Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Bose QC Ultra Headphones Review: New ANC King?”.
Hey folks, I’ve got Bo’s new flagship noise cancelling headphones here. The quiet Comfort Ultra headphones, they cost $ 429. That’S a lot to pay for headphones and not surprisingly, they’re very good, but are they better than Sony’s wf1000x Mark 5 Apple’s airpods Max and some other headphones in this price range? Let’S get right into the review, so I can try to answer that for you. So, as you can see, the design of these headphones is totally new. It’S sort of a cross between Bose’s previous Flagship model, the noise cancelling headphone 700 and the quiet Comfort 45s, which have morphed into a new $ 350 model.
That Bose has simply named The Quiet. Comfort headphones, the headphone 700 had some metal Parts, but the QC Ultra headphones incorporate an aluminum, yolk and arms that slide into the headband. Another upgrade is their dual hinge design, so they both fold up and fold flat. Just be careful not to get your finger caught in the hinge, which I did a couple of times and got an unpleasant pinch.
The headphones feel durable and are surprisingly lightweight at 254 G, which is just a couple of gram more than what the headphone 700 weigh. The Sony XM 5S weigh 249 G, while the much heavier airpods Max tip the scales. At 385 G Bose, reps told me. The QC Ultras are designed to fit a wider range of head types and, like other Bose, headphones, they’re quite comfortable to wear.
They did clamp slightly more than the Sony’s, but I was able to wear them for a couple of hours straight without a problem like other ovar headphones, they will steam up your ears if you wear them around in warmer environments. It’S also worth mentioning that the Black version of the headphones can end up showing some smudges. If you have any Grime on your hands or just have oily skin the white smoke version. Doesn’T I did like the controls. The QC Ultra headphones feature: a mix of physical control buttons, along with a raised volume strip on the right ear cup. That’S easy to reach and use by feel alone. There’S also a touch and hold gesture for that strip. That’S customizable! As a shortcut you can choose to map it to one of four functions.
The main button on the headphones allows you to pause and play your audio with a single tap skip tracks forward, with a double tap and Skip back with a triple tap. Holding the button down. Lets you toggle through full noise, cancelling an awareness, mode and immersion mode that activates full noise cancelling along with Bo’s new spatial audio feature with head tracking that it calls immersive audio. The awareness mode is equivalent to Apple’s transparency mode and it sounds quite natural, with almost no audible, hiss. There’S also a new active sense feature that kicks in some noise cancelling should the sound get too loud around you. That’S similar to the new adaptive audio feature on the airpods Pro 2. That feat feature isn’t available for the airpods max, because it requires Apple’s H2 chip thanks to ear detection sensors inside the ear cups. When you take the headphones off your ears, your audio will pause and resume playback when you put them back on beyond that.
If you set your headphones down somewhere and forget to turn them off, they’ll go into a sleep mode to conserve battery life. If they aren’t used within a certain amount of time, you can actually set the time anywhere from 5 minutes to 24 hours. They will completely turn off on their own. That’S similar to the airpod Max’s power saving features, while Bose mentions that both this overear Ultra model and its new QC Ultra earbuds feature world class noise cancellation and they certainly do the real feature it’s hyping.
This go around is immersive audio. Its custom version of a spatial audio Bose says that immersive audio goes beyond special effects and creates a wider, more spacious, Sound Stage, so your content becomes multi-dimensional and layered, regardless of the audio platform or device like other headphones. That feature. Spatial audio Apple’s latest airpods, for instance, since the QC Ultra headphones and QC Ultra earbuds have two spatial audio modes, one still mode without head tracking engaged and a motion mode that uses headtracking and allows the audio to move with you.
