Bowers & Wilkins P5 Mobile Headphones

B&W (Bowers & Wilkins) P5 Headphones


Being a B&W speaker owner, and fan, I was eager to test out a pair of P5’s. The look of the headphone also enticed me – they are very attractive:






So I bought a pair. My reason for buying these was to use them as portables, on the road, with the iQube and an iPod Classic. I have been using the Senn PXC350, and still will have to for sure on airplane trips, but when I travel another way, or when I am gone a long time, I want to have another, non-noise cancelling headphone for that. I was hoping the P5 would fill the bill. I had bought the Ed 8's for that, but decided I liked them for home use too much to take them on the road.

As they arrived, I was impressed by the nice packaging. They are smaller than I thought. The build quality of the headphones themselves is outstanding. And indeed, they are very beautiful to look at. The pad design has been extensively discussed, and so I won’t go into it there, but as nice as they looked, I never found them to be completely comfortable. There is more pressure on the ear than I would like, no matter what I did. I could only wear them comfortably for about 15 minutes. On the flipside, they do isolate very, very well – the best I have gotten from a headphone that doesn’t use noise cancellation except for the Sennheiser HD25.

Also, the included cables are very thin and un-inspiring. And due to the connection scheme coupled with the manner in which the cable is snaked through the earcup close to the earpad assembly, and the absolute requirement of the earpad assembly to be snugly coupled to the headphone, it’s very unlikely that any sort of aftermarket cable is possible.

But worst of all, I found the sound to be very disappointing. My initial listen showed some promising things, but some very noticeable problems too, which I had hoped would be ameliorated with burn in. So I burned them in for 100 hours before listening to them again.

I played around a LOT with positioning on my ear, and while it definitely does matter, it did not change the overall sound significantly IMO (assuming we are talking only about reasonable positionings to begin with ).
I tested them using the iQube, which I consider to be a paragon of transparency in a portable amp. Just to make sure of what I was hearing, though, I also used the P5 on the Meier Audio Concerto and even the Leben CS300X.


Sound:

The P5 have a slightly muffled, muted sound, are lacking transparency, and are noticeably colored. They are maybe the darkest sounding headphones I have ever heard that were “real” headphones. The treble sounds very rolled off and lacks extension in a very noticeable way, even compared to headphones with a slightly soft treble like the JVC DX1000. As such, little musical details get lost. Cymbals don’t sound like they should – they are thrown almost behind your head since they are so muted.

The midrange is an enigma. There is definitely a lack of transparency to it. It’s lush, but there is a odd coloration I cannot quite describe to it. Some female vocals sound very good in a beautiful sort of way, but male vocals sound odd. And piano also sounds wrong – it fails to sound realistic. Patricia Barber's outstanding recordings have some of the most natural piano rendering I know of, and yet through the P5, they did not sound as I know they should.

The above two traits also lead to a lack of dynamics and good attack. The whole presentation comes across as slightly slow and soggy. It's been a long time since I listened to a headphone where I felt that the dynamics were so restricted. I guess I have become spoiled listening to headphones like the Beyer T1 and the Ultrasone Edition 8 - but the P5 didn't have the dynamics even of the PXC-350.

The bass is pretty strong, and generally good, but it lacks a little in terms of punch and definition. It’s not one-note, which is good, but it’s a little loose sounding. I have heard better defined bass in headphones costing less. I would say the bass performance is good, but not great. It has better weight than depth, too -- on Joan Armatrading's "Lover's Speak", which has some very deep bass during the chorus, this was less present than I expected it to be - the bass weight is mid-upper bass, not deep bass.

On some material, like Mae Moore’s “Love Will Bring You Back” from “It’s a Funny World”, this darkness didn’t really cause any major problems. I noticed the lack of top end extension because I am so familiar with the music, but it did not bother me, and Moore’s voice sounded good. Some tracks that are generally too bright to enjoy actually sounded great on the P5. But on other material, and especially male vocals, or music where there is musically important detailed treble, the colorations get in the way too much.

Two examples: David Gilmour's voice on "This Heaven" from "Like in Gdansk" is rendered in a muted way that is flatter and duller than it really sounds.

On the other hand, Johnny Nash's "I Can See Clearly Now" actually sounded GREAT, but that is a track that is normally is a very bright sounding. It sounded good in a way that it actually shouldn't

The lack of treble extension gives the headphones a little bit of a claustrophobic soundstage. The image isn’t all that well defined, and seems to cluster in the center of the head and around the ears, with very little forward projection and not much depth.

My main comparison was to the Sennheiser PXC350, as it’s similarly priced, and designed for the same basic application. All of my other headphones are in a much higher price/performance range. The PXC350’s are noise canceling, and as such they have a little bit of background noise when the NC circuit is on. The P5 have a blacker background. But that is the only advantage they have. The PXC350 sound better in every other way. They are more neutral, much more transparent, and have better treble extension, bass definition, and soundstaging than the P5 do. I no longer own them, but if memory serves me at all, I would say the Denon D1000/1001 outperform the P5 sonically. I wish I still had them so I could compare the two – but I’d be surprised if the P5’s outperform the Denons in terms of just sonics.

