Battery life: 30 hours
Bluetooth: 5.2
Weight: 320g
Spatial audio: No
The Bowers & Wilkins are a little older than the Sonos Ace, which is most apparent in their use of Bluetooth 5.2 with codec compatibility limited to aptX HD and aptX Adaptive. Mind you, their relative age means they’ve had time to become closer in price to the Ace without losing one iota of their upmarket, truly premium credentials where look and feel is concerned. Sound quality (which, it’s worth noting, is restricted to ‘stereo’) is profoundly impressive, too – the Px8 sound big and bold, balanced and naturalistic, exciting and musical, in every circumstance and all the time. If their noise cancellation wasn’t quite so much in the ‘average’ category they’d be hard to lay a glove on.
For
- Confident, convincing and endlessly entertaining sound
- Comfortable even over longer listens
- Classy, aspirational standard of build and finish
Against
- ANC is nothing very special
- Expensive even though they’re more affordable than ever
Battery life: 30 hours
Bluetooth: 5.4
Weight: 312g
Spatial audio: Yes
The very first pair of Sonos headphones certainly took its time getting to market, but the Ace brought some impressive tricks. They are arguably among the best-looking and unarguably one of the most comfortable pairs of wireless over-ear headphones around, and they’re specified without apparent compromise. Bluetooth 5.4 with aptX Lossless is at the cutting edge, sound quality is impressive, and active noise cancellation is very decent too (although not quite as decent as Sonos claims it is). Full Sonos system compatibility would be nice, but it seems you can’t have everything…
For
- Detailed, balanced, quite genteel sound
- Great looks, good comfort
- ‘TV audio swap’ feature
Against
- Could sound more energetic and dynamic
- Wider Sonos system compatibility would be nice
- ANC is not (as Sonos claims) class-leading
