Apple barely talked about CarPlay at its WWDC 2026 keynote, giving most of the spotlight to Siri AI and the broader Apple Intelligence additions in iOS 27. But that doesn’t mean CarPlay is a no-show this year.

The Cupertino giant buried most of the CarPlay updates in a developer-only video, and, as it turns out, there’s genuinely more here than you would have expected. As a CarPlay user myself, I’d say some of these features are long overdue, while others tag along with the broader iOS 27 redesign.

So, without any further ado, let’s discuss everything new coming to your CarPlay dashboard this fall, with the stable iOS 27 release. 

Full video apps for when you’re parked

The most substantial update to CarPlay this year is support for video playback. Apple’s iOS 27 lets developers build video streaming apps for your car’s dashboard. CarPlay already got AirPlay video casting last year, but iOS 27 takes it a step further, letting you watch videos directly from supported apps.

Apple hasn’t confirmed the list of supported apps yet, but it might include names like YouTube and Netflix. The catch, however, is that you can only watch videos on your CarPlay screen when your car is parked. Further, the manufacturer has to specifically enable the feature, which is why I’m not expecting every car to get this on day one.

Audio scrubbing in Now Playing

This is the “how was this not already here” CarPlay update. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to jump to a specific part of a song using the horizontal audio bar on the CarPlay Now Playing screen, only to realize it doesn’t do anything.

With iOS 27, the Now Playing screen finally gets a real scrubber. Using the horizontal progress bar, you can drag and jump to any point in a song or podcast. If you’re the type who replays the same 10 seconds of a song on a loop, or skips podcast intros entirely, this one’s for you, no question.

A persistent audio MiniPlayer

Music and podcast apps will get a persistent MiniPlayer. It’s in the top-right corner of the CarPlay dashboard, offering basic playback controls along with the album art. 

You can simply glance over while checking the map for your exit, and you’ll actually know what’s playing and be able to skip it, without backing out of navigation first.

Better navigation heading and GPS accuracy

This is one of the quieter yet most important CarPlay updates Apple ships with iOS 27. The company is improving how the iPhone-mirroring system tracks your direction and position, refining both GPS accuracy and the heading detection (the direction your car is pointing in). 

I’ll admit that it’s not a flashy feature, but it should fix the occasional car icon spinning in circles at a stoplight glitch or navigation confidently rerouting you down a street you are not on. 

More reliable wireless CarPlay

Wireless CarPlay is all about convenience, and it works just fine, until it doesn’t, and that’s usually when I give up and switch to a wired connection. For anyone who’s dealt with mid-drive drops, unclear voice calls, or a dip in audio quality after hanging up, iOS 27 could be much-awaited fix.

Though Apple doesn’t explain the extent of the change, it says that wireless CarPlay connections are more reliable in iOS 27. 

New developer tools

iOS 27 adds new app templates across categories. It also gets support for Live Activities (introduced with iOS 16.1) and widgets from any app, so you could have a live sports score widget running on your CarPlay display without actually opening the app.

Developers also gain new APIs for building conversational voice apps, including AI chatbot integrations, into CarPlay. 

A subtle visual refresh

While the design language would remain the same, CarPlay gets a total of 14 new wallpapers in the same Celosia style, debuting across iOS 27 and macOS 27. Liquid Glass elements will reflect the transparency level you choose with the new iOS 27 slider, while app icons gain additional refractive layers that add depth and definition.

Siri AI finally comes to your car

On top of all that, CarPlay also gets Siri AI with iOS 27. For those catching up, it’s Apple’s long-delayed, Gemini-powered assistant that can handle natural follow-up questions the way Gemini does.

So, you should be able to ask for a restaurant, then ask what time it closes, without repeating the entire request. Siri AI also stores every conversation on your iPhone’s Siri app, with a small car icon indicating you asked the question while using CarPlay.

The catch, however, is that Siri AI for CarPlay requires an iPhone 15 Pro or newer. 

SpaceX went public this week in the largest IPO ever, making CEO Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire.

Despite its name, SpaceX has been emphasizing the potential of its costly AI business, and competitors OpenAI and Anthropic may soon follow with their own public market debuts. So on the latest episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Sean O’Kane, and I discussed what’s looking like a hot IPO summer.

“We have SpaceX not only sucking up just a huge chunk of the money that’s available on public markets, but also really stress testing the limits of what a public company can be and how much it can be controlled by one single person,” Sean said. “My eye is really on these other tech companies that will go public and how much they will try to emulate.”

Kirsten also noted that there are other startups trying to “ride that SpaceX IPO wave,” for example by raising money for orbital data centers after SpaceX helped to popularize the concept.

“So there’s a ripple effect that’s happening throughout the market that I think is probably even more interesting than just the headline, ‘SpaceX makes Elon a trillionaire,’” she said.

Keep reading for a preview of our conversation, edited for length and clarity.

Anthony Ha: I want to zoom out a little bit from just the SpaceX IPO, because beyond the Elon Musk of it all, it’s the beginning of what could be a [series] of different IPOs for different AI companies. We’ve talked about Anthropic confidentially filing to go public, and now OpenAI has done the same. How excited are either of you about this?

Kirsten Korosec: I want to start off by saying that I love Julie Bort’s story, which I think sums it up pretty nicely. It’s a great headline, so I’m gonna read it here: “It’s not FAANG anymore, it’s MANGOS.” FAANG being Facebook, which is now Meta; Amazon; Apple; Netflix; Google, now Alphabet. 

