Bowers & Wilkins may be well known in the premium loudspeaker and headphones space, but like most other premium audio brands, it hasn’t exactly made a mark in the wireless earbuds space, but this doesn’t mean the company can’t deliver a great wireless earbud.
Enter the Pi8, the company’s very own reference in-ear earbuds, which looks nothing spectacular as compared to many cheaper wireless earbuds as it doesn’t sport any funky lighting or design, but once you put them on and start playing your favorite songs, you’d be yelling ‘take my money’ in your mind before even the chorus begin, because the Pi8 delivers absolute balanced sound that’s so unique that you won’t be able to find on regular wireless earbuds.
The Pi8 comes in a pebble-shaped charging case that looks similar to many earbuds with a smooth matte paint job, which sadly isn’t resistant to scratches and smudges if you stow it inside a bag of keys and coins. I would have preferred if they had just slapped on the B&W logo instead of the full ‘Bowers & Wilkins’ word on the case as it would make a better statement.
Aside from being able to offer two additional charges to the earbuds, what’s really impressive about it is wireless audio retransmission, which the charging case is able to serve as a wireless audio transmitter to the earbuds when you plug in the provided USB-C to 3.5mm cable to a wired audio source, such as an in-flight entertainment system, this is very clever if you don’t want to mess with finicky Bluetooth settings and there’s no pairing required for this feature to work.
For wireless connectivity, the Pi8 supports aptX Lossless transmission, which has sufficient bandwidth for streaming lossless audio though it isn’t as technically impressive as LDAC, but this means it will work with most devices for streaming high quality wireless audio. What really sets the Pi8 apart from the rest is the 12mm Carbon Cone drivers and 32-bit DSP, which both are crucial to deliver the brand’s reference audio experience by promising reduced distortion and capturing high frequency detail.
True enough, the Pi8 delivered every detail I wanted to hear in ‘The Greatest Show’, every drumbeat, instrumentals, Hugh Jackman and co’s singing sounded crystal clear as if they were played through high quality loudspeakers, this is a fairly complex song that many earbuds would easily have distortion on either the acoustics or vocals. Another great song to listen on the Pi8 is ‘Another Day of Sun’, the intro soundtrack of musical movie La La Land, which has similar complexity as the former. If you listen to pop or K-Pop songs, just so you know that you will enjoy every detailed beat that the Pi8 delivers.
The Pi8 has a companion app on iOS and Android that lets you customize the earbuds touch controls, which I have no problems as the capacitive touch area is big enough for any fingers. The app also features a custom EQ that you can tune its sound to your liking, I have the True Sound option turned on during my review as it works well on a wide genre of music.
ANC performance of the Pi8 is decent as you would have expected from premium wireless earbuds, it cancels low frequencies well enough that your ears won’t feel pressured, while the Passthrough mode lets ambient sound in without sounding like a low-quality microphone so that you can be aware of your surroundings.
B&W claims that the Pi8 can do up to 6.5 hours of music playback with ANC On, and I’m glad that the company mentioned this on its website instead of ANC Off, because who turns off ANC anyway when using them, and personally I think this is more than sufficient for many people, though I was hoping that the charging case could at least offer up to 3 charges, which would be perfect for long flight transits.
At RM2,399 or US$399, the B&W Pi8 is clearly a premium priced product, and I won’t disagree that there are a ton of nice sounding wireless earbuds that costs way lesser, but the Pi8’s sound engineering and features really deserves to be paid for if you have such budget for wireless earbuds, so definitely go audition it at stores when you get the chance, and I guarantee that you will be instantly sold once you hit the Play button on your phone.
The Bowers and Wilkins Pi8 can be purchased in Malaysia from TC Acoustics here.
