Performance
We tested the PI7 in a variety of scenarios like riding in the car, crossing a busy street, and taking calls at the office. Since audio quality is something that’s typically overlooked in a lot of other wireless earphones, we listened to a lot of different styles of music with the new PI7.
Compared to most earphones on the market, the B&W PI7 presents a much wider soundstage with deep bass across a wide range of frequencies from 10Hz to 20kHz. Like B&W’s PX line of noise-canceling over-ear headphones, B&W utilized the same engineers as the team that was behind their prestigious 800 Series Diamond speakers. These are the same speakers used at Abbey Road Studios, and we think this is what sets both the PI7 and the PI5 apart from other in-ear headphones.
When you step up to the flagship PI7, you get the added bonus of the high-frequency balanced armature tweeters in each earphone, and we liked how this really allowed us to experience more dynamic details popping out in hi-res music files. The 20kHz top-extension you get from both models really came alive with the PI7, especially on music with a lot of natural acoustic instruments such as horns, violins, guitars, and voices. If you want to experience the extra dynamics that almost pop out right in front of you, Liro Rantala’s “Helsinki,” is a really good track to hear this natural presentation of details popping out in the mid to high frequencies, a rhythm, and pacing that got our feet tapping along to the music.
Next, we tested the noise cancellation. In terms of lower frequencies like the low-end “hum” of a car or the sound of a train passing by, the PI7 did not block out noises as well as larger over-ear headphones like the B&W PX7 Noise-Canceling headphones -- but, having said that, the performance was comparable to the best noise-canceling in-ear headphones on the market.
We were impressed by how effective the Active Noise-Canceling tech in the PI7 was at automatically adapting to the ambient noise in our changing environments. It did a great job automatically analyzing and canceling out the higher frequency sounds. When we were out and about in a noisy street with honking cars, sirens, and people talking, the PI7 performed well at reducing all the distractions so we could focus on the music. When we wanted to hear the sounds in our environment, the PI7’s Ambient Pass-Through feature came in handy when it was time to pause the music and have a conversation without taking out the earbuds.
In terms of noise-canceling on phone calls, we tested them in the car, walking across the street while taking business calls, and in the office. In all of these scenarios, people on the other end consistently told us the reduction of background noises was substantially better, especially when we were walking around in a busy downtown environment. People told us our voices sounded clear during the call, and on conference calls, fewer people were asking us to mute if there was wind or other noises in the background.