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The four-mic array works very well and presents voices cleanly. We didn't have any trouble understanding every word from a test recording on an iPhone, though the signal was just slightly faint compared with that on many other high-end models we've tested. They also come loaded with 9.2mm bespoke Bowers & Wilkins drive units. These are paired with a high-frequency "balanced armature" driver, and each of the four drive units is driven by its own amplifier. And the other most notable potential problem with the original PI7 is still around: they're very large. The physical design hasn't changed, which means there's a big section that sits just outside your ear canal. I gave the originals to one small adult (but still well within 'typical' size) and she couldn't even fit them in her ear due to the shape. As we hoped, the Bowers & Wilkins Pi5 S2 also lived up to expectations in terms of sound. Nothing has changed technically compared to their predecessors, and I didn’t feel that the tuning had been changed either. The sound performance was particularly impressive with finely resolved classical recordings such as “La Mer” from Claude Debussy’s works for orchestra. A very nice differentiation and spatiality with very good localisation provided pleasurable moments that are rarely achievable with in-ears. An important item in the app is “Auto Connect”, which regulates handling with different players. In the app, all previous connections are listed, and you can prioritise them. If, for example, a smartphone and a laptop dominate your working day, these are listed in the app, and the devices can be switched at the touch of a finger. Since the Bowers & Wilkins Pi5 S2 cannot handle multipoint, “Auto Connect” is an important function, as it automatically establishes connections with known devices as far as possible.
The only other difference is that the Pi5 S2 case holds more charge. Despite both buds being listed as offering five hours of listening, the Pi5 S2 case carries a quoted 19 hours of charge, while the more premium Pi7 S2 carries an additional 16 hours. The difference is likely driven by the more expensive set’s improved, power-hungry hardware and streaming capabilities. The app design is very straightforward and clean, but the experience is remarkably light on actual features. You don't get an EQ, the ability to fine-tune the ANC experience, or the option to customize the control layout. There is a section that lets you choose between low, high, or off options for the Passthrough mode, but, confusingly, the app doesn't prevent you from leaving both the ANC and ambient mode active simultaneously. That seems counterintuitive, and a far more elegant solution would be to allow the user to cycle through ANC, ambient, and all-off modes like with most other models we test.
Control via the outer ends of the Bowers & Wilkins Pi5 S2 remains: Tapping from one to three times controls the music. For phone calls, tapping once will answer a call, tapping twice will hang up, and holding your finger down for longer will reject a call. It does not matter which side you use to do this. Only when noise cancelling or voice assistants from Google or Apple are activated do the two sides of the headphones take on different tasks: The ANC is switched on the left, the voice assistant on the right. But the tech behind the drivers has been tweaks. There's no support for aptX Adaptive wireless, so you should get a more reliable connection overall (B&W is saying you also get longer range of up to 25m) as well as Hi-Res Audio from compatible sources. We’re always looking to make a better product. We have re-engineered the caps at the end of the earbuds to improve antenna performance," they said.
