British audio brand Bowers & Wilkins today announced the all-new Px7 S3, premium active noise cancelling wireless headphone.
Bowers & Wilkins’ Px7 S3 is the latest generation of headphones with a re-imagined industrial design and profile engineered for comfortable, extended listening, with a notably slimmer form than previous models. The new carry case is also more compact and easier to fit into a bag. The new headband and arm mechanism ensure the headphones fit even closer than past models to one’s head, while earpads with improved memory foam encapsulate and cushion the listener’s ears for greater comfort.
Px7 S3 delivers advances in acoustic performance over its predecessor, the Px7 S2e with almost every element in its design being new: its 40mm biocellulose drive units feature a redesigned and improved chassis, voice coil, suspension and magnet, with only the cone material itself carrying over from the previous generation of headphones. The redesigned drive units deliver lower coloration and distortion, improved resolution and superior dynamics. As before, they are carefully angled to the listener’s ears to ensure a consistent distance from every point across the surface of each driver to each ear, ensuring better imaging and stereo spaciousness.
“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” stated Giles Pocock, VP of Brand Marketing. “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.”
For the first time in a Bowers & Wilkins over-ear headphone, these high-resolution drive units are powered by a dedicated, discrete headphone amplifier. This provides notably more scale and energy to the sound.
The Px7 S3 includes both aptX Adaptive 24/96 wireless technology and aptX Lossless. Both technologies can automatically optimize wireless music transmission from compatible phones, tablets and computers, ensuring the best possible sound quality with high-resolution music streaming services such as Qobuz and TIDAL, for 24-bit / 96 kHz high-resolution sound quality.
3.5mm analogue audio connections are also supported, as is high-resolution-capable USB-C, a benefit for both computer users and owners of compatible mobile devices, including the latest generation of iPhone. Both cable types are included in the carry case that accompanies the headphones.
Bowers & Wilkins engineers are confident that Px7 S3 features the most powerful and effective active noise cancelling technology the brand has ever developed. Using a proprietary Bowers & Wilkins-developed platform, Px7 S3 features eight high-performance microphones, located around the periphery of each ear cup monitor ambient noise from the outside world, and two more providing voice clarity. When making calls, unwanted noise is effectively suppressed by the latest generation of voice processing technology, called “ADI Pure Voice.” All eight microphones work in conjunction with the noise cancelling and voice-processing technologies to ensure outstanding call clarity.
The Px7 S3 is rated for 30 hours of battery life with full noise cancellation on, while a 15-minute quick recharge is sufficient to provide up to seven hours of additional listening time.
As with all other current generations of Bowers & Wilkins headphones and earbuds, the Px7 S3 can be configured and controlled using the brand’s Music app including activating or disengaging the noise-cancelling transparency mode and monitoring the headphone’s charge levels. In a significant upgrade, listeners can now opt to fine-tune the sound through an adjustable five-band EQ, complete with the option to store preferred settings. If preferred, the EQ option can be bypassed by selecting the True Sound mode, which represents the preferred audio tuning selected by the acoustic team at the Southwater Research Establishment (SRE).
As before, physical controls on each earcup are also included, ensuring full control even without the Music app. The revised button layout, which reshapes the volume up, volume down and play/pause buttons to improve their tactile interaction also relocates the power button to the left-hand earcup. The Quick Action button allows users to either quickly cycle through the Px7 S3’s noise-cancelling options – Off, Pass-Through, and On – or seamlessly launch their phone’s Voice Assistant at the touch of a button.
For the first time in a Bowers & Wilkins headphone, Px7 S3 will offer support for spatial audio. In line with the brand’s True Sound philosophy, the engineers at SRE have developed a proprietary audio processing technology designed to give listeners a realistic sense of acoustic space and a natural, yet immersive, experience with spatial audio. This new technology will be rolled out as an over-the-air update later this year.
In another first for Bowers & Wilkins, Px7 S3 will also offer support for Bluetooth® LE Audio, complete with Auracast broadcast functionality, enabling a single audio source to broadcast to an unlimited number of receiving headphones. LE Audio also includes a new high-quality audio codec, LC3, which offers the potential for higher quality sound than standard Bluetooth audio. Bowers & Wilkins will roll out LE Audio compatibility to Px7 S3 as a future update.
Px7 S3 will be available in three finishes: Anthracite Black, Indigo Blue and Canvas White, each with complementary detailing. To ensure long-term pride of ownership, Bowers & Wilkins has engineered the new design so that both ear cushions and headband are replaceable. Due to tariff uncertainty, Bowers & Wilkins states that final pricing and retail availability in North and Latin America will be announced at a later date.