower mids of the B&W Music app’s five-band EQ can give it more openness, but the core intent remains the same.
Ladbroke Hall, hosts a performance by James Blake.
Conclusion
Across the Atlantic and back, the Px8 S2 has proven itself capable of maintaining tone and keeping quiet. The upgraded active noise cancellation is also excellent, if not absolute. It doesn’t oppress the world like Bose QuietComfort Ultra (2nd generation)or even the AirPods Pro 3. They won’t make you feel as lively in a vacuum as the richer, ANC-enhanced Sony WH-1000XM6. The Px8 S2 successfully (re)directs your focus to cleanly layered sound against a black background. It keeps the timbre uncluttered, whether playing songs jam-packed with 80s hits or full of reverb. The 30-hour battery ensures continuous dynamics.
There are headphones with character and clarity that can offer an alternative for those who want to hit with a sharper treble response, such as the Focal Bathys MG. But a top-of-the-range front-row trim costs almost twice as much. There’s another brand-leading precision-grade speaker coming from another brand for those who prioritize smooth, expansive vocals and surgical tone control.
Where the Px8 S2 really excelled was its James Blake-like character: the ability to put presence before the show, to command attention without demanding it. B&W says an OTA update in late 2025 will offer a special immersive mode, without changing the core audio. At this moment, Bowers & Wilkins Px8 S2 headphones It stands out for its undeniable texture and timing.
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