Sony 1000X The Collexion vs Bowers and Wilkins PX8 S2: High-priced headphones compete for your dollar

Luxury headphones are magnets for controversy due to their high price tags, but anyone giving these cans a serious look can have a hard time getting straight talk. Ever since Sony dipped its toes in the high-end waters with the Sony 1000X The Collexion, comparisons to other high-priced headphones were the natural result. One set of headphones in particular, the Bowers and Wilkins PX8 S2, popped up multiple times on Reddit and other forums as a comparison readers wanted to see — so which cans win when we pit the Sony 1000X The Collexion vs Bowers and Wilkins PX8 S2? Here are the main takeaways.

The Bowers and Wilkins PX8 S2 has fewer features, is no less frustrating than the Sony 1000X The Collexion

Though both headphones have a decidedly premium construction, Sony seems to understand user experience better than Bowers & Wilkins does. The Sony 1000X The Collexion is built around a metal skeleton clad with leather-like material, using touch gestures and limited buttons. Though the Bowers and Wilkins PX8 S2 is similar in materials choices, the headphones aren’t as comfortable long-term as the Sony 1000X The Collexion. However, it’s quite easy to maintain, and from a design standpoint is both flashier and more practical than the Sony headphones in some ways.

As I reviewed both the Sony 1000X The Collexion and Bowers and Wilkins PX8 S2 for SoundGuys, I have first-hand experience using both headphones. I found my time with both headphones to be a little frustrating, mainly centered around comfort and fit. Specifically, both of these products are quite heavy — over 300 grams — and it’s very difficult to get heavy headphones to be comfortable to wear long term. This is especially true if you wear glasses like I do. The excessive weight can get fatiguing as time goes on, even if your headphones resemble a leather couch with all that padding.

I mention comfort first because it affects the entire user experience. While I know that not everyone likes gesture controls, the Sony 1000X The Collexion is less likely to get moved around on your head when you’re not mashing buttons on the side of the ear cups like you have to with the Bowers and Wilkins PX8 S2. Though there is an appeal to not having to worry about rain causing false inputs or the cold making it harder to control your headphones, buttons have the distinct tradeoff of being forced to apply pressure to something that already may be putting a lot of force on your head.

As both headphones have battery life that exceeds 24 hours, it’s not much of a differentiating factor here. However, if you like to listen to lossless music, the Bowers and Wilkins PX8 S2 is the only model between the two that supports USB-C listening in addition to analog — the Sony 1000X The Collexion can only do analog. Both headphones support higher-bitrate Bluetooth codecs, so that, too, isn’t much of a differentiating factor either. But the Sony 1000X The Collexion supports LE Audio features, while the Bowers and Wilkins PX8 S2 does not — so anyone who gets irked by latency should take note.

If you’re someone who really wants to stay on the cutting edge, the Sony 1000X The Collexion has a lot of features that should keep you happy. For example, the Sound Connect app unlocks spatial audio, Find My device, adjusting ANC settings, managing Multipoint, and more. The Bowers & Wilkins app on the other hand, is pretty bare-bones and without a lot of the latest-and-greatest features. In my experience, a lot of these are really “nice-to-haves” and not “killer features” that I use a lot; nine times out of ten I turn all of these things off because headphones don’t really need to be all that complicated.

You’ll probably want the Sony 1000X The Collexion’s microphone if you make a lot of calls

If you’re the type of person to take a lot of calls, the Bowers and Wilkins PX8 S2’s microphone fared a little better in our labs under controlled conditions than the Sony 1000X The Collexion. Specifically, outdoor gabbers should note the improved call quality in the presence of wind noise. Though neither product is “bad” here, in that one specific condition the Bowers and Wilkins PX8 S2 wins out.

However I will point out that the bassier mic of the Bowers and Wilkins PX8 S2 can make things sound a little strange when conditions are ideal, or close to it. Some of this might have to do with the mouth simulator we use being a little too close to the mic, but this is a situation that you’d run into as well. Across reverberant spaces, and in the presence of office or street noise, the Sony 1000X The Collexion handled noise rejection and deletion quite well. Just remember that these clips are a high-water mark for each of these products, and your call may sound different due to your network, client, or app.

