Bowers & Wilkins new P17 true-wireless earbuds sound fantastic but they’re $400 – CNET [CNET]

Bowers & Wilkins, the venerable British audio company acquired last year by Sound United, has released its first true wireless earbuds. They are well worth the wait — if you can afford them. The new flagship noise-canceling P17 earbuds sound terrific but cost a whopping $400 (£349, AU$600). The step-down noise-canceling P15 buds, which I haven’t tried yet, retail for $250 (£199, AU$370). Both are available to order now in charcoal or white. 

Premium earbuds that cost $200 to $300 aren’t uncommon, but at $400, the P17 is in a class by itself, sort of like Apple’s AirPods Max in the over-ear noise-canceling arena. The Bang & Olufsen Beoplay E8 3rd-generation carry a list price of $350, but you can now find them discounted to a more palatable $250. Sennheiser’s Momentum True Wireless 2 buds are also down to $250 and Master & Dynamic just released its excellent MW08 buds for $300. 

Aside from stellar sound — I’ll dig more into that shortly — the P17 buds have a few bonus feature that may or may not help you rationalize paying $400 for them. For starters, they’re the first earbuds I’ve encountered where the wireless charging case converts into a transceiver, so you can plug the case into the headphone port on an airplane’s inflight entertainment system and wirelessly stream audio from the case to the earbuds.

At 75g with the buds in the case (the P15 is 61g with the buds inside), the case is pretty light and fairly compact, though not as compact as that of the AirPods Pro. It looks like a smaller version of the case for the Sony WF-1000XM3 and — like that case — it can only stand upright if you flip it upside-down on its lid.

Additionally, Bowers & Wilkins says the P17 supports Qualcomm aptX Adaptive wireless transmission (which includes the AptX HD codec) from compatible mobile devices, allowing for “high-resolution music transmission from suitable streaming services, such as Qobuz.” Also, the P17 “backs that high-resolution capability with 24-bit/48kHz wireless transmission between each earbud.” That makes the P17 one of few true wireless earbuds to support high-resolution audio “all the way from your music source to your ears,” according to Bowers & Wilkins, .

Alas, the list of mobile phones that currently support aptX Adaptive is quite limited — I do not own any of them — and I’ve always found that aptX’s implementation in devices is rather opaque. Apple’s iPhones support the AAC codec, not aptX (both the P15 and P17 support AAC streaming). And while we’re discussing Bluetooth audio codecs, which is what happens when you’re dealing with high-end wireless headphones, these earbuds don’t do Sony’s LDAC hi-res audio codec. Sorry, LDAC fans.

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