Bose

Please note: This review was originally written on the 29th August 2019. Bose released version 1.7.0 of their firmware on the 14th September 2020 which includes an EQ. This EQ makes them sound way better and comments below around the sound feeling lacking or not delighted are no longer valid, they sound fantastic. Even a year later these headphones are standing up against the best. I've left the original review intact as I'm sure this EQ update will cause confusion around whether they actually sound great or not, especially given the current competition which I can now say they can stand up against.

First impressions

The headphones come nicely packaged in an easy to open box. Inside is the carrying case containing the headphones and a section with a magnetic flap containing a 3.5mm to 2.5mm cable for an analog signal that can be used with no power, plus a USB-A to USB-C cable for charging the headphones. USB-C should be the charging port standard nowadays so it’s good to see this on the headphones. The case itself is fairly large since the cups of the headphones only swivel and don’t fold but the case is quite slim and light. It feels like it should offer good protection. The zip feels durable and opens easily allowing the case to lie flat. Since the headphones don’t fold it’s quick to take them out and put them on. The buttons can be accidentally pressed but this isn’t an issue once you get used to them and actually you can easily turn the headphones on while taking them out and putting them on.

Headphone design

The headphones themselves look nice but the design of the band going across the centre of the cups is a surprise, not a bad surprise mind you, but it does mean the touch panel is only on the front half of the right cup. In practice this works fine because you only skip forward and backward horizontally and you still get the full height for adjusting volume, allowing for multiple volume increments per swipe. Somehow I never seemed to need to adjust the headband size, perhaps because I have a small head but, because there is no ratchet, it’s easy to adjust anyway, potentially pushing the end of the band with both thumbs when you take them out, or pushing the top of the band against the top of the case to put them away. Essentially, taking these out of the case and putting them on always seems to be a swift process.

The overall design I would describe as smooth. The cushions are smooth and soft, almost perfectly fitting the plastic housing. The cushioning of the headband is smooth and goes pretty much round the entire band with a bit on top to give a more rounded appearance.

Overall, they feel nice and durable and after a month of use I was never concerned about the longevity of the cup swivel.

Initial experience

Turning them on for the first time was a delight. Outside noise just melts away as you hear some music much like you would hear in a cinema during its surround sound demonstration and shortly after you’re told they’re ready to connect and to download the Bose Music app. The first time connecting to the headphones went fine and two Bluetooth connections were made, one with an “LE-“ prefix which I assume means Low Energy but I’m not quite sure why this is required (if you need to repair, remember to forget both!). On later occasions I had issues with the app connecting to the headphones, nothing I would do apart from re-pairing the headphones would allow me to connect to the app, even though the headphones were connected and I could play music. I experienced this both on iPhone and Android and found that it was an extremely common issue. I emailed Bose about this but had no response however the issue seems to now be resolved. My first press of the Favourites button resulted in the headphones restarting but after that it was never an issue again.

Comfort

I have a relatively small head and have used the headphones all day during work with no discomfort at all, I also sometimes wear glasses and these were not an issue either. I would find I would get slightly warm as you would with any headphones but never sweaty.

Battery and charging

The manual states that charging takes 2.5 hours, with a few hours left of charge I usually put these on to charge over an hour’s lunch break and come back to find them still charging and get to maybe 15 hours of charge left, so 2.5 hours seems about right. The manual states 20 hours of charge and this seems about right too.

Noise cancellation

The premium feature of these headphones is their noise cancellation and I find it excellent. Any constant noise is pretty much eliminated but random noises as with any noise cancelling headphones aren’t cancelled to the same degree. Loud fans, air conditioning, train noise are all completely gone. On a plane I found I could still clearly hear it but on taking the headphones off I was extremely surprised at just how loud the plane was without them. People talking nearby are muted but not eliminated.

The headphones have 11 “noise cancellation” levels 0-10 plus noise cancellation off. 0 is a pass through mode where you can hear everything almost exactly the same as if you weren’t wearing any headphones.

One thing to note about planes is that you may need to use the wire. Noise cancellation still works when wired and I was surprised to find out that the Bose NC700 will in fact clean up electrical noise! You are also able to change the volume which I found isn't possible on other headphones, namely the Sony WH-1000XM4. I don't know if other headphones filter out electrical noise.

Features

There are three buttons, two on the right and one on the left:

• Top right: Power, pairing and reset
• Bottom right: Assistant
• Bottom left: Favourites and long press for “listen mode”

Power, pairing and reset are self explanatory.

