Bowers & Wilkins Just Gave Its Elite Earbuds a Bespoke Upgrade

The legendary British hi-fi maker’s newest earbuds promise to sound and look better than your average AirPods.

Published April 4, 2025

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Released last summer, the Bowers & Wilkins Pi8 are the brand’s latest-and-greatest noise-canceling wireless earbuds. And for anybody willing to dish out a premium, they deliver a sound and several neat features than most other rivals — made by Apple, Sony and Bose — can’t match.

Now, the British hi-fi manufacturer has released special-edition versions of the Pi8 wireless speakers that, well, give them a new kind of shimmer.

Bowers & Wilkins Pi8 (McLaren Edition)

An F1 paint job

The Bowers & Wilkins Pi8 (McLaren Edition) wireless earbuds are, as the name gives away, a collaboration between B&W and McLaren the British luxury automotive maker.

Internally, the McLaren Edition wireless earbuds have the same sound and feature list as the B&W’s standard Pi8. But on the outside, they’ve been given a new paint job with the same “Galvanic Grey” finish and “Papaya orange” accents as McLaren’s Formula 1 racing team.

It should be noted that this is far from the first collaboration between the two brands—their partnership has stretched for years, and most recently, they’ve released similar special-edition versions of Bowers & Wilkins’s Px8 over-ear wireless headphones and Zeppelin wireless speaker.

Same sound and features

As for sound, the McLaren Edition wireless earbuds promise to be exactly the same as the standard Bowers & Wilkins Pi8. They have 12mm carbon cone drivers, a technology used in the brand’s 700 Series loudspeakers and flagship Px8 noise-canceling headphones.

The earbuds support high-resolution codecs, such as aptX Adaptive and aptX Lossless, which allows them to play near CD-quality audio over Bluetooth. Most interestingly, the case doubles as a Bluetooth transmitter and when connected to a source, such as your laptop, the Pi8 can stream even high-resolution audio (up to 24-bit/96kHz).

Price and availability

As you probably guessed, these McLaren Edition wireless earbuds come at a price — they cost $499, which is $100 more expensive than B&W’s $399 Pi8.

(In fact, B&W is currently discounting the standard Pi8 to $319, so the price gulf between the two wireless earbuds even deeper.)

For those interested in B&W’s standard Pi8 and not the McLaren Edition models, the company offers them in four colors: black, white, blue and jade green.

The Bowers & Wilkins Pi8 (McLaren Edition) wireless earbuds can be preordered now on the company’s website. They are expected to start shipping on April 15th.