Now it’s shifted, and we’ve got Meta, Anthropic, NVIDIA, Google, OpenAI, SpaceX. [We’ve still got] massive tech companies, surely, but there is a shift here, right? First of all, we’ve got a bunch of AI labs in there, and that’s very different. Netflix gets booted out of there, a giant streaming service. And so to me, it’s an interesting shift in terms of public markets and the vast amount of money and capital available in the public markets shifting away from consumer [and] social networks and towards, specifically, AI labs and other, more innovative deeptech, such as SpaceX. 

So I think that’s the most interesting thing —  aside from the fact that this summer is going to keep us all very busy as reporters, more than probably any other summer in a while.

Sean O’Kane: You know, once upon a time I wanted to be a lawyer, and one of the reasons I didn’t was because I hated the paperwork that was going to be involved. And here I am looking forward to reading hundreds more pages of SEC filings this summer —  talk about a beach read.

It’s a moment we’ve been anticipating for a while. We’ve spent the last few years really wondering if the IPO market was going to quote-unquote “open back up” after a lot of consternation about private markets, and mockery about people reaching their like Series [whatever] fundraising round. This is a good stress test — I mean, “good,” take that word however you want — a good stress test of public markets in general. 

We have SpaceX not only sucking up just a huge chunk of the money that’s available on public markets, but also really stress testing the limits of what a public company can be and how much it can be controlled by one single person. My eye is really on these other tech companies that will go public and how much they will try to emulate.

A thing that I keep saying and thinking about with SpaceX is, they’re really trying to take some of the most extreme aspects of Google and Meta’s original IPOs back in the early 2000s and mashing it up with that “We’ll lose money forever” with Amazon. And I’m curious how much Anthropic and OpenAI will try to do the same. Will they remake themselves in the image of SpaceX? Or will they try to put themselves in a different light?

Anthony: One aspect that really got driven home as I was reading about the OpenAI IPO is also the extent to which some of this is also a bit of a race in terms of timing. I think we can confidently say at this point, SpaceX is first out the gate, which probably has some advantages and disadvantages. It’s also a bit of a different company because it’s billing itself as an AI company, but obviously has a bunch of other stuff going on, too. 

But there is a sense in which, at least according to some analysts, OpenAI and Anthropic may both want to go before the other one, because there’s only a finite amount of capital, a finite amount of interest. At some point some of these valuations have to start coming back down to Earth, and so they may both be scrambling to be first. 

Kirsten: I mean, there’s very much a race between Anthropic and OpenAI. You’re even seeing OpenAI talk about slashing prices, and they’re certainly going to be competing on the IPO calendar. But that is very short-term thinking. If they’re smart, they should be much more concerned about the long-term play here. 

To me, what’s really interesting is while Anthropic, OpenAI, and SpaceX all prepare for these moments, there are a host of other companies out there that are raising money on the backs of the success of companies like SpaceX, or going into SPACs. Just today, for instance, or as we’re recording this, a company called Quantum Space is doing a SPAC and absolutely trying to ride that SpaceX IPO wave. 

We’ve got a host of other startups that our reporter Tim Ferholz has reported on that are clearly — they’re not going to go public, right? But if SpaceX is successful with space data centers, they’re raising money off of that potential and they’re building businesses on that potential. So there’s a ripple effect that’s happening throughout the market that I think is probably even more interesting than just the headline, “SpaceX makes Elon a trillionaire.”

Sean: The commonly accepted theory in Silicon Valley is that AI is remaking the economy, but because of its use. AI is actually already remaking the economy — just because of how people are trying to build it. We have everything that you just described, we have these other companies rushing to public markets. And I think that’s a really good point to think about: Will they ever regret rushing to public markets?

But we even have companies like Ford and General Motors who are pivoting their unused battery creation capacity to be energy providers for data centers. And Ford’s stock shot up when it announced what is honestly a pretty modest-looking energy storage business, in comparison to something like Tesla. And Tim De Chant had a really great series of stories this week about GM’s pivot, as well.

The economy’s already being remade. Whether that’s durable, again, that’s the question, but it’s happening right now.

Kirsten: That is actually a really good point, because to me, I want to say five, six, seven, eight years ago, there were all these headlines of “the next Tesla killer” and these automakers and other companies are still chasing trying to recreate all these various businesses, and specifically the strategies of Elon Musk-based businesses. They haven’t learned their lesson.

I wish I could communicate this to all the automaker CEOs out there: I get it that you have a lot of unused batteries and you want to pivot to something else, but trying to model your business after Tesla or SpaceX and others, it doesn’t always work. Perhaps look elsewhere.

Sean: So Ford shouldn’t get into space data centers. Is what you’re saying?

Kirsten: No, they shouldn’t. But just watch. This is going to happen.

OFFBEAT

L3Harris supplies system that can down incoming drones with laser-guided rockets

The US Army has awarded a contract to defense biz L3Harris for its Vampire counter-drone system to support an urgent requirement to protect against hostile airborne threats.

As drones continue to be a danger to ground forces, the Army’s order, worth up to $106 million, will form part of its layered defense approach against remotely operated and autonomous aerial vehicles.

The Vampire system is described by the firm as a completely self-contained platform that delivers a precision strike capability against drones and remotely piloted aircraft.

