When it comes to earphones, we have reviewed a variety of options from the cheap to the affordable and the ones with eye-catching price tags. Recently, TC Acoustic has brought in premium audio brand Bowers & Wilkins which not only focuses on speakers and audio bars, but also offers a selection of premium earphones and headphones.
We were given the opportunity to review their most premium earphones out there, the B&W Pi7 S2, their second generation TWS earphones that are said to come with unmatched audio quality at an almost ridiculous price tag as well.
Specifications And Design
Bowers & Wilkins Pi7 S2
Type of in-ear earphones
9.2mm driver
Microphone 3 microphones
ANC battery 5 hours/ 21 hours with pod
No ANC 6 hours / 21 hours with pod
USB-C charging port
Wireless charging Yes
CODEC AAC, LDAC
All operating systems are supported
Virtual assistant support Yes
Control Pad Yes
IP54 waterproof capability
Selling Price RM2450
Starting with the design of this Pi7 S2 earphone, it comes with a compact but thick design that houses not only balanced armature audio drivers with two 9.2mm audio drivers in each ear bud, but also has a built-in amplifier that helps in ensuring the audio quality of these earphones is at the best possible level.
Due to the components loaded inside, the design of the B&W Pi7 S2 ear buds is also seen to be thicker than most of the earphones we've reviewed. This is not a bad thing because the design of these earphones is still neat, and although it looks a little out of the ear when installed, it makes it easy for the user to access the contact pad on the back surface of these earphones.
Moving on to the charging case of these earphones, the design is a bit similar to the Sony WF-1000XM3 earphones, and for me this is one of the biggest downsides of these earphones as I am not particularly fond of such designs.
This is because the charging frame cannot stand completely vertically and needs to be erected on its cover. The size of this frame is also too big for me and causes my pants pocket to bulge when storing these headphones in it.
Even so, this earphone frame also comes with its own advantages, including giving these earphones a battery charge of up to 16 hours and also being able to connect devices without Bluetooth functionality to these earphones. We will explain this function in the paragraph below.
Audio Quality
People know Bowers & Wilkins as a premium audio brand, but they have a history of beginning as a speaker repair and modification shop, before they eventually developed their own products.
With the demand for headphones and earphones on the rise, Bowers & Wilkins also introduced their speaker expertise to these products, and with the B&W Pi7 S2, I dare say it's one of the best audio quality earphones I've ever heard. .
Bass
For most earphones, the level of bass and even the low notes that are heard are either not strong enough or so strong that they drown out all other audio notes.
But for these earphones, the quality of the low notes and also the bass on the songs listened to in my opinion are at a quite appropriate level. For some of the songs I enjoy listening to, particularly from the pop and rock genres, I find that these notes are at a level where they can be heard smoothly, but don't drown out the other notes.
Vocal/Mid
Mid audio notes and vocals are one area where my opinion is very divided on these earphones. When enjoying instrumental songs in the genre of jazz, post-rock and so on by artists such as Mono, Hiromi, Marmalade Butcher and so on, I can say that the harmony between the notes heard through this Pi7 S2 is among the best I can hear through a pair of TWS earphones.
However, this harmony is affected when I listen to pop songs with processed vocals in them. The low notes, bass, mids and high notes are fine, but the vocal volume doesn't really stand out in my opinion, and often drowns in the mid or higher notes.
It's not bad, but for an earphone of this quality, it's a little disappointing.
High
Just like the bass and low notes I said earlier, just like the high notes heard on these earphones, they never once hurt the ears, even when I played songs at high volume.
The audio quality heard on these earphones is an example of how Bowers & Wilkins audio engineers transfer their speaker development expertise to this second generation TWS device.
Yes maybe the vocal quality on these earphones is not as good as the other notes, but this is one of those shortcomings that could easily be fixed, but no. I will explain about these details in the paragraph below.
Microphone
Each bud of these earphones comes with three built-in microphones that not only help in giving the user a smooth chatting experience, but also help in ensuring that the noise canceling function works well.
During my time using these earphones, I can say that the noise canceling function is as good as the Sony WF-1000 XM4 earphones, and has a function where these earphones will pause the audio when one of the earphones is removed.
Unfortunately, the B&W Pi7 S2 doesn't have the talk-to-pause function featured on Sony's earphones, making it an earphone worth buying. It at least also has a transparent audio feature called audio pass-through in this application where you can hear the surrounding sounds while listening to the song.