Sony 1000X The Collexion microphone demo (Ideal conditions):

Bowers and Wilkins PX8 S2 microphone demo (Ideal conditions):

Sony 1000X The Collexion microphone demo (Windy conditions):

Bowers and Wilkins PX8 S2 microphone demo (Windy conditions):

The Sony 1000X The Collexion has more effective noise canceling

Though the Bowers and Wilkins PX8 S2 made great strides over Bowers & Wilkins’ earlier models, the ANC of the Sony 1000X The Collexion is superior. Not only does the Sony 1000X The Collexion offer better passive isolation than the Bowers and Wilkins PX8 S2 — that is, physically blocking sound from reaching the ear — but it also cancels more on top of that.

There are a few arguments to aiming for less aggressive ANC, namely to preserve sound quality. However, it doesn’t seem that the Bowers and Wilkins PX8 S2 offers a huge advantage in that arena either. Generally, strong ANC can sometimes add noise here and there, or make things a little less pleasant to listen to if there’s a leak in the seal. For both the Sony 1000X The Collexion and Bowers and Wilkins PX8 S2, that doesn’t seem to be the case based on our testing, and projection of user opinion scores.

If you’re looking for commuter headphones to block out as much noise as possible, the Sony 1000X The Collexion is the clear winner in this comparison to the Bowers and Wilkins PX8 S2. If you don’t need to drown out the world, the Bowers and Wilkins PX8 S2 is fairly capable.

The Sony 1000X The Collexion sounds better to more people than the Bowers and Wilkins PX8 S2

The Sony 1000X The Collexion and Bowers and Wilkins PX8 S2 both have their fans, but more people will like the sound of the former over the latter. If you were to hand both headphones to a group of about 200 people, they’d most likely tell you that while the Bowers and Wilkins PX8 S2 sounds “okay” (3.4 MOS), the Sony 1000X The Collexion sounds “good” (4.5 MOS). This data is arrived at by running real music samples through HEAD acoustics’ Multi-Dimensional Audio Quality Scores algorithm, and my experience listening to both products for weeks tracks with the scores. Though both boast impressive hardware under the hood, where the proverbial rubber hits the road is where we make our decisions.

In my listening sessions, I found some serious foibles with each pair of headphones, but which one sounds better to you will largely depend on your tuning preferences. Just remember when you see the responses on the chart below, headphones don’t need to conform to our independently-validated house curve to sound good, but it gives us useful context to talk about the tuning of each product. We test headphones so that we have a more or less objective way to compare them, even if you decide you like something a little different.

The Sony 1000X The Collexion sounds fairly normal, outside of a really high bass shelf that adds about 4-6dB of power to everything under 600Hz. The Bowers and Wilkins PX8 S2, on the other hand, has a lot of editorializations that make things sound a bit strange. For example, while the mids are quite fine, the lows are a little wobbly, and the highs have a rather huge peak at 8-9kHz that can be fatiguing to listen to when your music has a lot of room effects or other high-frequency content. Though usually you’d try to whack things like this down (or bring everything else up), you can’t really do that with a limited 5-band EQ like that of the Bowers and Wilkins PX8 S2.

The Sony 1000X The Collexion isn’t without its faults, but it’s at least easier to “rescue” with the app, if that makes any sense. With a 10-band EQ and a much easier main “problem” to fix, dropping everything from 600Hz and below down by about 3dB will sound far better than stock settings.

When should you get the Sony 1000X The Collexion or Bowers and Wilkins PX8 S2?

Of course, all of the above can go right out the window depending on your tastes and needs. If you manage to find the Bowers and Wilkins PX8 S2 on sale for far less than the Sony 1000X The Collexion, it’s not a bad set of headphones — so it’s definitely worth a look. However, a $799 initial price tag is far above a $649.95 one, so that price has a long way to fall before it becomes competitive with the Sony 1000X The Collexion.

Here are the main situations where you’ll want to choose one or the other:

Should you look for alternatives?

Of course, if you’re looking to save money, the world’s your oyster. You could easily grab less-expensive options in the ANC category that not only are more comfortable — but perform better too.

For example, the Sony WH-1000XM6 ($448 at Amazon) is still an excellent set of headphones against the Sony 1000X The Collexion, while the Bowers & Wilkins PX7 S3 ($449 at Amazon) holds its own against the Bowers and Wilkins PX8 S2. Though neither option is really “premium,” they’re definitely more frugal choices to make.

Beyond these options, you should pay close attention to our best noise canceling headphones lists, as we update them periodically with new test data, reviews, and models as they come out.