It can be fitted to vehicles, such as mounting on the back of a truck, and combines a telescopic mast with an electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) stabilized targeting system. It also has a launcher for a variety of what the military likes to call effectors – projectiles or missiles that typically go bang.

In the case of Vampire, this will often be the Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System (APKWS), comprising US-made Hydra 70 2.75-inch (70 mm) rockets with an added laser homing capability.

This seems to have become the (relatively) low-cost weapon of choice for downing certain types of drones, and is now being fitted to British Typhoon fighter jets deployed to the middle east, for example.

However, L3Harris says that Vampire has a modular plug-in design that allows for the rapid addition of other sensors, effectors, and radio management systems.

The system can engage aerial targets up to six kilometers (3.8 miles) away. Its laser designator can highlight targets, while also coordinating with other platforms, allowing for a distributed approach to target engagement.

“We’ve worked with the Army to understand their needs for new counter-UxS systems that can be quickly assembled, delivered, set-up and fired,” said L3Harris president, for Targeting & Sensor Systems, Tom Kirkland.

“Vampire is effective at hunting and engaging drone threats affordably, which enables US armed forces to sustain reliable defense of its personnel and infrastructure.”

We asked L3Harris how many systems the US Army will be getting for its $106 million.

The company says it developed Vampire at the beginning of the war in Ukraine to provide a low-cost solution to help eliminate Russian drone threats. It has since ramped up production at a new production line in Huntsville, Alabama, in a response to the growing need it sees from the US and allies to counter the drone threat. 

L3Harris says the system has so far logged more than 350,000 operational hours in support of European combat operations since 2023. ®

I work from home, so I typically listen to audio through headphones or AirPods. But I’ve always wanted a desk speaker that doesn’t take up too much space, which made the new Sonos Play a fitting first Sonos product to review.

The Play, launched in March, is Sonos’s first new device in more than a year. The $299 speaker is a hybrid: part home speaker, part portable. It sits on your desk in a pill-shaped dock, but at 1.3 kilograms, with a “utility loop” on the back, it’s easy to carry around the house or take outside.

While testing it, I often started a podcast at my desk and carried the Play to the kitchen while I cooked or made coffee. The advantage over wearing AirPods is that you remain aware of your surroundings — no more missing what someone across the room is saying. And you don’t need to rely on voice commands to control playback; the Sonos Assistant and Alexa are both built in.

Physical controls are another advantage. Skipping tracks or adjusting volume with greasy hands is awkward on AirPods; the Play’s buttons are more forgiving. That said, the controls themselves are easy to miss — they’re the same color as the silicone top and barely raised above the surface. After a few days I had memorized their positions, but the learning curve is a minor frustration that better contrast or more tactile buttons could have avoided.

The speaker is sturdy and IP67-rated, meaning it can handle rain and brief submersion — I ran it under a tap without issue. It can also charge your phone in a pinch, doubling as a power bank, which is a welcome feature for outdoor use.

For sound, the Play relies on dual-angled tweeters, a mid-woofer, and three digital amplifiers, with two passive radiators to reinforce bass outdoors. The result is balanced and detailed at moderate volumes — instrument separation is particularly good. The soundstage is narrow, though, meaning the music can feel somewhat contained rather than expansive, and at higher volumes the mix loses some of its clarity.

The Play is well-suited to a desk or a patio; it isn’t trying to fill a room. For that, Sonos’s Era 100 SL — which launched alongside the Play — is the better choice. Two Play units can be paired into a stereo configuration, either through the app or, more cleverly, by holding the play/pause button on both speakers simultaneously. It’s a useful feature that makes a noticeable difference for music, though less so for television audio — which these speakers aren’t really designed for anyway.

Sonos has also built in Trueplay, which uses the speaker’s microphones to automatically calibrate sound based on the room. Earlier versions of this feature required waving your phone around the space to tune the audio — an awkward workaround that would have made little sense on a portable speaker. The new implementation handles it automatically.

Sonos has had well-publicized struggles with its app — disappearing speakers, glitchy volume controls — and while the company has made meaningful improvements, a few rough edges remain. Sync between the Play and my MacBook was occasionally laggy, for example, and playing or pausing audio on YouTube sometimes produced a noticeable delay before the speaker responded.

Switching audio between speakers worked reliably through AirPlay but failed repeatedly in the Sonos app until I installed the Apple Music integration — and even then, the process is more cumbersome than it should be.

The “Apply” button in the Sonos app, required to confirm speaker changes, feels like an unnecessary extra step. AirPlay handles the same action with a single tap.

Pocket Casts integration has a resuming bug: podcasts restart from the beginning rather than picking up where you left off.

Overall, the Sonos Play is a solid speaker that largely delivers on its premise. The app issues are real but not dealbreakers, and Sonos has shown it is willing to iterate. If portability isn’t a priority, the Era 100 ($219) or Era 100 SL ($189) offer more volume for less money. If you want something more rugged and truly portable, the Sonos Roam 2 or JBL Charge 6 are worth considering. But if you want a speaker that works equally well on a desk and a back porch, the Play makes a convincing case for itself.

Computed Axial Lithographic printing gets even closer to the Star Trek replicator fantasy than any other 3D printer we’ve seen: there’s a machine, it glows with a mysterious bluish light, and an object appears. OK, the object is appearing inside a spinning vat of photochemical ooze, not in thin air, but that’s a detail. It’s still very cool tech, and now it’s open source enough to replicate with full documentation and a GitHub repository.

