The package sitting on my desk when I arrived in the office yesterday morning filled me with excitement, then I opened it and my excitement was justified. I spend pretty much all day in front of a PC, most of it with headphones on listening to music so a “cheap” or low quality set of headphones just doesn’t cut it for me when I’m listening to over 100 hours of music at work every month, plus my listening at home.
For a number of years now I’ve been somewhat loyal to Sennheiser headphones, they’re not cheap; they sound great and I have always found them really comfy. Add to the like I have for Sennheiser, I’ve also had this pre-conceived thought that Bose are a bit overpriced for what you get. The un-boxing of the Bose Quiet Comfort 25 headset really does highlight a quality product; the packaging is immaculate, the case to protect your headphones is really nice quality and they even have in the package an airline converter for those who travel a lot and are likely to need the noise cancelling.
Design and Comfort: A quick check of the packaging over; I installed the battery for Noise Cancelling function, plugged the cable in and got down to business. The headphones are extremely comfortable even as a four eyed geek, many of my glasses wearing counterparts will agree that some headphones can be remarkably uncomfortable because of the pressure they put just behind your ears where your glasses loop over – Not the case here.
Sound Quality: On initial impression, I was almost disappointed. The sound quality wasn’t as good as I had hoped it to be. The high range sound was a little flat but not a deal breaker, the mid range sound was good, but the low range (bass) was missing! This was at very low volume, without the noise cancelling feature enabled at the time and I’m yet to find a set of headphones that can delivery a really crisp and well rounded sound at low volume. Once I turned the volume up to my normal listening level (not quiet but not outrageously loud) the sound went from above average to outstanding, crisp but not piercing upper range sound, powerful mid range and bass that packed some punch.
The noise cancelling was the next trick, some minor tweaks to the EQ a flick of the switch and the world went away. The general hum of the office air-conditioner disappeared, the traffic noise (I work on a very busy road in Adelaide) disappeared and I felt much more focussed on my work without the minor distractions around me all day. It wasn’t until lunch time when I removed my headset I realised just how noisy the office is and that’s a great reflection on the capability of these headphones.
As you can no doubt tell, the first impression that these headphones give is very good; The Bose Quiet Comfort 25 offers a really comfortable user experience in a headset that you can wear all day, enjoy your music to new levels that you haven’t before. It will be interesting to see how the experience grows over the coming couple of weeks of the full review.
What headphones are you rocking out with and what drew you to them?
Hi – I wear glasses. Some reviews say that I should opt for the 20s because I’ll lose NC capability if the seal in broken. I hate in-ear headphones. What do you think?
You didn’t mention the price.
The previous model of these did not work at all without the noise cancelling on and a review of these on cnet stated that while it’s good that the new model does work if the battery goes flat the sound quality is not good, so you would only use them this way if you didn’t have a spare battery
The sound has a different dynamic when the noise cancelling is turned off (or the battery has gone flat), if you know what you’re doing with an EQ you can balance it and still have a very good sound experience, out but I can see how someone would say the sound “isn’t as good”.
I’d quite happily use the headset without the noise cancelling turned on in a quiet environment or if I wanted to hear what was going on around me (like when my wife is out and kids are in bed – bad time to test noise cancelling!).