Bowers & Wilkins Pi8 True Wireless Earbuds Review

I used the headphones for more than two weeks on a variety of music and made a few calls as well. Although the call part probably won’t be too important to our readers, I felt the call quality was excellent.

I’m generally not too keen on earbuds. They fall out of my ears at the worst possible time, and their fidelity always leaves something to be desired. Not true of the B&W Pi8 earbuds. There’s enough here (and to hear) that an audiophile, even a cranky earbuds hater like me, will find things to really like.

The Bowers & Wilkins Pi8 earbuds are not something I was really excited to review, but I wanted to see if someone was making a pair worth my attention. As I mentioned above, I simply don’t like earbuds. I don’t find them comfortable or usually very musical. I have tried a few brands, and they all seemed a compromise in comfort or audio quality, and usually both those factors were missing to a small or large degree.

I have always liked B&W products. When I lived and worked in England for a few years in the 90s, my audiophile friends over there loved B&W speakers, and I got a pair of 801 speakers, which were indeed excellent (but too big to move back to the states).

So, I was both excited and hesitant to try these earbuds. I’m glad I did give them an audition, and my journey is detailed below.

The Pi8 Earbuds are shipped in a small package, but it contains everything you need to get started, including USB cables for charging. You can purchase the Pi8 Earbuds in any of 4 colors, I received Anthracite Black for my review unit. There’s a trim clamshell case, which protects the earbuds, and can charge them in that case.

B&W considers the Pi8 a reference design and I would not argue. The shape of the earbuds is based on extensive research into the shape of the human ear, allowing for variations in gender and ethnicity. The Pi8 earbuds come with four different ear tips to accommodate most ears.

The top of each earbud represents a large capacitive touch surface with advanced sensors that improve the responsiveness and reliability of touch-based interactions. The new industrial design also repositions all antenna and microphones within the earbud to avoid the possibility of accidental blockage of wireless or audio signals, while a new IR proximity sensor provides more reliable and responsive wear sensing.

The Smartcase supplied with the flagship Pi8 retains support for both wireless charging and its innovative Wireless Audio Retransmission technology. This according to B&W, allows listeners to retransmit audio to their earbuds wirelessly from connected analogue or digital sources, such as in- flight entertainment systems, home computers or even the latest generation of USB-C-enabled iPhones. Pi8’s Smartcase can retransmit in aptX Adaptive at up to 24-bit/96kHz quality, delivering a valuable performance upgrade over the older Pi7 S2. B&W gives you an adapter with a mini plug on one end for your source component, then a USB-C plug in the other end that goes into the case. Then the case acts as a transmitter to get your source to the Pi8 Earbuds. Very slick.

The earbuds also feature carefully positioned microphones designed to reject unwanted external noises during voice calls. The noise cancellation technology includes a proprietary ANC algorithm developed by Bowers & Wilkins.

Battery life is very good for an earbud. The Pi8, with its upgraded DSP/DAC, offers 6.5 hours of audio from the earbuds and a further 13.5 hours from the Smartcase, for 20 hours of total use. The Pi8 can be rapidly recharged, with just 15 minutes of charge providing enough energy for two more hours of use.

Getting these headphones paired was easy enough. I get them connected to my iPhone, and some other equipment around the house like an Eversolo DMP A6 DAC and streamer. That configuration allowed me to listen to my Roon collection easily on the Pi8 earbuds.

I had one problem during the setup. Having had many other earbuds that I’ve auditioned, I charged them up, put them in my ears, and they sounded tinny. Really tinny. The bottom dropped out of the mid frequencies and the bass was non-existent. I was pretty sure I had a defective pair. Then I read the quick start manual, and I quickly realized I had the Pi8 earbuds oriented incorrectly in my ears. The B&W logo and text was supposed to be pointed toward my mouth on both earbuds.

When I did that, the sound came alive. As a reviewer I know to read the documentation, but I let that detail slip by. My bad. Lesson learned.

Using the ‘tap on the earbuds’ to control them is problematical. B&W is not the only brand affected with this problem and there are no easy answers. I wouldn’t want to have to go to the app to control the headphones, but until you get used to it, I found it tough sledding.

Answering a call is 1 tap. Skipping a track to move forward is 2 taps. Going in reverse is 3 taps. Hanging up a call is 2 short taps and 1 long one. You can customize this in the B&W app, but you still have to remember it all. As I said, there’s no easy way around this. If you want to control these earbuds, you must tap on them or use the smartphone app to navigate.

Here are some of the many musical selections I listened to:

These little B&W marvels aren’t inexpensive, and while there are much cheaper earbuds on the market, I think they do represent really good value. The Bose QuietComfort Earbuds II are $179.00, Apple AirPods Pro II are $189, the Final ZE8000 are $289.00, and all these represent some compromise, in noise reduction or battery life, plus they simply aren’t going to sound as good as the B&W Pi8 earbuds.

Despite my self-inflicted setup missteps getting these in my ears, the B&W Pi8 Earbuds seem to me to be state-of-the-art for comfort and sound. They have made me reconsider earbuds as listening gear, and I’d love to have them on a long flight or just walking around the house. Highs are clean, bass is prodigious, and they can be made to fit a variety of ear shapes and sizes.

Tapping on the earbuds is going to be confusing until you get used to all the possible combinations of tapping and holding. I panicked when my iPhone rang, and I had to figure out which taps worked to answer it. With flexibility comes complexity, and it takes a while until muscle memory sets in and it’s easy to get what you want.