Bowers & Wilkins wins TechRadar's Headphones of the Year Award for the second year running – and I'd wager it knew the trophies were coming

I'm not sure Bowers & Wilkins cares for accolades, reader – and yet this is what its engineers are going to get from me, and from this publication, until the brand ceases to set new benchmarks for audio quality within the category of wireless headphones.

You probably know just as well as B&W does that our Headphones of the Year Award at the TechRadar Choice Awards 2025 was open to on-ear, in-ear and over-ear designs (rather than just cans, as the word 'headphones' may suggest). And here we are again, another full year of testing under our belts, with me needing to impress upon you that choosing the Bowers & Wilkins Px8 S2 as our Headphones of the Year was one of the simplest conclusions I've come to in 2025.

I put them on. I listened; I commissioned a full review – but honestly, I did that just to get a second opinion that confirmed my own internal verdict. I already knew their score.

And I write this despite the fact that Bowers & Wilkins doesn't make it easy for me in terms of workload or stress levels. Last year, the TechRadar Choice Awards 2024 audio winner nonchalantly revealed itself late in the game, at the end of August – in the shape of the Bowers & Wilkins Pi8.

And if that was cutting it fine (products for consideration must have been released since September 1, 2024, but be available to buy before September 31, 2025, to be eligible) consider that the Px8 S2 hit shelves on September 24. That's right, B&W gave us precisely seven days of grace to hand over the crown.

It would be easy to draw from this the conclusion that B&W does things only when the product is right and not when it's time to put the feelers out for Awards season. I fully believe this to be true – I've met the Bowers & Wilkins team and this is a company that wants to know within its own family-run factory walls that its new headphones are the best, before garnering the opinions of others.

Oh, and if you've spotted that the May 2025-launch Sony WH-1000XM6 won our 'Best wireless headphones' award and are now thinking "Hang on: how come the Px8 S2 are the overall winner, not the Sonys I love?" allow me to explain.

Bowers & Wilkins' Px8 S2 arrived late to the party, then hogged the limelight

The Bowers & Wilkins Px8 S2 may have only recently joined the ranks of our best headphones (in the past few days, in fact), but just because not too many of us have had the chance to try (or buy) them, it doesn't mean they're not the best. And unlike the bulk of our Choice Awards, which are compiled using reader input as well as our own, this particular nod is given solely by TechRadar.

There's no denying that the category of best over-ear headphones is one of the most hotly contested guides I oversee – I regularly wear cans just so I won't be distracted (usually managing editors asking where certain pieces of work are, because I had to shelve things to get a Bowers & Wilkins review live in time for Award inclusion, didn't I?) and I found myself plucking the B&W Px8 S2 from their newly slimmed down case every time in the past few weeks, to block out the world with detailed, nuanced, exciting music.

Honestly, sound quality has never been an issue for B&W, but what the company has done with the Px8 S2 is take the highly gifted Bowers & Wilkins Px8 and newer (even better) Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S3 upon which these are built and refine, tweak and upgrade will the skilled hand of a surgeon.

Think extra mics here, more EQ tabs there, upping the codec support, tweaking the chassis and motor powering it to help eke more nuance and precision from your music, shaving a bit of weight off, adding a chic exposed cable detail on the arm… it's the very definition of incremental gain, and while they still don't come cheap at $799 / £629 / AU$1,299, it's easy to see where the money has gone – and I urge you to try them before deeming them too expensive, because you cannot knock the sound.

As we said in our review, the Px8 S2's "open, detailed and vaultingly dynamic sound", "great standard of build and finish" and "excellent control options" simply cannot be bettered right now, in what is a hotly contested and ever-changing market.

Yes, you can buy headphones for a lot less, but what we're saying is that you can't currently buy better for this money or less, in the wireless headphone arena.

I would humbly love to make Bowers & Wilkins aware of the hi-fi and audio press' exacting schedules and perhaps even remind the company of the deadlines for Awards inclusion, but last time I tried to do that I ended up in a listening session, holding one of the 40mm dynamic cone drivers you'll find in B&W's flagship headphones. And I heard myself agreeing that yes, we're talking incredible levels of precision here, involving many delicate processes – and no, you simply can't rush these things…