I don’t want to overplay this – it’s not like the P5 sound awful. But they are a very colored headphone, and you will have to really like their odd flavor to like them. It’s already clear that some people do, and that’s great. I have deep, deep respect for B&W. I absolutely love my B&W Nautilus 800’s. I had never owned a pair of speakers for more than 2 years before investing in the N800’s – and I have owned them for almost 10 years, and just yesterday I was listening to some nice vinyl through them and absolutely reveling in their sound. Unfortunately, B&W has a major miss with the P5, in my opinion. They could have been so much better, and they look so nice and are so well built, surely they could have made them more neutral sounding. It’s not like B&W doesn’t know what good sound is. I have a hard time imagining that they feel the P5 represent $300 worth of headphone sound. Maybe they needed to do more benchmarking.

In any case, unless you have a VERY bright set-up and want to radically change the sound of it in the other direction, I cannot recommend the P5’s at all. I think B&W needs to go back to the drawing board, or at a minimum, offer us a headphone at some point that better represents what their tradition dictates that they are capable of.

I listened to these out of my iphone at the apple store the other day while waiting for my genius bar ticket to come up for my busted ipod.  I was expecting them to be built really well, and sound decent.  I was not impressed. 

Some say they like the looks.  I think they look like something that is cheap but meant to look classy.  Like one of those ritzy prefab homes.  But clearly some think they look cool. 

They were much smaller in person than in pictures. 

I was expecting great build quality from the impressions I read, which I appreciate in a headphone, but the metal on these is for looks.  They don't actually seem built better than any other well made plastic headphone to me, either by feel, or by looks. I think my ath-M50 could take more abuse than these.

The sound was not impressive.  I was shocked because I was expecting something that was warm, forgiving, rich, maybe something like my old K240 sextetts.  But they managed to sound muffled and shrill at the same time.  Quite an achievement- if something is going to be warm, rolled off, and muffled you'd at least expect it to be rich and smooth.  But the upper mids were shrill, and the mids were muffled and lacked detail.  The rest of the spectrum was nothing to write home about.  My ath-M50 are more comfortable, look better, are 1/3 the price, and sound better in every way, regardless of source. 

The one positive thing I can say is that they are very comfortable for supra-aural cans.  They way the pads sit on the outer edges of the ear, while the leather covers the ear spreads the weight nicely.  But my circum-aural m50 is more comfortable and isolates better and is not much bigger- smaller in fact since it folds up.

Keep in mind, I listened to these at the apple store.  I wouldn't have posted this review if they were open cans, but since they are fairly isolating, I didn't feel like that environment had much impact on my impressions.   I would buy these if you love how they look.  But if you are interested in sound quality, there are much cheaper alternatives that sound better, are also happily driven from ipods and isolate equally well or better.   ATH-M50, srh-840 and AKG K271 (if you like a bass light sound) are a few that come to mind. 

I've had these cans for a few weeks to give them a fair trial.  To keep this short and sweet.  These are one of the best sounding portable headphones you can purchase, perhaps not the very best, but one of them.  Make sure you're comparing apples to apples.  These won't compete with Grado's or similar open headphones, but for portables, they are VERY impressive.

A few things to note:

• These do have a very lengthly break-in period before they really warm up, especially the treble.
• These are very sensitive to placement on the ear.  I find putting them a little further back on the ear sounds best.
• It will take around two weeks before they loosen up physically, they may hurt your ears at first, especially if you wear glasses.
• These are closer to reference headphones in terms of input required.  Most MP3's will sound horrible unless they are lossless---and even then it really depends on what was used to rip them to MP3 in the first place.

As long as you keep those things in mind, you'll have an incredible listening experience.  Ignore one of the above, and you'll find they're just mediocre at best.  Once you hear what they're really capable of, you'll be tossing your Bose QC'a and Sennheiser HD's in a box.

I bought these at an Apple store after jumping around between a few display models, and they certainly were the best of the lot that they had, in both sound quality and comfort.  I didn't want to take them off, so that told me something.

What's wrong with them-- Well the mids can get mucky-- like there's a film over them.  The bass is loose on the extreme low end-- it gets really slappy in the extreme lows below 200hz.  The treble gives me the most bother.  There's a real lack of imaging in these phones-- they bowl over the transients and there's little soundstage anywhere.  Compared to my UE Reference Monitors, well, there isn't really a comparison.  The UE's do everything so right, it's laughable when I jump to the B & W's.

So you'd think I'd be chucking these in a drawer and never look back, but a funny thing-- despite their shortcomings (I tend to address them with EQ- and if you want a different appreciation for them fire up iTunes and put the "electronic" eq on them and dial them in a bit) these headphones are like a comfy pair of old slippers.  They don't do anything particularly well, but I find myself reaching for them often because they're so darned comfortable to wear.  I can take a snooze while wearing them and they're wonderful. Beware- in warm weather, your ears will sweat!  

One final note-- because of their flat profile, there are about five positions they can rest on your ear, and each sounds entirely different.  Play around with placement before dismissing them, you might find a really good position and spend the next two months trying to figure out where you had them on that great night of listening they provided way back when.  

Yeah, they're quirky and expensive, but they look good and feel great.  I'm not getting rid of them, they're a creature comfort my ears appreciate on the right occasion.  They're not for detailed listening.  They're for curling up with a good book on a cold night.  Soul food for your ears.