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.  Yes, they have metal on them, but also a bunch of plastic around the big chunk of metal.  I like good build quality, 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 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.

FIRST: don't believe any reviewer who listen to the P5 only few hours or a couple of days, they need minimum 60 hours of break in to start sounding decent, at 100h they sound ok. At first they're so closed in like listenin' with a big and heavy curtain in front of your head, no detail in any frequency, no dynamic, just ugly sound with boomy bass and not even punchy. I was shocked the first time I hear them, "who could ever buy this crap?" was my first impression.

SECOND: pjoliver182 mod http://www.head-fi.org/t/576341/b-w-p5-modifications is essential and the cheapest and easiest upgrade to gain bass detail, dynamic and better definition in any freq. Just add a little isolation material (also cotton will work for testing differences) in the upper part inside the ear pad. I've done this review with this essential mod, before I was very close to return the P5. Thank you again pjoliver182!

THIRD: They're very sensitive to ear pads position, move pads up/down/front/rear to get best results for your head. You need to experiment a bit to get best bass extension and articulation, focus, dynamics or to retrieve more ambience and soundstade depth.

The target for me was to select a portable HP without the need of a stand alone dedicated headphone amp, so they must be not too big and sound ok with an iPod, smartphone or a notebook.

Any difficult to drive or low sensivity HP is ruled out.

Overall rating is based on this needs.

I've used for testing: iPhone 4, iPod Classic 160Gb, Blackberry Bold 9700, Dell Precision M6600 Notebook with IDT hd audio codec and JRiver MC16 with WASAPI Event style in Windows 7 64bit, Linn Majik Kontrol or Naim Supernait+HC2 built in headphone amps with Linn Majik Ds or Naim CD5XS+FCX2 as sources. Lots of HD tracks 24 bit downloads tested. I think some of the listed equipment is good enough to judge overall quality and differences of HPs I targeted.

I've tried a lot of different types of HP so to have a general reference, I still have the following for testing purposes and to add some direct comparisons:

Sennheiser CX300 (in-ear)

Sennheiser HD535 (low sensivity)

Grado GR10 (in-ear)

Grado SR125i (low sensivity)

Monster Beats Solo HD

Overall the CX300 (best buy in ear for Whathifi) presentation is the most similar to the P5, a lower level P5 if you will: less detail and dynamic, less articulated and punchy bass, less separation and ambience, less armonics and less stable at high volumes.

Grado's are much more dry in sound, if you like them you'll hate the P5 tube like sounds. At first Grado's seems to pull out more details but now I think they loose some body in the sounds which for me is another part of the details and they've a mid/high freq bump not so comfortable to use with common headphone sockets, don't know how things goes with dedicated amps, but I'm not interested as stated before.

Monster Solo HD is much less detailed and too much boomy and exagerated bass to be serious.

My ratings:

Value 4 stars: they're not cheap nor they're too much expensive, very good VFM given the quality of construction and overall sound. At nearly 300 Euro they've more VFM than Monster Solo HD at 200 Euro for example.

Design 5 stars: I love the design, colors and materials used. I rate this parameter very high and I'm proud to show them around to anyone. Very appropriate even for older guys like me at 44 who don't like to emulate rappers and prefer a classic but modern look. Beautiful bag.

Confort 3,5 stars: at first they seems very confortable, but during long listening they start to pressure your ears too much. For over the ear they could be improved at least half a point, I'll give five stars only to around ear and light HP. Also it's not so easy to find again the sweet spot position if you change the distance of the earpads for storing them in the dedicated bag, it's so narrow and that detract a little to confort of use. Last cons: If it's hot they could make your ear hotter. Isolation confort is very good even if it's still possible to do better.

Audio Quality 4,5 stars (with pjoliver182 mod, without mod 4 stars, see SECOND point above): The sound is on the warm side with very good timbre fidelity, good dynamic and detail but not the champ here especially if you don't do the mod. I can't believe some reviewers stated they could be spitty or aggressive. I wish a little bit more HF detail and extension for perfection, that's why not a 5 star rating. Maybe a better cable could do the job but it's very difficult to upgrade it given the type of implementation: 2,5mm jack and even smaller than normal to fit it inside the ear pad, 3,5mm on the amp side.

With break in AND mod AND correct sweet spot, the critical bass is excellent, powerful enough to give justice to any kind of music, controlled and detailed enough to not miss anything in that department.

Midrange is british, its stronger feature for the one like me who appreciate it that way. It's detailed and full of body, not sterile. Voice M or F, saxs and pianos are very enjoyable. Some sounds even ambient sounds or voices from people speaking in live performances like jazz sessions seems so real sometimes I pull off the P5 to ask my wife if she was speaking to me or look around if there's someone moving in my room...

Overall what is so easy to love about the P5 is the coherent sound, it's not coherent in a neutral cold way, it's coherent in a tube like fashion. Any frequency is colored in the same way, so there is not a disjointed rappresentation of the music, you don't hear a super detailed HF and at the same time a boomy undetailed bass for example, nor you need to listen to only one kind of music or just a few tracks which are recorded optimally for your headphone. Any recording and genere could be enjoyed in a satisfactory way because even if colored any parameter is in good condition. Think about giving 7, 8 or 9/10 to various aspects of the music and sound instead of a 4, 7 or 10/10. The latter is less enjoyable in the long run even if some aspects are better. So you don't have the best HF extension but it's good enough to enjoy details and the meaning of the music and interpeter. The Prat factor is very high, the midrange british and tube like, the sensation of lots of harmonics add to the musical presentation. You can feel the body of instruments even if they could be more detailed, Grado's Hps on the contrary seems to loose some weight to instruments and voices even if they're perceived more detailed. Drums are not so fast like Grado's but are much more punchy and more full. Pianos the same, not so detailed nor so thin, more round and more decays and harmonics. I like much more now this type of presentation. I think Grado's are colored too, just in another way. Just b/c you could enjoy lots of different recordings or generes not means the P5 color the music in such a way all sound the same, not at all. You could hear great differences between recordings and that's why you are always happy to check the sound of the new HD file you've just downloaded.

Another strong feature is the volume you could push these little babies, more you pump the volume more details and dynamic you gain without fatigue and without congestion or lost of control. So in the end you start thinking, are they really less detailed or I just need a stronger amp to achieve better results? On the contrary with Grado's you think, maybe a dedicated tube amp could be the right choice...

Overall an excellent 4,5 stars: they could be more confortable, less picky sweet spot, maybe more detailed, maybe...