This feature is quite useful for example when you need to hear an announcement being made, but don't want to take off your earphones. Speaking of which, these earphones also come with a function that will pause the audio playing when you take one of your earphones off, and restart it when it's put back on.
Battery
In terms of battery life, the B&W Pi7 S2 earphones have a charge of 5 hours for each bud, while the charging frame can provide another 16 hours of charging, giving these earphones a total life of 21 hours.
Although the overall lifespan of these earphones is not that low, but with only 5 hours for each bud, this is significantly lower compared to the vast number of offerings out there that are not only premium, but have a lower price tag.
One feature you may find interesting is that this charging frame can also be charged wirelessly using Qi charging technology, which is useful if you have a Qi wireless charger.
Applications And Controls
Like other TWS brands, Bowers & Wilkins also has applications for their products. For this brand, the app is Music, and it can be used to update their products, and change a small number of built-in settings.
For the Pi7 S2 earphones, this application can be used to update the firmware and also access functions such as native support for a number of music streaming applications that come with support for lossless audio streaming such as Tidal, Deezer and even SoundCloud.
These earphones also come with a number of shortcut controls such as skipping songs forward and backward, answering calls, activating noise cancellation controls and even accessing the digital assistant.
Unfortunately you'll need to memorize these shortcuts because even though the Music app gives you a list of the shortcuts present on these headphones, it doesn't give users the ability to change those settings to easier-to-remember shortcuts.
To me this is a very significant shortcoming for earphones that come in at this price, especially when there are other TWS at a much cheaper price that exhibit this functionality.
In the meantime, this application also does not have a built-in equalizer function to allow users to adjust the audio quality to their liking. I understand that the audio engineers have worked hard to ensure that the quality of these earphones is as good as possible, but audio choices are subjective, and this is probably something B&W could consider for future products.
Wireless Transmitter Framework
One function that in my opinion is a killer feature on this Pi7 S2 earphone is the wireless transmitter function through the charging frame of this earphone. This feature was first introduced with the first Pi7 model, but has now been improved further with this new model.
These earphones come with two cables, namely USB Type-C to USB Type-C and USB Type-C to 3.5mm audio. In short, you can use these two cables to connect this earphone charging frame to any device with USB Type-C or 3.5mm audio plug to audio plug, and this earphone frame will emit audio to the ear buds. ears just like that.
This is especially useful when you want to connect the earphones to an audio device that does not support Bluetooth, such as an in-flight audio jack or a disc player.
In terms of connection distance, Bowers & Wilkins says a connection using a 3.5mm audio plug has a radius of 15 meters, while a connection with a USB Type-C to USB Type-C cable comes with a connection radius of around 30 meters. But it should be noted that this connection distance will decrease if you travel to areas with obstacles such as walls and doors even within this distance.
In the box
The Bowers & Wilkins Pi7 S2 comes with a number of additional accessories and ear buds of different sizes for larger or smaller ear holes.
1x Bowers & Wilkins Pi7 S2
1x Charging frame
1x USB Type-C to 3.5mm audio cable
1x USB Type-C to USB Type-C cable
2x silicone ear buds size S and L
Conclusion
I dare say that the Bowers & Wilkins Pi7 S2 are among the best earphones in terms of audio quality that I have ever used. Balanced high and low notes and with a wide staging for a TWS earphone makes me quite excited to use these earphones every day and for a wide variety of my favorite music genres, especially for rock, jazz and instrumental genres.
The audio pass-through function that allows the charging case of these earphones to be used as a Bluetooth transmitter is also very useful especially if you want to listen to audio from a source that does not have Bluetooth support.
Even so, at a price tag of RM2450, it's very hard for me to recommend these earphones for people to buy, especially due to shortcomings such as shortcut settings that can't be changed, the absence of an equalizer feature in the app and the much poorer battery life compared to other offers that are much cheaper.
However, if you are someone who cares more about the audio quality of your earphones, and don't have a problem buying TWS at a great price, maybe this B&W Pi7 S2 is something you can consider.
Pro
Best audio quality for a TWS
Very useful audio pass-through function
Good audio noise cancellation feature
Wireless charging via Qi
Can take advantage of lossless audio streaming like Tidal and Deezer
Cons
Poor battery life
Shortcut controls that cannot be modified
No talk-to-pause function
The frame design is not pocket friendly