This project is descended from the same Berkeley research that we featured last year, but at that point, they were inviting everyone to join their Discord server, and that was about it. At the time, we put on our old man outfit to yell at clouds and say, “A Discord shouldn’t count as open source!” For once, it looks like those geriatric grumblings were heeded. There is still a corporate-hosted chat server named for a malignant goddess, and you’re still invited, but now there’s also actual, searchable documentation!

As with all CAL, there’s still the spinning vat of specially viscous photopolymer resin, and the light is provided by a NexiGo Nova Mini projector. There’s no FEP to worry about, and no stops and starts: the vat spins, the projector exposes the resin, and a part appears almost faster than can be believed, with spatial resolution like an older SLA

The instructions for putting that projector-based printer together look good; there are even instructions for mixing the special resin, though pay attention to the safety warnings in the “Don’t Try This At Home” banner. Apparently, they’re going to have FormLabs mix resin for those who cannot do it themselves, which seems like a valuable partnership for people who want to limit exposure to toxic ooze. Of course, that’s what a fume hood is for.

Rumor mill: Intel is preparing to extend the life of its Raptor Lake platform, and the signal is not coming from a formal announcement, but from conversations happening around the supply chain. The company is planning a new wave of processors under the name Raptor Lake Next with a launch expected in the first half of 2027. The chips would arrive after Intel introduces its next-generation Nova Lake CPUs, which the company intends to unveil at CES next year.

That sequencing would put an older architecture alongside a newer one in the market at the same time, a decision that seems driven as much by platform and component realities as by standard product cycles.

Details about Raptor Lake Next are still thin. The name has surfaced through sources cited by Tom’s Hardware, but Intel has not disclosed specifications or confirmed how the chips will be positioned. It is also unclear whether this will involve deeper architectural changes or mostly be a continuation of existing silicon under a new label.

What is clearer is the environment shaping the decision. At least two motherboard vendors said they are increasing production of DDR4-compatible boards for both AM4 and LGA 1700, citing stronger demand for the last-generation memory. The vendors did not directly reference Raptor Lake Next, but the overlap in timing raises the possibility that the two developments are related.

That demand shift appears tied to ongoing volatility in memory pricing and availability. DDR5 has not fully displaced DDR4 in all segments, particularly where cost sensitivity or upgrade paths matter. Keeping a DDR4-compatible platform alive gives Intel a way to serve that part of the market without forcing a transition to newer, and often more expensive, components.

Raptor Lake, first introduced with Intel’s 13th-generation processors, already has a long runway behind it. Even so, it continues to hold ground in certain performance categories. In gaming, Raptor Lake Refresh still includes Intel’s best gaming chip, and the newer Core Ultra 7 270K Plus trails the Core i9-14900K only narrowly.

There are also indications from Intel’s own product stack that the underlying architecture is not going away. The company recently introduced Bartlett Lake processors for embedded and industrial use, built on Raptor Cove cores and the Intel 7 process.

These chips are compatible with the LGA 1700 socket used by Raptor Lake, even if they are not officially supported on consumer motherboards. But some enthusiasts have managed to run those processors on 600- and 700-series boards.

That continuity makes a refresh like Raptor Lake Next easier to execute. That lets Intel keep using a mature process, support hardware that is already in the field, and tweak performance or pricing without forcing a full platform change.

The strategy may also mirror what AMD has done in response to similar market conditions. Faced with memory constraints, Team Red recently brought back a prior-generation DDR4-based chip, an example of how older platforms can stay relevant when pricing and supply line up.

It’s still worth remembering that, as with any roadmap detail emerging from vendor conversations, plans could change.

I know there is a rather large price difference between the Bowers & Wilkins Px8 S2 and the Sennheiser HDB 630. The Px8 S2 sits at $799, while the HDB 630 lands at $499. That $300 gap is not nothing. It is the difference between my $250 seat for The Wizard of Oz at the Sphere and the $450 first-level ticket that promised the full wraparound experience, flying monkeys included.

So why compare them?

Because the two are surprisingly close in a few areas that matter, and the gap is not as ridiculous as it looks on paper. Some readers will throw eggs. Probably the same bitter Rush fans still pretending Anika Nilles has not been killing it behind the kit on the Fifty Something tour because accepting reality would apparently violate the sacred scrolls of 2112. Someone get poor Geddy a glass of tea and a throat lozenge. He still remembers every word, but a few of those notes are landing somewhere near the corner of Bathurst and Wilson.

Could I have used the Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S3 instead? Sure. That would have made the pricing cleaner. It also would have required having a pair around, and this is what I had in front of me. Reviewing is not fantasy football. You work with the gear on the desk, the train, the airplane, the hotel room, and occasionally the Wawa-adjacent dog walk.

So here we are: a $799 British luxury wireless flagship versus a $499 German wireless headphone with a very useful USB-C dongle and enough sonic discipline to make the comparison less silly than it sounds.

Can der kleine David from Wedemark make the British Goliath blink?

Let’s find out.

This comparison is based on our full reviews of both models, which are linked below for readers who want the deeper individual breakdowns.

