These Gorgeous Wireless Earbuds Borrow Loudspeaker Tech to Deliver a Rare Kind of Sound

It’s difficult for traditional audio powerhouses — like Sony, Bose, Sennheiser and Bowers & Wilkins — to compete in today’s wireless earbuds market. Now that smartphone manufacturers like Apple, Samsung, and Google also make their own (really good) wireless earbuds, they can give them distinct software advantages.

For example, if you have an iPhone and AirPods, a Pixel smartphone and Pixel Buds, or a Samsung Galaxy smartphone and Galaxy Buds, these wireless earbuds will quickly pair with your smartphone. And all their best features are baked right into the device’s operating system, so there’s no toggling with Bluetooth settings or downloading a separate app.

There are a few proven ways that traditional audio companies can still compete, of course. Two of them are style and sound quality. Not everybody wants the same-looking wireless earbuds as everybody else, after all. And higher-fidelity sound quality is obviously what these audio companies specialize in.

And that’s exactly what Bowers & Wilkins is banking on with its new flagship noise-canceling wireless earbuds.

Bowers & Wilkins Pi8

The Bowers & Wilkins Pi8 are the next-generation versions of the previous Pi7 S2 flagship noise-canceling wireless earbuds, but they’ve been redesigned from the ground up. According to the company, they were developed by the same design and engineering teams responsible for B&W’s Px7 S2e and Px8 over-ear headphones.