Renowned British audio brand Bowers & Wilkins has unveiled the next iteration of its award-winning wireless headphones. The B&W Px7 S3 builds on a line of over-ear cans that first launched in 2010 and have helped define the brand’s personal audio product for more than a decade.
“It’s been an extraordinary challenge for Bowers & Wilkins to develop new headphones able to exceed the exceptional performance and critical acclaim given to our current range,” Giles Pocock, VP of Brand Marketing for B&W, said in a statement. “I’m thrilled that with the new Px7 S3, the team has not only risen to that challenge but has managed to set a new benchmark for excellence in the headphone category.”
Right off the bat, users will notice a slimmer, lighter design that allows for extended listening sessions while maintaining the same level of performance that B&W users expect. A new headband and redesigned arm mechanism allow the headphones to fit closer to the wearer’s head. And improved memory foam in the earpads provide a more snug and comfortable fit around the ear. Even the carrying case has been designed in a more compact form factor.
From a functionality standpoint, Bowers & Wilkins moved around some of the physical buttons on the headphones to allow for a more seamless user experience. The volume up, volume down, and play/pause buttons remain on the right ear but have been reshaped to improve their tactile interactions. The power button has been moved to the left ear alongside the Quick Action button, which allows users to quickly cycle through noise cancelation modes or launch their phone’s voice assistant.
As striking as the new design is, it’s what Bowers & Wilkins has done to the inner workings of these headphones that’ll wind up being most impactful.
According to their release, almost every element in its design is new, including the 40mm biocellulose drive units that have their own redesigned chassis, voice coil, suspension and magnet. Only the cone material itself is carried over from the previous design. Also new is a dedicated, discrete headphone amplifier that B&W said provides more “scale and energy” to the sound profile of the headphones.
To that end, the Px7 S3s support both aptX Adaptive 24/96 wireless technology and the latest Qualcomm innovation, aptX Lossless, which is designed to deliver CD-quality (16-bit/44.1 kHz) lossless audio over Bluetooth. That, combined with B&W’s in-house Digital Signal Processing results in 24-bit/96 kHz high-res sound quality out of the headphones.
Other features packed into the Px7 S3s include a vastly improved ANC experience, powered by a new eight-microphone configuration (twice as many as the previous generation and on par with the number of mics used for noise canceling in Apple’s AirPods Max), and, for the first time ever in B&W headphones, support for spatial audio, which will come via a software update later this year. That will be followed by another first for the brand, integrating Bluetooth LE Audio compatibility into the headphones, again via software update. LE Audio, with Auracast broadcast functionality, allows a single source of audio to broadcast to an unlimited number of receiving headphones. And, with the new LC3 high-quality audio codec, LE Audio also has the potential to stream higher quality sound than standard Bluetooth audio.
The Px7 S3 wireless headphones will be available in three premium finishes: Anthracite Black, Indigo Blue, and Canvas White. Due to the ongoing uncertainty around tariffs, pricing and availability will be announced at a later date. B&W said it will place a “Notify Me” button on its website for those interested in receiving an alert when the headphones become available.
