Our Favorite Headphones Just Went Wireless
Through the WIRED offices and you’ll see a lot of people wearing Bowers & Wilkins headphones. Specifically the on-ear P5 model—they’re compact and light, luxuriously appointed, and they put out some truly phenomenal sound. Everything about them is top-shelf enough to easily justify the $300 price tag.
Well here’s some news: The P5s are now available in a wireless Bluetooth model. They use the same 40mm drivers you’ll find in the B&W P5 series 2 headphones, and all of the same niceties—like the removable, soft leather earpads and the aluminum frame with a padded headband. The features new to this model are just what you’d expect from a wireless headset: a three-button control array on the right earpiece, and a pair of microphones for talking on the phone (and only for the phone—these aren’t noise-canceling). Of course, there’s also a battery in the new model, and Bowers & Wilkins claims it affords you up to 17 hours of playback time. There’s also a regular old cable to keep the music going when that runs out.
They work with any Bluetooth device, and if you have an Android phone or a nice Bluetooth transmitter that uses the aptX, the P5 Wireless supports the higher quality streaming codec.
The Bowers & Wilkins P5 Wireless are priced at $400, which is $100 more than the same headphones in the non-wireless, non-battery powered configuration. I haven’t tested the wireless model yet, but I look forward to it, especially considering how great the P5 Series 2s are. However, the last time I got excited about a pair of high-end wireless headphones, it was a bust: Sennheiser released a Bluetooth version of its fantastic Momentum headphones, but after a couple of days of testing, I grew so frustrated with drop-outs and poor quality sound that I gave up on them. Turns out I wasn’t alone: Sennheiser is currently re-engineering them to fix these problems. Of course, that’s not to say these Bowers & Wilkins will have suffer similar issues, but it’s cause for a bit of caution.
If you like the look of these but you don’t want to spend the really big bucks, I’ll point you to the $200 B&W P3s, which are very much the same as the $300 P5s, but with slightly lower quality materials. Still great-sounding and comfortable, for sure. Just cheaper (and not wireless).
