BOWERS & WILKINS PX7 WIRELESS NOISE-CANCELLING HEADPHONES
While Bowers & Wilkins has been making speakers since the 1960s, it entered the headphone market only a decade ago with the on-ear P5 Mobile Hi-Fi headphones.
The P5s strongly leveraged B&W’s reputation for luxury, all leather and shining metal, connected stethoscope-like with twisting metal rods — one reviewer back then called them “truly drop-dead gorgeous things shouting executive luxury from every curve.”
It was to be three years before B&W launched an over-ear model, a more serious headphone, again linked up with sculptural swirls of steel but — as with the P5 — there was no noise-cancelling, and no wireless operation either, depite the premium pricing.
The PX7 brings the company fully up to date with a technological full monty of wireless (or wired or USB) playback, active noise-cancellation, and app control.
THE EQUIPMENT
The B&W’s PX7 arrives at the same price as other premium wireless noise-cancellers such as the Sennheiser Momentum Wireless and Bose 700. Yet their build and construction now seems focused more on solidity than the overtly executive luxury of previous designs. The PX7 is initially available in black or grey, not the browns, golds and silvers of previous models. The cascades of steel connectors have been replaced by remarkable moulded arms made of a composite which includes carbon-fibre, yielding
