Bose still leads the market when it comes to wireless noise-cancelling headphones, but it's facing a lot of strong new competition. At $299.99, Bowers & Wilkins' PX5 headphones offer wireless ANC (active noise cancellation) for $100 less than the Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones 700. While they don't reach quite the same level of excellence as the Bose model, they're a good alternative if you're looking to save some money.

Design

Available in blue or gray models, the PX5 headphones use cloth, textured plastic, and leather in their design for a luxurious look and feel. The supra-aural (on-ear) earcups have generous memory foam cushioning in the earpads, as does the underside of the headband. The overall fit and feel can seem quite tight at first, but once adjustments are made, the fit is secure and exerts less obvious pressure on your ears and head.

Internally, each earcup houses a 35.6mm full-range driver delivering 10Hz-30kHz of audio. The right earcup's side panel houses the power/pairing switch, as well as a three-button array of controls. The central multifunction button handles playback, track navigation, call management, and voice assistance, while the two outer buttons are dedicated volume controls. The bottom of the side panel also houses a USB-C port for the included charging cable, as well as a 3.5mm jack for the included audio cable.

The audio cable can be used with or without ANC on, but the headphones must be powered up. There's no passive use of the cable when the headphone battery is kicked, and there's also no inline remote control.

The ANC button on the left ear switches through the various ANC modes, including high, low, auto, or off (we'll discuss these in the next section). Holding the button for a couple of seconds activates or deactivates the ambient listen-through mode. The headphones use Bluetooth 5.0 and support AptX (Adaptive, Classic, and HD), AAC, and Bluetooth codecs.

The Bowers & Wilkins app (for Android and iOS) has some useful features. The ANC section allows you to adjust the level of ambient pass-through from the mics, blending it with the ANC levels like you can with the Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones 700. The app also has some soundscapes you can play for relaxation or focus (like rain and waterfalls). You can install software updates via the app, as well as tweak some settings, such as the auto-play that starts audio up the moment you place the headphones on.

You can also disable voice prompts and customize the standby timer for the headphones to power down (or simply disable it). For those who like to use ANC without audio playing for extended periods, this adjustment will be a must—otherwise, after 15 minutes of no audio playback, the ANC (and headphones) will shut down. Unfortunately, the app lacks the ability to make EQ adjustments.

Bowers & Wilkins estimates battery life to be roughly 25 hours, but your results will vary with your mix of ANC use and your volume levels.

Performance

The PX5's noise cancellation circuitry is most effective against low-frequency rumble like you hear on trains or planes, but the mids are also handled well. Keyboard clicks and office chatter are still audible, but get tamped down significantly. Without a doubt, the high ANC mode is the most effective setting. There's very little hiss added by the ANC, which is often an issue with less-capable models. The ANC also seems to have very little effect on the audio, which isn't always the case with wireless models. The ambient listen-through mode works quite well and is a quick way to hear your surroundings without removing the headphones. So overall, the noise cancellation is very good, and certainly excellent for the price.

As for audio performance, on tracks with intense sub-bass content, like The Knife's "Silent Shout," the headphones deliver strong low-frequency response paired with bright high-frequency presence. There's no distortion at top volumes, and at moderate volumes, the lows still sound robust.

See How We Test Headphones

Bill Callahan's "Drover," a track with far less deep bass in the mix, gives us a better sense of the PX5's general sound signature. The drums on this track can sound overly thunderous on bass-forward models, but here they sound full and natural, without ever feeling overly boosted. Callahan's baritone vocals get far more prominence in the mix, with some boosted low-mid richness and some decent treble edge to keep things defined. The acoustic strums get some added brightness, as do the higher-register percussive hits.

On Jay-Z and Kanye West's "No Church in the Wild," the kick drum loop receives an ideal high-mid presence, accentuating its punchy attack, while there's some clear high-frequency boosting pushing the vinyl hiss and crackle forward. The sub-bass synth hits that punctuate the beat are delivered with reasonable power, but not the intense subwoofer-like push we often hear from heavily bass-boosted headphones. The vocals are clear and relatively crisp, though they can use a bit more treble presence; there's no added sibilance to speak of, however.

Orchestral tracks, like the opening scene from John Adams' The Gospel According to the Other Mary, get some added bass anchoring without sounding unnatural, while the higher-register brass, strings, and vocals retain their crisp, prominent place in the mix. This is a sculpted sound signature, but it's balanced, with a lean toward the low-mids that may not appeal to everyone, but certainly doesn't make things sound muddy or lacking in detail.

The mic offers decent intelligibility. Using the Voice Memos app on an iPhone 8, we could understand every word we recorded, but there was the typical Bluetooth fuzzy distortion around the edges. The mic signal is strong, however, and it doesn't sound too distant from your mouth.

Conclusions

If you're looking for noise cancellation on a strict budget, consider the in-ear route—the Apple AirPods Pro deliver an excellent experience for $250. That said, the $300 PX5 headphones are still more affordable than most of the high-end options in the category, like the aforementioned Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones 700, as well as B&W's own PX7 (which offer pretty similar performance to the PX5). So if you're looking for an on-ear pair for no more than $300, it's worth checking out the Bowers & Wilkins PX5.

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