Luxury

These headphones from Bowers & Wilkins are probably the best pair of headphones I've ever owned. The design of them is phenomenal, the audio quality is superb, and I find them comfortable and easy to use. It's almost impossible to make a perfect product, especially headphones, but I consider them to be pretty close.

First of all, the audio quality on these headphones is phenomenal. It sounds good when you're listening to podcasts or talk radio, but when you switch over to music it really blows you away. Some Bluetooth headphones I've used have suffered in the audio department, but these sound exactly as good as a wired pair of headphones at a similar price. There's no stuttering or connectivity issues, no distortion, they sound perfect. I don't like a lot of bass in my music and I found them to be perfectly balanced.

Visually I find the soft gold style to be very pleasing, it's not so bright that it stands out but it does set itself apart from your standard black headphones. The ear sections are well padded for comfort, and do a great job of sealing your ears to prevent outside noise from distracting you. The noise cancelling also helps with this. One issue with this, however, is that on some heads this might seem too tight. I personally find they fit perfectly, but other people I've allowed to try them on have sometimes found them too tight, even a few weeks after I first started using them. I find the tight grip to be a useful feature, but if you are sensitive to pressure, that could be an issue. It's not head-size. The large-headed members of our family found them comfortable, it's definitely related to how much pressure you like on your ears. Those who were uncomfortable with a tight feeling on the ears, needed time to adjust.

The 22 hour battery life is amazing, I've only recharged it one time over a few weeks of casual use. One way it achieves this is that the auto-off function is on a very short trigger, about 1-2 minutes. I sometimes found this to be too short, but overall this helps to lengthen battery time, and reconnecting takes less than a second, so it's not a major issue. The adaptive noise cancelling also works very well, keeping background audio to a bare minimum without it sounding strange.

A bigger issue I had was with the interesting features that allow the headphones to pause when you lift one ear, or go into sleep mode when you put them down. In theory these are great features, and if you're a normal music listener they probably will be, but I had to download the app and turn them off after several issues they caused me. As I often listen with one ear on and one off, the headphones kept pausing, and every time I found bend down (while vacuuming or cleaning for example) the headphones would interpret that as a signal to go into sleep mode. If you simply walk or job while using your headphones these features should be fine, but if you're bending and moving around more, or if you prefer not to listen with both ears, it's best to turn off these features. If you tend to sit static when you listen to music, for example, transit or just chilling, you can easily leave this feature on. But if you're using these while active, best to leave that feature off.

Despite a few minor issues, I consider these headphones to be near-perfect. The quality of the audio and the sleek design are great, as is the long battery life and ease of use. Gorgeous design, great sound quality and no dropped connection = a very happy owner.