Related Reviews:

Why This Comparison Makes More Sense Than It Should

The Bowers & Wilkins Px8 S2 and Sennheiser HDB 630 are not aimed at identical buyers, but they do overlap in one very important way: Both are built for listeners who care more about sound quality than ANC trickery, app gimmicks, or whether their headphones match the color of their laptop. Which, for most of us, is a yes.

The Px8 S2 is the more luxurious headphone. Nappa leather, exposed cable detailing, a slimmer frame, stronger passive isolation, physical buttons, Bluetooth 5.3, aptX Lossless, aptX Adaptive, aptX HD, USB-C playback, 3.5mm wired playback, and a more powerful low-end presentation all reinforce its flagship position.

The HDB 630 is the more practical and more value-driven headphone. It offers 24-bit/96kHz playback via USB-C, Bluetooth 5.2 with aptX Adaptive and aptX HD, and the included BTD 700 USB-C dongle, which makes higher-quality Bluetooth easier to access from more phones, tablets, and laptops. Add in the better app, parametric EQ, crossfeed, bass boost, longer battery life, and more spacious midrange-focused presentation, and the Sennheiser starts looking like the more sensible troublemaker.

One is wearing a tailored British overcoat. The other shows up with German paperwork, better battery life, and a dongle that actually solves a problem.

Design & Build Quality

The Px8 S2 wins the materials contest.

One area where the Px8 S2 clearly pulls ahead is visibility. The Bowers & Wilkins branding, materials, and overall look stand out in a way the Sennheiser does not.

That became obvious during my usual coffee shop testing. My Asbury Park routine has become slightly more complicated lately, so I have been spending more time at a different local spot where the coffee is better, Hebrew is not uncommon, and the parking lot looks like a Range Rover, BMW, and Tesla owner’s support group.

This is also a crowd that includes some of my children’s former classmates, parents, soccer coaches, and baseball coaches, all of whom know I am the guy who rolls up in large Toyota SUVs with 150,000 to 200,000 miles on them and considers that “nicely broken in.”

They noticed the Px8 S2. More than once. The Sennheiser HDB 630 drew less attention, which may be a positive depending on your personality, wardrobe, or tolerance for conversations before caffeine. But in terms of brand presence and visual appeal, the Bowers made the stronger impression.

The HDB 630 is more understated. It borrows from the MOMENTUM 4 & 5 platform but feels more substantial than most Sony or Bose competitors. The travel case is practical, the accessories are well organized, and the included USB-C cable, 3.5mm analog cable, airline adapter, and BTD 700 dongle make the package feel complete.

Winner: Bowers & Wilkins Px8 S2

Comfort & Fit

On paper, these two are almost identical in weight. The Px8 S2 weighs 310 grams. The HDB 630 weighs 311 grams. On the head, they feel different.

The Px8 S2 has a firmer clamp. That helps with passive isolation and keeps the headphones planted while walking, commuting, or pushing through public transit crowds with the usual mixture of resignation and mild rage. The padding is comfortable, and the slimmer frame makes the Px8 S2 easier to wear for long stretches than the original Px8.

The HDB 630 has a lighter clamp and softer Japanese Protein Leatherette ear cushions. It feels less locked-in than the Bowers models, which some listeners will prefer. The pads can get warm during longer sessions, especially on trains or in warmer spaces, but the overall comfort is strong.

If you want a firmer, more secure fit, the Px8 S2 is better. If you want a lighter clamp and less pressure, the HDB 630 makes more sense.

Winner: Tie, depending on fit preference

Battery Life

This one is not close.

The Px8 S2 delivers roughly 28 to 30 hours in real-world use with ANC. That is perfectly respectable.A 15-minute quick charge adds about seven hours, which is useful if you forgot to charge them before a flight or a long NJ Transit day. With the World Cup landing at MetLife Stadium this weekend, seven hours may only get you through the first cheerful lie about how smoothly NJ Transit is handling the crowds.

The HDB 630 averaged roughly 53 to 54 hours in real-world use, with around 51 to 52 hours when ANC was engaged all the time at above-average listening levels. A 10-minute charge also delivers about seven hours of playback.

That is almost a full week of commuting from a single charge. Sennheiser wins this category before the Bowers even finishes lacing its shoes.

Winner: Sennheiser HDB 630

Connectivity & Hi-Res Support

The Px8 S2 has the stronger native Bluetooth spec. It supports Bluetooth 5.3 with aptX Lossless, aptX Adaptive, aptX HD, aptX Classic, AAC, and SBC, along with multipoint connectivity. It also supports wired playback via USB-C and 3.5mm, and both cables are included in the case.

For Android users with compatible hardware, that gives the Bowers & Wilkins a very complete wireless toolkit. For Apple users, the usual aptX problem remains. iPhones, iPads, and Macs do not support aptX Adaptive or aptX Lossless natively, so the Px8 S2’s best Bluetooth performance still depends on using the right source device.

The HDB 630 is more limited on the headphone side. It supports Bluetooth 5.2 with SBC, AAC, aptX, aptX HD, and aptX Adaptive. It does not support LDAC, Bluetooth LE Audio, or aptX Lossless. That gives the Px8 S2 the clear advantage on the spec sheet.

Where Sennheiser fights back is with the included BTD 700 USB-C dongle. The dongle gives Android, iOS, Windows, and macOS users a more reliable path to aptX Adaptive or aptX HD from devices that might otherwise be limited to AAC or basic Bluetooth codec support. That matters because a lot of phones, tablets, and laptops still handle Bluetooth audio with all the grace of a vending machine rejecting a perfectly good dollar bill.

