Bowers & Wilkins P5 headphone

Manufacturer: Bowers & Wilkins
Website: http://www.bowers-wilkins.co.uk
Typical Selling price: £250.00
Described as Mobile HiFi rather than as ‘headphones’, the P5s are made from rigid and high quality materials and feature memory foam cushions, held on by small magnets. There is a hidden socket on one side of the headset, revealed when you pop off one of the cushions, that you connect either a simple microjack to microjack lead, or else the Apple-approved switching controller cable, both of which are supplied. The whole package is very high end with a natty pouch with metal tag and a quarter inch adapter supplied for use with older fashioned headphone sockets. This is the first set of headphones produced by Bowers & Wilkins and are intended to keep up their standards of excellence. The packaging itself is rugged and durable and so good looking that everyone who buys these will keep it for storage.
– iPhone compatible remote control
– 2x 40mm diameter Mylar diaphragm
– Neodymium magnets
– Impedance: 26 Ohms
– High precision diaphragm resistance material
– Closed back for noise isolation
– Fold flat design
– Single sided detachable/changeable OFC cable with low handling noise
– Adjustable leather headband
– Carry pouch
– Memory foam changeable ear cushions
– Real Sheep Leather used throughout
– Standard cable included
– 3.5mm/ 1/4in jack adaptor included
– Frequency response: 10Hz to 20kHz
– Sensitivity: 115dB @ 1kHz
– Max input power: 50mw
– Dimensions: 180mm x 150mm x 35mm folded ,60mm in use
– Weight: 195g
Review by Adam Rayner
I go back a long way with audio and headphones in particular. I can recall as can everybody of my generation, the very first time a set of Sony Walkman headphones attached of course to a Sony cassette deck Walkman was slapped around my head. At the time cassette was crap unless you had a two-, or better yet three-head deck and the Walkman’s clear full range sound was a ruddy revelation. It was like a cassette deck but better and the sound quality was bloody astonishing.
But years later, when I got a Panasonic portable CD player, it was the next level of excellence again and the sheer clarity from CD (this one cost £300 – for a portable!) was just bizarre. I felt a bit like I was in the middle of some sort of pop video the first few times and indeed, so good did I think my headphones were at the time, that the effect lasted for a bit.
I have been collecting some ear buds together and some headphones as well, with a view to doing a wee round-up and these posh headphones came up at around the same time and kind of demanded their own bit of space. For Bowers & Wilkins are famed for their good to insane-end speakers and make the legendary Nautilus snail-shell shaped speaker.
They love classic materials and these headphones are no exception. I wish I could give an eleven for build quality as these are all carved bits of Aluminium and the softest baby ungulate’s bottom leather.
They are so gorgeously over engineered you will drool over them and keep the packing as that too is so handsome, with a clear window and pretty finish and Neodymium magnets embedded to make the flap close and sort of stick shut. The very baggie that you get to keep them in between uses has a big chunky chromed lump on the end of the drawstring and more Neo magnets are found inside the headphones themselves, used to hold the squishy marvellously sound-excluding pads to the ear speaker bit itself. Open the one side and you find a neat as ninepence plughole for where your supplied choice of cables goes as the P5s can be used either with the simple microjack or the included quarter inch classic headphone socket jack plug adapter cable or else used with the again double-ended stereo microjack lead but with an iPod switcher part amidships.
Although this didn’t work with my ancient iPod nano, this switch can be used in different combinations of short multiple press sequences to change volume or track on your iPod or iPhone.
I haven’t used the London Underground I some time but I charged up the ‘Pod and went off to visit the Anglers Mail at IPC magazines. Wow has that place changed since it was in Kings Retch Tower? Of course, lots of folks use headphones on the tube and yet despite the things wrapped around others’ heads I was kinda aware that having these babies made it an utter Win for me, Flash Harry.
But one thing took me by surprise. I have a playlist of songs compiled when I lost a relationship decades ago and I discovered that I had transferred the albums they originally came from and could make the list again from way back in the cassette era, some of them. Madness’ version of It Must be Love, and Stevie Wonder singing You Are The Sunshine Of My Life and others that resonated down the years for me.
Even though the files were AAC compressed and not all that crisp versus CD, the sound was transporting me as much as the bloody train. I drifted back to the years I would go see this girl on the tube and then the end when I made this compilation in pure spite to try to tear her apart. In so doing, I used songs that meant stuff to me not her so while I reckon she didn’t give a damn, at the time it ripped my heart out instead.
All so long, long ago….. so why in bloody hell were tears welling up in my eyes? I sat there and listed to Sade sing about how Your Love is King and it all got too much. I had to claw the bloody things off my head
On the way home having had a cracking meeting, I slapped ’em around my bonce once more and it was like stepping into another world again. No anti-noise, just classic solid materials and utter comfyness that is like closing the door on a Bentley, the world just goes away a bit.
The Commodores’ Three Times a Lady absolutely stitched me up again, only this time, I’m sure I spotted a couple of other passengers wondering what was going on, as you cannot help moving a little to the music. Not quite as bad as the dancers practising in the Dole queue in The Full Monty but bloody close. Maybe it’s just me but I do think this set of headphones should come with an emotional health warning, like:
WARNING, USE OF THIS PRODUCT IN PUBLIC PLACES MAY CAUSE INVOLUNTARY EMOTIONAL REACTION. LISTEN WITH CARE.
I absolutely adored every part of the experience, from drooling in a joy-of-possession style to all facets of their use but that ruddy sound is breath taking and in my opinion you won’t get noticeably better until you are spending over £from any other maker out there. Giving these back was like Fostering children. I fell in love a bit and am going to be pleading with B&W for a deal on my own pair. I want them so bad I can taste it and I can set up some counselling to cope.
Sound Quality 9.0
Build Quality 10.0
Comfort 10.0
Isolation/Noise cancelling 10.0
Value For Money 9.0
Overall rating 9.6