Bowers & Wilkins Pi8 earphones in test: overwhelming sound, clever housing

Or there's always the company's Music app (free for iOS and Android). It too has playback controls, but also offers ANC options (hybrid, off or pass-through) and lets you integrate your favourite music streaming services – assuming they're Deezer, NTS, Qobuz, SoundCloud, Tidal and/or TuneIn. And it includes a very useful five-band EQ as well as a Bowers & Wilkins True Sound preset. By prevailing standards, it's a clean, logical and user-friendly app, which is about as much as anyone has a right to expect.

In terms of performance, the headline here is that Bowers & Wilkins has easily justified the price of the Pi8 – and what's more, the downsides (if there are any) to owning a Pi8 are minor and don't impact the actual sound too much.

Keep the volume somewhere between “realistic” and “perhaps a little too loud” and you'll find plenty to enjoy with the Pi8's performance. They produce a spacious, well-defined and tightly organized soundstage, meaning every element of even the most complex recordings has plenty of room to spread out and express itself.

This spaciousness and separation does not detract from the uniqueness or unity of the way the Pi8 is something like Fela Kuti’s Gentleman. No matter how hectic things get, Pi8's sound is always cohesive, even though they can see so deep into the mix that each individual instrument is easy to isolate and examine.

Photo: Simon Lucas

Avoiding acoustic pileups

The same recording also allows Bowers & Wilkins to showcase their dynamic talent. There's plenty of scope when it comes to changes in intensity or volume, but the earphones are also able to identify and contextualize the smaller (but no less important) harmonic variations or transient occurrences.

In fact, the level of detail reaches dizzying heights on every occasion. No aspect of the recording is too fleeting or too far back in the mix for the Pi8 to miss. There's no such thing as “insignificant” for these earphones.