The important distinction is that the BTD 700 improves the source side of the chain, but the HDB 630 headphones are still limited to the codecs they can actually receive: SBC, AAC, aptX, aptX HD, and aptX Adaptive. So no, the HDB 630 does not magically become an aptX Lossless headphone because the dongle knows a few extra tricks.

Winner: Bowers & Wilkins Px8 S2 for native Bluetooth support.

Real-world compatibility winner: Sennheiser HDB 630, because the included BTD 700 dongle makes aptX Adaptive and aptX HD easier to access across more source devices, including Apple hardware.

Controls & App Experience

The Px8 S2 has the better physical controls. Real buttons still matter. Volume, playback, power, and Quick Action controls are easy to use without poking blindly at the side of your head like you are trying to reboot a router in the dark.

The Bowers & Wilkins Music app is clean and simple. It gives you ANC controls, wear sensor adjustment, battery status, Quick Action customization, and a basic EQ. It works. It also does not give you much room to shape the sound.

The Sennheiser Smart Control Plus app is far more useful. Parametric EQ, crossfeed, bass boost, ANC customization, and on-head detection controls make it the better tool for listeners who actually want to tune the headphone.

The downside? Touch controls. They work, but they are not as satisfying or consistent as physical buttons. I will take buttons every time. I am old enough to remember when pressing something meant something happened.

Controls winner: Bowers & Wilkins Px8 S2
App winner: Sennheiser HDB 630

Active Noise Cancellation & Passive Isolation

The Px8 S2 provides better passive isolation and stronger ANC. Penn Station, airports, Rutt’s Hutt, Kosher Square Pizza, and Rook Coffee in Oakhurst are not exactly anechoic chambers with better parking. In all of them, the Bowers did a better job lowering the outside world.

The passive isolation is so strong that there were times when ANC felt less necessary. That is a good problem to have. The issue is that ANC and Transparency mode do affect the sound. Clarity, low-end definition, and soundstage depth can shift depending on the source and the mode.

The HDB 630’s Hybrid Adaptive ANC is effective, but not as strong as the Bowers & Wilkins. Voices and sharper environmental sounds remain more noticeable. Passive isolation is also not quite at the same level.

The upside is that Sennheiser’s ANC does less damage to the sound. It tightens the presentation slightly and can shave off a bit of openness, but it does not flatten the music or make everything feel like it was run through cheesecloth.

If isolation is the priority, buy the Bowers. If preserving the music matters more than muting the entire planet, Sennheiser has a stronger argument.

Winner for isolation: Bowers & Wilkins Px8 S2
Winner for sonic consistency with ANC engaged: Sennheiser HDB 630

Sound Quality: Bass

The Px8 S2 has the stronger low end. Sub-bass and mid-bass hit with more authority, more speed, and more physical impact. These are not neutral headphones, and they do not need to apologize for that.

The important part is that the bass does not smear the midrange. The Px8 S2 adds weight and drive without turning everything into wireless sludge. Rock, pop, electronic music, and modern recordings benefit from that extra punch.

The HDB 630 is leaner. Bass is present, controlled, and well integrated, but it does not hit with the same force or definition as the Px8 S2. Bass heads will probably prefer the Bowers. That is not a character flaw. Some people like their low end with a chair and a name tag.

Sennheiser’s choice is different: less skull pressure, more clarity, more space, and better midrange detail.

Bass impact winner: Bowers & Wilkins Px8 S2
Bass restraint and balance winner: Sennheiser HDB 630

Sound Quality: Midrange and Vocals

This is where the HDB 630 begins to push back.

The Sennheiser has the stronger midrange focus. Vocals are more present, instruments have more breathing room, and the presentation feels cleaner through the center of the mix. Acoustic music, jazz, piano, and vocal-driven recordings benefit from that approach.

The Px8 S2 is clear and detailed, but male vocals sit slightly farther back than the instruments. Sam Cooke’s “Lost and Lookin’” was clean and crisp, but some of the warmth and texture I expect from that recording were pulled back. Nick Cave’s “Into My Arms” had the full, heavy piano weight the track demands, but his voice lost some of the growl and chest-shaking presence that give the song its emotional gravity.

That does not make the Px8 S2 weak through the midrange. It just tells you where Bowers & Wilkins made its choices. Compared with the HDB 630’s more midrange-forward balance, the Px8 S2 puts more emphasis on bass impact, speed, detail, and top-end air than on vocal intimacy.

Female vocals can vary by recording. Amy Winehouse comes through with the attitude intact. Aretha Franklin sounded clearer than lush, with a touch less body than expected.

Winner: Sennheiser HDB 630

Sound Quality: Treble and Detail

The Px8 S2 has more top-end energy. In my review, I noted that its top end had more air and sparkle, giving the sound a greater sense of openness and a slightly brighter character. The important part is that it does not turn hard or fatiguing with poor recordings, and with better tracks, the extra bite and presence are obvious.

Amy Winehouse’s “Valerie” is a useful example. That track can grate with the wrong gear, but the Px8 S2 kept the guitar notes sharp, her vocals clean and crisp, and never pushed things into hardness. Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” and “I Will Always Love You” also showed that the Bowers does not round off the top end or soften the edges just to make everything easier to digest.

