Review: Bowers & Wilkins P7 Headphones

In the vast jungle of fancy headphones, some trees stand taller than others. The Bowers & Wilkins P7, a gorgeous $400 pair of over-the-ear headphones, is one such specimen.

I use "fancy" in the way one would speak of a Bentley or a Morgan. It gets you there just as well as any other performance-minded piece of equipment, but it does so with a unique flair, and with great attention paid to the luxurious bunting.

B&W is a British hi-fi company. It's been tickling the ears of the audio elite for decades, but in the last few years it's been turning its focus toward the high-end consumer. How? By consistently delivering amazing-sounding, beautifully designed personal audio products at a relatively modest price point. And yes, in high-end audio, $400 is relatively modest.

These new P7 headphones continue the trend. The design and the build quality are very close to the company's best-selling on-the-ear P5 headphones, including all the black leather, the metal frame, and the magnetic clasps that let you remove the pads. Everything is just bigger on the P7s. The most obvious difference is the design of the earpads, which are fully circumaural. The P7s are the first over-the-ear headphones B&W has ever made, and of course, the build quality and the choice of materials is exquisite, bordering on decadent.

The big, leather pads are super-soft (think of all the cliched things we usually compare soft leather to, then double them) and they scoop around the ear to create a comfortable, tight seal. Inside are 40mm aluminum-copper drivers, and the sound they put out is just phenomenal.

When I first got the P7 loaner pair a couple of months ago, I slipped them on and just sat there with a grin for the first few minutes. The richness is astounding. They aren't as transparent as reference headphones — they definitely have some boost to the bass. But like all other B&W headphones, the audio profile is perfectly tasteful, with excellent range and dynamics. I wore them most of that first day, but I had to take them off because I was finding it difficult to concentrate on work — I just kept cueing up songs.

Since then, I've worn them in a bunch of different settings. At the office, they provide enough isolation to block out external noises and significantly shield me from all the talking going on around my desk. The over-the-ear design is much better than the on-ear P5s and P3s for noisy environments. Likewise for wearing them around town and on the commute — though I was always overly self-conscious wearing these lavish-looking $400 headphones on the city bus, or even at the coffee shop. But of course, they sounded great on the street and among the hubbub.

For home listening sessions, they made a little less sense to me. The home is where you can listen to music without much going on around you, so you usually don't require the seal of a full-sized headphone. Granted, I don't have kids, and my house is large enough where I can get away from the TV or the stereo and listen in peace. So for me, I prefer an open-backed headphone for listening at home — open-backs are airier, usually have a more natural low end, and are more comfortable to wear for long periods since they don't rely on the tight seal to block out noise. So if you prefer a more "open" sound, there are better ways to spend your $400 on headphones.

There are also plenty of excellent-sounding closed-back headphones for less then half the money, like the Sony MDR7506 or the Audio-Technica ATH-M50s. Just a little cheaper than the P7s are the $350 Sennheiser Momentum headphones and the $300 V-Moda Crossfade M-100s, both of which have a somewhat similar sound profile to the P7, and both of which are more compact.

Which is not to say you shouldn't consider the Bowers & Wilkins P7s. You certainly should, but just understand what you're paying for. The build quality and the materials — especially the leather — are positively exquisite, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a pair of headphones for $400 that are as well-crafted as these. Also, if you're already a fan of B&W's other mobile-friendly on-ear and in-ear models, then you understand the benefits of B&W's design. Namely, the pads and cables are user-serviceable. If the leather wears out, or if your cat chews through a cable, you can not only order replacement parts yourself, but you can swap them out in less than a minute. The drivers can also easily be repaired — the earpads pop right off without fuss.

So the P7s sound great and they're classy. But they're also an investment. Continue to treat them well, and they'll likely continue to delight your ears for a very long time.