Assistant button:

When I initially set up the headphones it was difficult to get any assistant working easily. I couldn’t get Alexa working at all and Siri and Google Assistant didn’t respond to their wake word. I’ve now tried setting them up again and had no issue with any of them. However only Alexa responds to the wake word. If you have an iPhone on your desk then you can in fact say Hey Siri, the phone microphone will pick that up but it will respond through the headphones even if you have a different assistant selected. Alexa works as you would expect with the wake word except you have to wait for the “ready” tone, you can’t just quickly go “Alexa bla bla bla…” as you would with an echo, this is a very minor point that most people probably don’t realise they can even do with their echo but I felt mentioning. Even though Siri and Google Assistant don’t react to their wake words, there is still a “shortcut” setting where it looks like you can switch between battery level and enabling the wake word but that only turn off the battery level short cut. Only when Alexa is enabled is there a “Wake word” toggle visible so I believe the shortcut setting issue is an oversight from the developers.

Without the wake word you press and hold the assistant button while you talk.

If music is paused when you use the assistant then it will play afterwards which can be annoying.

Favourites button:

This allows you to toggle between 3 levels of noise cancellation including level 0 and a long press will put the headphones into “talk or listen” mode where the music is paused and noise cancellation set to 0. You can also set two of the favourites the same and it will perform as though there are only two favourites set e.g. 0 and 10 (I personally don’t use any other levels and prefer to be able to switch between the two quickly). It would be nice to be able to set one of the favourites as noise cancelling off but this is not currently possible.

Touchpad:

The front half of the right cup is a touch pad:

• Double tap to pause/play
• Swipe forward/backward to skip forward/backward
• Swipe up/down for volume up/down. The further you swipe, the more it changes the volume level
• Long press for shortcut: Hear battery life on enable/disable wake word

Under the right ear cup is the USB-C charging port which I had to problem having plugged in while the headphones were in the case with the lid closed but not zipped.

Under the left ear cup is a 2.5mm port for connecting the included 2.5mm to 3.5mm cable which doesn’t require the headphones to be turned on.

Sound quality

I couldn’t fault the sound quality but equally I wasn’t delighted. That’s not to say the quality is bad, it’s very, very good but at this price point I was expecting a bit more. The response is even across the board and while not as bass heavy as other headphones, they definitely have a good response at the low end which you could dial in if your app has an equaliser. At the top end the highs were very clear. On that note, the app doesn’t have an equaliser so your listening device/app must have its own. I personally was happy with the flat response, but to not include an equaliser feels like a huge oversight.

One feature Bose tout is “Signature active EQ” which promises to adjust the EQ depending on volume level. In practice I found this works well meaning you don’t have to turn up the volume high to get a good frequency response.

Sound sync/Lag

Watching videos on a MacBook Pro the sync seemed perfect.

Watching videos on a well known video upload site/app on my iPhone and often a culprit for laggy bluetooth audio had an almost imperceptible lag, you could only just detect it if you tried really hard and even then I wasn’t sure.

Watching videos on other streaming apps appear to have no lag.

Overall, they did very well in this regard.

Microphones

Apart from the noise cancelling abilities of these headphones, the microphones are another area where they shine. Feedback from people on the other side of phone calls and online meetings has been very good. The amazing pass through or ambient mode is a testament to how good the microphones are.

Issues

As I previously mentioned, there used to be issues connecting to the app but these must have been resolved with a background update to the firmware and/or app. I have experienced a call come in on my phone when on a video meeting on my laptop and my microphone on the headphones stopped working. I had to restart the headphones to get the microphone back. I also more recently had the headphones restart by themselves while I was in a meeting. Apart from that I haven’t had any other disconnection/restart issues.

The other thing I’ve noticed is that the headphones seem to stutter when listening to computer audio and something happens on your phone (iPhone). e.g. If I get a text message or open the Bose app. It’s not a big deal if you only get the odd message but if you’re frequently getting messages then this can be quite annoying.

Conclusion

For the price at the time of review I would hope that the initial experience would have been better with respect to the issues connecting the headphones to the app. Bose failed to respond to my message but the issue does appear to be fixed. A couple of minor issues still exist with the app and it would be nice to have “noise cancelling off” to be an option in favourites (there is no way to turn it off except with the app). I can forgive the restarting as I’ve only had that happen once in a month, but I don’t know if the issue with losing the microphone in an online meeting will happen again as a result of rejecting a phone call.

I would also hope for slightly better sound quality but then you’re not just buying these headphones for their sound quality, you’re buying them for their great noise cancelling and microphones, you truly can use these confidently for calls and online meetings etc. After a month of using them I believe the sound quality has got better with some break-in period. If sound quality is what you’re after and not so much noise cancelling or microphone quality then there may be better options. You certainly won’t be disappointed with the sound quality, I’m being very picky here because of the price point.

Update

As of the 14th September 2020 Bose released version 1.7.0 which includes an EQ. The EQ was included in previous updates but these updates were held back due to issues they caused. 1.7.0. was finally released and everyone is now able to update to it. I'm pleased to say that this EQ gets rid of what I felt "lacking" with these headphones.

Firmware Updates and Release Notes:

1.4.12 and 1.5.1 - 12th May 2020

Introduced EQ and better stability. Later held back due to various issues.

1.6.x

No release notes found. This may have been a botched release.

1.7.0 - 14th September 2020

Re-release of fixed >1.4.x.