So it’s always in front of you. Bose says it works with movies and any stereo track, but it’s really designed for music listening using the immersive audio feature does widen the Sound Stage a bit, creating the illusion that your audio is more outside your head. It works better with some tracks than others, but it does open up the sound a bit giving it area quality. Most people will probably choose to leave it on, but the downside is that engaging it does impact battery life significantly. The headphones are rated for up to 24 hours of battery life at moderate volume levels with noise cancelling on, but that number dips to 18 hours with immersive audio engaged. I spent some time comparing the sound quality of the QC Ultra headphones to that of the Sony. Wh1000X Mark 5 and the airpods max, while the QC Ultra headphones, have the same drivers as the headphone 700. The ultra sound has improved it’s not a huge Improvement, but the ultra seems slightly cleaner, sounding and more revealing with deeper but well-defined base, since they feature the same drivers. Most of the audio quality gains come from the more powerful chipset with improved digital processing. Both the Sony, xm5 and airpods Max are excellent. Sounding headphones and sound quality is subjective, as everybody has different ears and different musical tastes, but I’d say this: Bose is a touch ahead of both the Sony and airpods Max for sound quality. The Sony has a slightly warmer sound profile and the Bose just comes across as slightly more natural sounding than the airpods max.
By that I mean it sounds slightly more accurate. All that said, I was slightly disappointed that headphones, don’t feature USBC audio, you get a headphone cable for wir listening, which will come in handy for air travel, but with most smartphones now missing a headphone jack it’d be nice to be able to plug a USBC cable Directly into your phone and have an all digital wire connection, reling the lossless audio tracks, the Beach Studio Pro and some other headphones offer. That feature. I have one other small gripe: Bose says that both the QC Ultra earbuds and QC Ultra headphones feature: the Snapdragon sound technology Suite enabling support for the latest Qualcomm Apex, adaptive codec for audio streaming, including lossless and low latency capabilities. Uh, Google Fast pairs also on board, but you may have problems actually getting Apex to work with your device. I paired the headphones with a Google pixel 7, which supports Apex audio, but it defaulted to the AAC audio codec for HD audio.
Even after I access the devel mode when I pair them with a Samsung Galaxy flip 5, which is supposed to be Snapdragon sound, enabled the same thing happened. However, when I connected them to a Asus Rogue phone 6, another Snapdragon enabled phone, I was able to use fex adaptive. I found the whole thing a little bit irritating and I do think there’ll be some confusion around the appd support. I had better luck with multi-point pairing, while the QC Ultra earbuds still lack bti point which allows you to connect to two devices simultaneously and switch audio between them. The ultra headphones have it. I was able to switch back and forth between the Asus Rogue phone 6 and the iPhone 14 pro and switch the audio easily I’ll finish by talking about the noise cancelling and voice calling performance.
As I said, Bose isn’t talking up the noise cancelling as much as it usually does. Maybe that’s because it’s as good as it is and speaks for itself, you can argue over whether Sony or Bose has better noise. Cancelling and apples is also excellent, but I wore these in the noisy Streets of New York and the headphones really muffled. Everything around me, including people’s voices, it’s topnotch voice, calling performance, is also excellent. I was told they have five microphones in each ear cup.
Four external and one inside the ear cup that help drive both the noise cancelling and voice calling performance. While I was slightly disappointed with how much background noise, the QC Ultra earbuds, let in that wasn’t an issue with these full-size Ultras. Even in noisy environments, caller said they only heard minimal background noise, while my voice came through clearly I’m on a test call here with fellow C at editor, John Falone, John, I’m in of New York City uh a lot of traffic going on behind me. So I’m just going to talk a little bit longer to have you hear my voice with the uh the background noise.
Let me know what you think so, from the listener’s point of view, this sounds very good. Your voice is nice and clear and I don’t really hear much background noise whatsoever all right. There is indeed uh. You know a lot of cars that uh uh some buses, so some pretty good background noise, supression suppression all right thanks. So here’s what I like and don’t like about the QC Ultra headphones, what I like they’re lightweight and comfortable and their new design, is an upgrade over Bose’s, headphone 700 and the standard Bose quiet, Comfort, headphones. They sound excellent. The new immersive audio mode does offer some sound quality enhancements.
Their noise, cancelling is great and their voice. Calling performance is topnotch. What I don’t like they’re higher price tag, they’re $ 30, more than the Sony, which is already seeing meaningful discounts. They don’t have USBC audio.
Also engaging immersive audio impacts battery life, which already isn’t quite as good as what you get with some noise cancelling headphones and, lastly, their support for the Apex audio codec seems limited. Despite those small downsides, you can afford their higher price tag and hopefully they will go on sale. At some point, I do think they are very worthy alternatives to both the Sony XM 5s and the airpods Max. As always, let me know what you think in the comment section: I’m David carer for CET, thanks for watching .