The Pi7 S2 and Pi5 S2 both look relatively similar to B&W’s previous generation earbuds, featuring round sides and a raised semi-circular outer case housing the buds' capacitive touch controls. We’ll be interested to see how the new sets perform when we get them in for testing, as Bowers and Wilkins claims it has fixed the biggest issues we encountered reviewing the older Pi7. The corresponding app (iOS, Android) is fairly spartan in terms of setup and control. Of course, noise cancelling can be switched on and off just as with the left-hand side of the earpiece. However, the “ambient cut-through” or transparency mode can only be switched on and off in the app: “Off” does not transmit any external noise captured by the microphones, “High” passes on a slightly amplified signal to the headphones, and “Low” lets the acoustic environment through in a slightly muffled manner, but this allows you to maintain sufficient attentiveness in road traffic without drowning out an audible signal. With aptX and AAC, Bowers & Wilkins only provides codecs with standard resolution, foregoing high-resolution audio as with the Pi7 S2. On the one hand, you lose a high-value feature, but on the other, the Pi5 S2 provide a remarkably good listening experience from streaming standards such as CD quality on Deezer, and Spotify also streams in the highest quality. Good noise cancelling and transparency mode Meanwhile, the new Pi5 S2 features a single 9.2mm bespoke drive unit in each earbud and supports up to CD-quality (16-bit/44.1kHz) streaming thanks to their support for aptX wireless transmission codec.The Pi7 S2 are the only set of the two to offer Adaptive ANC, where the buds monitor your surroundings and tweak their settings accordingly to deal with the external noise the mics detect. Bowers & Wilkins is looking to expand its customer base via an expanded colour range and now offers the Pi5 S2 in storm grey with semi-transparent dark red ear tips, cloud grey with shimmering pink end pieces, light green and – as with the model we tested – spring lilac with plain ear tips, which I felt was rather chic. The design of the Bowers & Wilkins Pi5 S2 has remained the same, which means that these in-ears still protrude a bit from your ears, something that you need to bear in mind if you like to wear a cap or hat. The Bowers & Wilkins Pi5 S2’s noise cancellation (ANC) acts consistently well across the entire frequency band: Everyday noises are effectively attenuated so that street noise with your window open or noise from your neighbours in the office were largely masked by the signal. However, the Pi5 S2 did not provide the quietness of over-ear headphones. The transparency mode can be activated in two stages via the app and provides a slightly reduced ambience in the “Low” setting. Voices and traffic noises were transmitted to the ear at a pleasant volume with good transmission quality. For louder environments, it can be set to “High”, which provided a slight boost but added a slight hiss. The Bowers & Wilkins Pi5 S2 in practice
Note that the Bowers & Wilkins Music app (available for Android and iOS) is the one you should use for these earphones, not the B&W Headphones app. The main screen shows an image of the earpieces, along with a battery life readout for each one (but not the case). The first time you open the app, a setup guide walks you through the basics of the on-ear controls. The earphones are compatible with Bluetooth 5.0, which is a bit out of date. That's noteworthy because Bowers & Wilkins still hasn’t nailed the pairing process. Most earbuds we test enter pairing mode as soon as you remove them from the case, but these require you to press a button on the case for 1.5 seconds to initiate the first-time pairing process. In testing, it took us multiple tries to initially pair them with an iPhone, an annoyance we don't expect from any product we test, let alone one that costs this much. The good news is that subsequent connection attempts worked fine. Specifically, the company claims it has extended both sets' battery lives to five hours worth of listening and fixed the connectivity issues we experienced using the B&W Pi7 in 2021.
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The latter is particularly important with the original Pi7 having a tendency to drop out, especially in busy signal areas like rail stations, during our time with them. This issue is a key reason our reviewers gave them 3/5 stars, despite the Pi7 offering “clear, agile, insightful sound” during our tests. We’ve introduced a new design of antenna and repositioned it within the earbud endcaps: at the same time, we have switched to a new endcap material that is more transparent to Bluetooth signals. The result is stronger Bluetooth signal strength, giving us an improved 25 metre range, double what it was before, plus enhanced wireless stability." Both models have a different mic setup and active noise-cancellation (ANC) powers. The Pi7 S2 has a six-mic set-up – three in each bud. The Pi5 S2 has a dual mic set-up in each bud. So on paper, the Pi7 should offer better call quality, though we’d need to test them to confirm in real-world use. This means they can stream high-resolution music, from compatible hi-res music streaming services like Tidal, in up to 24-bit/48kHz audio quality. The Pi5 S2 is not necessarily an accessory for workouts – despite the IP54 rating of these earphones – instead, they are for chilling out. Nevertheless, they did a good job in urban areas as well as during walks in nature. The noise-cancelling system shielded outside noise well, although not as dramatically as the Bose QuietComfort Earbuds II did.
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