The HDB 630 is smoother through the top end. On Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know,” the Sennheiser stayed clean and controlled, with no splashy treble tantrums. On Amy Winehouse’s “Valerie,” it avoided turning a bright recording into dental work, which is always appreciated before lunch.

So the Px8 S2 sounds more vivid and energetic up top, while the HDB 630 sounds smoother and more controlled. If you want more bite, air, and sparkle, Bowers wins this round. If you want a calmer treble balance that still preserves detail and space, Sennheiser makes the better case.

Winner: Tie, depending on taste

Soundstage & Imaging

The HDB 630 is the more spacious headphone. For a closed-back wireless design, it creates an unusually open presentation with strong imaging and a real sense of air. No, it is not an open-back headphone. Let’s not start selling magic beans. But it gets closer than most wireless ANC models have any right to.

The Px8 S2 has a precise and stable soundstage. Width, depth, and height are solid, and instruments are placed accurately. It sounds organized and controlled, but not as expansive as the HDB 630.

The Bowers gives you solidity and impact. The Sennheiser gives you space and separation.

Winner: Sennheiser HDB 630

Which One Sounds Better?

The Px8 S2 sounds bigger, punchier, and more dynamic. It has stronger low-end authority, a livelier top end, better passive isolation, and a more premium feel. It is the headphone I would pick for travel, louder environments, rock, electronic music, pop, and situations where I want more physical engagement from a wireless headphone.

The HDB 630 sounds cleaner, more spacious, and more balanced through the midrange. It gives up some bass weight and luxury finish, but gains clarity, app flexibility, battery life, and a more open presentation. It is the headphone I would pick for long listening sessions, vocal music, jazz, acoustic recordings, and anyone who wants less lifestyle theater and more actual listening substance.

The Px8 S2 is more fun in the visceral sense. The HDB 630 is more honest in the musical sense. The Sennheiser is the better fit for the audiophile purist who puts neutrality, midrange clarity, and tonal discipline ahead of bass weight, luxury finish, and the understandable desire to look slightly more important at the coffee shop.

Which One Is the Better Value?

The Sennheiser HDB 630 is the better value.

At $499, it delivers excellent clarity, long battery life, a useful app, USB-C hi-res playback, aptX Adaptive, strong comfort, and the included BTD 700 dongle. That dongle is not just filler in the box. It solves a real problem for people using phones, tablets, and laptops that do not always support the best Bluetooth performance natively.

The Px8 S2 justifies some of its higher price through better materials, stronger isolation, more authoritative sound, physical controls, broader codec support, and a more luxurious design. It feels like a flagship.

But $799 is still $799. At that price, the Px8 S2 has to be judged as a luxury wireless headphone, not just a better-sounding alternative. It clears that bar in many ways, but not every listener needs what it does best.

Value winner: Sennheiser HDB 630

The Bottom Line

The Px8 S2 is the more premium, more physical, and more visually distinctive headphone. It has stronger bass, better passive isolation, more effective ANC, physical controls, and the kind of build quality that makes the price easier to understand, if not exactly painless.

The HDB 630 is the smarter value play. It gives you better battery life, a more useful app, stronger tuning flexibility, a more spacious presentation, and a cleaner midrange balance for considerably less money.

Can the German David slay the British Goliath?

Not quite. But he lands enough clean shots that Bowers & Wilkins should keep both gloves up.

Which One Should You Buy?

Buy the Bowers & Wilkins Px8 S2 if you want the more premium, more visually distinctive, and more physically engaging headphone. It delivers stronger bass, better passive isolation, more effective ANC, physical controls, and a more energetic presentation. It is the better choice for travel, commuting, louder environments, and listeners who want their wireless headphones to feel like a flagship product.

Skip the Px8 S2 if you want the best value, the longest battery life, the most flexible app, or the most neutral midrange. It is also not ideal if you dislike a more bass-forward tuning or expect ANC and Transparency mode to leave the sound completely untouched.

Buy the Sennheiser HDB 630 if you care more about clarity, neutrality, midrange balance, battery life, app control, and practical hi-res support than luxury materials or coffee-shop visibility. It is the better choice for long listening sessions, vocal music, jazz, acoustic recordings, and listeners who want a more spacious presentation for considerably less money.

Skip the HDB 630 if you want maximum bass punch, the strongest ANC, the most luxurious build, physical controls, or aptX Lossless support built into the headphones themselves.

The Px8 S2 wins on luxury, isolation, bass impact, and flagship presence. The HDB 630 wins on value, battery life, app control, midrange clarity, and everyday flexibility.

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In a coordinated effort, the FBI, working with Google and Black Lotus Labs, has dismantled a massive Chinese phishing-as-a-service operation called Outsider Enterprise with thousands of phishing websites used to steal credit card data and passwords.

The cybercrime operation used AI and distributed phishing kits for campaigns impersonating various trusted brands in texts sent through AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon.

Outsider Enterprise has been active since at least 2023 and operated at a massive scale, with Google linking to it 9,000 fake websites and more than a million fraudulent URLs.

Authorities believe that phishing campaigns powered by Outsider Enterprise led to stealing more than 3.8 million credit card records, causing an estimated $1.9 billion in losses.

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The action against Outsider Enterprise has technical and legal components and is part of the FBI’s larger Operation Riptide that targets cybercrime activity and infrastructure.

