The Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S3 are a treat to look at, wear, and hear. The storied UK company has found a great balance between a casual, inoffensive listening experience and a design that makes them seem at home on David Beckham's noggin. Audio purists will probably want to give them a miss, although they certainly punch above their weight, especially when compared to alternatives at this price.
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Design
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Sound
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Battery
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Features
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Value
British audio stalwarts Bowers & Wilkins usually impress whenever it releases a new product, whether that be R100,000+ floor-standing speakers or sub-R10,000 ANC Bluetooth headphones. The Px7 S3 continues that trend with a stylish choice of materials, a superb build quality, and a sound signature most folks will enjoy.
In isolation, the Px7 S3 would be an easy purchase. However, with a local retail price of around R7,800 (but occasionally less), it runs into stiff competition from the usual suspects. Here’s what you need to know to determine if the Px7 S3 are the right cans for you.
Premium start, premium finish
They might not be as shiny (literally) as B&W’s new flagship Px8 S2, but the Px7 S3 still look and feel premium from the moment you remove them from their included travel case, to when they’re sitting on your head.
The first difference we noticed between the outgoing Px7 S2e and the S3 was the S3’s shallower earcups. They don’t feel as bulky on your head, which is a win in our books. The slightly too-tight clamping force helps keep them in place, even when vigorous movements are required. Still, we wouldn’t recommend you pack these into your gym bag.
When it’s required, they’re comfortable enough to wear for hours on end, as we discovered on a ten-hour flight. But towards the end of those ten hours, our ears felt a little cramped and hot. There’s a soft wear limit to be aware of, but how long that is will depend on your tolerances.
While their construction is mostly plastic, they certainly don’t feel cheap. The hinges that allow the earcups to swivel flat in both directions feel like they’ll hold out. That also means the Px7 S3 lies flat in its hardshell travel case, which, thanks to the shallower earcups, is now noticeably smaller than that of the S2e. That can make a difference for frequent flyers, but so do headphones that fold up. These will only fold up once. Then you’ll need to buy a new pair.
Not that you’ll notice it much when you’re wearing them (unless you’re fond of mirrors), but the Px7 S3 also looks pretty damn good for the price. That probably won’t be true for everyone, ‘beauty is in the eye’ and all that. We reckon the combo of matte and glossy plastic with textured woven fabric makes for a handsome headphone. They also come in black if you’d prefer a more understated look.
Technically decent
As you’d expect from flagship-adjacent headphones, the Px7 S3 come with a fairly standard feature set that ticks the essential boxes. Unlike Sony’s last few cans, these don’t feature capacitive touch controls — you control them with the physical buttons on the earcups.
The left hosts the power switch, which does double duty as the pairing button, and a ‘quick action’ button that you can program in the companion app as the ANC toggle or voice assistant summoner. The three buttons on the right handle playback and volume controls.
Battery life lies around the 30-hour mark. That’s what B&W claims and roughly what we got over a week’s use. That’s also with ANC enabled, so if you’re in an already-quiet environment, you can switch it off to have them last even longer.
That said, we never felt the need to extend their running time thanks to their quick charge ability. Plugging them in for five minutes is enough to get seven hours of listening if you’re charging from dead, and you can even use them while charging. The Px7 S3 might not claim the biggest number, but battery life was never a concern.
You’ll find the usual AAC and SBC codecs supported over a wireless connection, along with Qualcomm’s aptX Adaptive and Lossless. If you’re after even more fidelity, they also support 24-bit/96kHz when plugged in. B&W says LE Audio and support for the LC3 codec and Auracast abilities will arrive in an over-the-air update, but they’re not saying when.
The last features worth mentioning include Bluetooth Multipoint support for up to two devices at a time, Google Fast Pair, Apple’s MFI support, wear sensors (so they’ll stop playing when you lift an earcup or take them off and resume when replaced), and a half-decent companion app. It can be a bit clunky to navigate, but the app gives you easy access to environment control and a five-band EQ that also allows for custom presets to be saved.
Sounds like a V
So, it’s got the looks, it’s got the features, but does it have the sound? In short, yes. Out of the box, the pair of 40mm “dynamic full range bio cellulose drivers” (whatever that means) that B&W have produced for the Px7 S3 will do a fine job. To the casual listener, the V-shaped tuning that the Px7 S3 presents will sound tight and punchy in the low end, with ample detail in the highs. If you mostly enjoy EDM-type tunes cranked up, the S3 will happily oblige.
However, the V-shaped tuning might not be what a more critical listener wants. With boosts to both the lows and highs, the mids tend to lose presense resulting in a slightly hollow tone. But, tonal balance aside, these still impressed us with the way they were able to highlight the different timbres of every guitar in the Eagles’ Hotel California, or how they enhanced the many layers of texture in I Lied to You from Ludwig Goransson’s fantastic Sinners score.
When it comes to cancelling out unwanted sounds in your surrounding environment, these don’t unseat the best from their throne, but they still place highly. A lot of that has to do with how they sit on your head. Good isolation makes up a large part of successful noise cancelling, and these isolate well.
The surprisingly natural-sounding transparency mode also deserves a special mention. Again, it’s not quite as good as the industry bests (AirPods Max and Sonos Ace), but it gets closer than other headsets.
Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S3 verdict
If you’re in the market for headphones with flagship-level attributes, but don’t want to pay flagship prices, the Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S3 are a strong contender. They stand out at this price with their snazzy design, they offer many of the same premium features as the competition, and hold their own when it comes to audio and ANC performance. They are a worthy purchase at their current price. On special? Even more so.
