Before you write in, our Headphones of the Year Award is open to in-ear, on-ear and over-ear designs (rather than just cans) because we want to make you aware of the very best headphone product released in 2024. And based on another full year of testing, I want you to know right from the off that choosing the Bowers & Wilkins Pi8 as that product was one of the easiest decisions we’ve made all year.
This year, the hands-down TechRadar Choice Awards 2024 audio winner revealed itself rather late in the game, at the end of August to be precise. This was cutting it pretty fine for consideration in the 2024 awards proceedings, but I doubt B&W was particularly worried about that; it’s abundantly clear to me that this time around, the UK audio specialist wanted to get its earbuds done right, rather than to get them done quickly – and that is probably why they’re so, so good.
The keen-eyed will already have spotted that the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones won our ‘Best wireless headphones’ award, so why did we choose the Pi8 as the overall winner, rather than the household name of Bose?
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: this decision isn’t always conscious, rather it makes itself, over the course of our review process. I might have five or six sets of the best headphones at similar price-points as reference products (I trust my ears and my testing, but it’s still nice to have proven class-leaders in the mix to double-check), and it’s the ones I reach for when I’m not testing that tend to steal the crown.
I typically prefer the best over-ear headphones given the choice – not just so I don’t have to talk to people, although that helps – but I found myself picking the B&W Pi8 earbuds every day before heading out the door, for no reason other than they provide the sound quality I really wanted.
Actually there are other reasons, but to understand them fully you need to understand that sound quality has never been the issue with B&W’s earbuds historically. So when the company finally went back to the drawing board and got the basics – design, comfort, connectivity, on-ear controls – absolutely bang on with the Pi8, it simply allowed that sound quality to take center stage. And there you have it: winners.
Let’s drill down into the design overhaul then, because the Pi8 are are unrecognizable from the slightly unreliable (and honestly uncomfortable) Pi7 S2 that came before them. Refreshingly, the company approached the challenge of rectifying the older siblings’ issues with both humility and due diligence, chiefly by completely redesigning the driver housings (to look quite a lot like the also-excellent 2023-issue Technics EAH-AZ80, honestly) but also by adding an upgraded DAC, DSP and amplifier components, meaning they effectively bypass Qualcomm’s digital-to-analog converter for even better audio quality compared to how most of the best wireless earbuds handle this.
Do the Pi8 nullify noise as well the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds or the AirPods Pro 2? For me, it’s a yes. The Pi8 have received quite the redesign here too – using tech from their PX8 over-ear siblings – and however B&W has done it, it works. That feeling of leaving traffic for dust kicks straight in, but without any sense of wind-tunnel-type nausea or being unceremoniously sucked into a vacuum by the eardrums. Also, you now get on-ear volume control, something I’ve been knocking B&W’s decision to swerve since 2021, since it had me rifling through my bag to alter the volume of elite earbuds’ – meanwhile, propositions at a fraction of the price could do it on the earpieces.
There’s a notable extra too: aside from the case’s no-nonsense, pocketable appeal, you can plug its USB-C port (USB-C to 3.5mm and USB-C cables are in the box) into a non-Bluetooth source, such as an in-flight entertainment system, and it’ll work as a wireless audio transmitter in aptX Adaptive quality at up to 24-bit/96kHz quality, turning these into wired earbuds… sort of.
There are no spatial audio with head-tracking and no ear-tip fit tests or hearing profile curation, but the B&W Music app is a joy to use when cueing up your various playlists if, like me, your music comes from a few different sources and streaming services. For better or worse, B&W wants unadulterated music to be the star of the show, and I cannot fault the sound quality the Pi8 earbuds are able to deliver in a wireless design, which is not a statement I make lightly.
All that’s really left for me to say is that the Pi8 won because they’re now as physically comfortable and secure as they are sonically detailed and dynamically agile, which only makes the solid noise-cancellation even more effective. No, they’re not the cheapest. They’re simply the best wireless headphone option I’ve heard in 2024, by quite a wide margin – and I’d strongly suggest you keep your eye on our Black Friday earbuds deals, since any discount would be worth a close look.
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becky.scarrott@futurenet.com (Becky Scarrott)