During the technical takedown, the FBI and partners seized multiple administration servers, a Shopify e-commerce storefront, and an account the threat actor used to test the phishing service.

The agency also seized around $100,000 USDT from Outsider payment wallets. Thousands of phishing domains that the threat actor registered at U.S. providers are now redirecting to an FBI splash page.

The agency also took over a Telegram bot linked to Outsider Enterprise that contained information on customers of the phishing service.

According to Google, the AI-assisted phishing operation has impacted hundreds of thousands of users worldwide.

The tech giant has filed a civil lawsuit targeting the operation’s infrastructure, and is coordinating with telecommunications service providers AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon to block fraudulent messages before they reach to subscribers.

“Our civil lawsuit targets an organized cybercrime operation known as the ‘Outsider Enterprise’. Based in China and coordinating through Telegram, this network distributes “phishing kits” that allow criminals to blast out fake text campaigns that look like they’re from Google and other trusted brands,” Google says.

Over a two-week period in May, Google says that a total of 2.5 million SMS messages were sent to Android users from the Outsider Enterprise infrastructure. Android users flagged 55,000 of them as fraudulent.

The company estimates that hundreds of thousands of victims lost millions to these scams.

Google is using this opportunity “to combine aggressive legal action and collaboration with federal and state governments” and is advocating for seven bipartisan U.S. anti-scam bills, including the Stop SCAMS Act, to strengthen legal protections against AI-enabled fraud.

The Stop SCAMS Act would require the FBI to lead a coordinated national anti-scam strategy, bringing together federal agencies, law enforcement, and private companies to better track, disrupt, and prevent fraud and scam operations.

In the meantime, Google underlined that Android users are protected from these threats by AI-powered defenses.

The defenses support scam detection on Android that warns users about suspicious calls, and messaging protections that block more than 10 billion malicious messages every month.

Security teams log 54% of successful attacks and alert on just 14%. The rest move through your environment unseen.

The Picus whitepaper shows how breach and attack simulation tests your SIEM and EDR rules so threats stop slipping by detection.

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Anthropic’s Fable 5 spent three days as the most capable AI model ever released to the public. It topped the Chatbot Arena leaderboard, crushed OpenAI’s GPT 5.5 on coding benchmarks by double-digit margins, and gave paying subscribers access to Mythos-class reasoning for the first time. Then, on June 12, the US government ordered Anthropic to shut it down.

The result is a strange moment in AI. The model that demonstrably outperforms everything else on the market is the one you cannot use. GPT 5.5, which OpenAI launched in late April under the internal codename “Spud,” is now the strongest model available to developers and consumers, not because it improved but because its only real competitor was removed.

The benchmark gap between the two is not close. On SWE-Bench Pro, which measures a model’s ability to resolve real software engineering issues across open-source codebases, Fable 5 scored 80.3% to GPT 5.5’s 58.6%, a 22-point difference. On SWE-Bench Verified, a curated subset of the same benchmark, Fable 5 reached 95.0%.

The coding benchmarks tell a similar story. Fable 5 leads the Code Arena by 98 Elo points, scoring 1,665 to GPT 5.5’s 1,501. On FrontierCode Diamond, a benchmark designed to test the most difficult programming tasks, Fable 5 scored 29.3% while GPT 5.5 managed 5.7%, and on the broader Chatbot Arena leaderboard Fable 5 sits at number one with GPT 5.5 in fourth.

GPT 5.5 does have one area of strength. On Terminal-Bench 2.0, which evaluates interactive terminal-based coding tasks rather than codebase-level issue resolution, GPT 5.5 scored 82.7% compared to Fable 5’s approximately 88.0%. The gap is narrower there, and the benchmark tests a different skill, executing commands and debugging in real time rather than reading and patching large repositories.

Pricing also favours OpenAI. GPT 5.5 costs $5 per million input tokens and $30 per million output tokens, half the price of Fable 5’s $10 and $50 respectively. For developers running high-volume applications where the performance difference is less critical than cost, GPT 5.5 is the more practical choice even when both models are available.

Fable 5 launched on June 9 as Anthropic’s first Mythos-class model made available to the general public. It offered a one-million-token context window and 128,000 output tokens. Anthropic made it available at no extra cost to Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise subscribers until June 22, a promotional window that the government directive cut short after just three days.

The shutdown came via an export control directive issued on June 12. The government cited a jailbreak vulnerability as the reason for pulling both Fable 5 and the broader Mythos 5 model family. Anthropic has disputed the severity of the finding, saying the vulnerabilities identified are minor, publicly known, and achievable by GPT 5.5 without any bypass techniques, while reports indicate that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy played a role in triggering the government’s review.

The practical consequence is that developers and researchers who were evaluating Fable 5 for production use have had to revert to GPT 5.5 or Anthropic’s earlier Opus models. For coding-heavy workflows, the downgrade is significant. The 22-point gap on SWE-Bench Pro represents the difference between a model that can resolve four out of five real-world software issues and one that handles roughly three out of five.

Whether Fable 5 returns depends on Anthropic’s negotiations with the government over the export control classification. The company has publicly argued that the directive is disproportionate and that the cited vulnerabilities do not justify pulling the model entirely. Until that dispute is resolved, GPT 5.5 holds the top spot by default, the best model available not because it is the best model that exists.