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Bowers & Wilkins Pi6

Bowers & Wilkins has delivered masterpieces before, but this is more about the market than the product.

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It's now almost impossible for any given in-ear manufacturer to produce and design a product that directly stands out in the market. Whether it's specific materials, support for particular codecs, or how big or small the case and battery life is - we've seen it all, and the market has come to agree on a kind of universal design standard that deviations are rare from, if they appear at all.

That's why it's easy to write off a traditional hi-fi premium manufacturer like Bowers & Wilkins, who may make great stuff but prides itself on anonymity.

It's even "worse" when the latest Pi6s are a kind of in-betweener, designed to be a slightly cheaper alternative to the Pi8. That said, they still have to set you back around £220, which puts them alongside the most expensive competitors - AirPods Pro, Sony WF-1000XM5, and Samsung Galaxy Buds3 Pro.

Bowers & Wilkins Pi6

So what do we have here? Well, for this money you get IP54 certification, around 7-8 hours of playback with ANC and 24 hours combined with the charges hidden in the case, Bluetooth 5.4, and support for codecs like SBC, AAC and aptX Classic and Adaptive. Of course, there's advanced active noise cancellation, multiple microphones for crystal clear conversations and materials that, of course at this price, telegraph pretty clearly that this is a high-end product.

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But there are also problems right from the start. There is no Qi charging for the case, which I consider to be close to a dealbreaker, especially at this price. Yes, it's important to create differentiation between these and the more expensive Pi8s, but this is downright absurd. Additionally, we had pretty solid issues with the touch controls on the surface of each device. We're not yet sure if this is mirrored in other reviews of the Pi6 or if it could be a defect, but in many, many cases the Pi6 required multiple attempts to summon a smart assistant or take a call with a single touch. Furthermore, automatic activation such as "Hey, Google" is completely missing.

We also tried out the accompanying app. It's stylish enough and provides access to rudimentary settings such as ANC modes and a small EQ. It doesn't look quite as finished as the hardware itself, and combined with the aforementioned flaws, there are some optimisation issues here that we didn't expect to see at this price point.

Bowers & Wilkins Pi6

Fortunately, the Pi6 delivers where it counts. The 12 millimetre drivers can use 24-bit and the aforementioned aptX Adaptive, and whether you're listening to audiobooks and podcasts, heavy James Blake synths or Dune: Part Two's hard-hitting multi-faceted soundtrack, this is again where Bowers & Wilkins shines. There's depth, there's breadth, and while this aspect of an in-ear experience is always difficult to describe, it was always the best part of the review task. It must be said that the ANC is far from the most efficient on the market, with both Apple and especially Sony delivering a far more adaptive and dynamic noise cancellation that can more easily adapt to changing circumstances. But the sound experience is unrivalled, even at this price point.

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The question is whether you can "live" with a lack of optimisation elsewhere. The Pi6 sounds good, really good, but at £220 you as a consumer should be able to expect something more complete, especially when the competition offers just that. Therefore, this is a somewhat lukewarm recommendation, which should end by saying that Bowers & Wilkins can still deliver hi-fi sound in a consumer package like few others - it just seems that the specific work of removing or downgrading features to turn a Pi7 or Pi8 into a Pi6 has been more important than the vision of a more complete, finished product.

06 Gamereactor UK
6 / 10
overall score
is our network score. What's yours? The network score is the average of every country's score

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