$200 Puro Pro hybrid over-the-ear headphones are almost perfect
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The QC35's are ancient by now. The XM3 has USB-C charging, excellent ANC and a warmer boosted sound. The XM4 has even better ANC and a better microphone, although I would recommend the XM3 if you want to use AptX on Android and Windows.
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macosandlinux
Ars Tribunus Militum
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The QC35 is a 5 year old product by now. The QC35 II launched in 2017 only brought the smart assistant integration. The XM4 is Sony's 2020 model. Kind of stands to reason the ANC technology improved in the meantime, given its popularity. At least you could have compared to Bose's NCH700 which is still a year older than the XM4 but not as ancient as the QC35.
If you want to visualize the magnitude of difference 5 years can make in tech, in 2016 AMD was selling Bulldozer series CPUs (Excavator cores), today they have Zen3.
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It's either one hell of a coincidence or these are rebranded. Several models out there have the EXACT same layout of buttons and sockets, including micro USB for charging. Maybe the PCB is common and they used their own drivers?
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I appreciate the review including a big ol' picture of the micro-usb port right away. 
I don't mind it *too* much... on hobbiest things I need to solder... but anything else would just be investing in new e-waste.
Actually ... maybe I'd rather deal with the tiny usb-solder pads on hobbiest projects too.
I don't mind it *too* much... on hobbiest things I need to solder... but anything else would just be investing in new e-waste.
Actually ... maybe I'd rather deal with the tiny usb-solder pads on hobbiest projects too.
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SubWoofer2
Ars Scholae Palatinae
Of course, if that doesn't get folk annoyed, one can always throw the word "audiophile" into one's reply to generate a certain amount of rage, and then double-blind testing to raise the temperature further, and then take the line that measurements are the be-all and end-all to elicit the nuclear option.
Personally, as an out-and-proud audiophile, and notwithstanding what people who don't know my system think about my hearing, I do hear a difference with top-end gear and mp3 does get exposed by really good gear, so kudos to Jim for mentioning flac lossless.
I liked this review. It takes matters to the point of tear-down and measurements but doesn't go there. It's sufficiently interesting to say, "worth investigating for myself". Plenty of links in the comments to follow up on, too.
(Tribal affiliation declaration: Behringer and Fostex fan here, with the Fostex Massdrop TH-X00 being the closest I can afford to my ideal over-ears, the Fostex TH900.)
Edited to add: for those interested in software tweaks and tailoring the listening experience in headphones, Australia's nurophonehave an interesting concept of tuning the headphone's response to your individual hearing.
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Fiio makes some nice headphone amps etc - I have an e10k
https://fiio.com/amp
Looking at getting a Q5s (bluetooth capable), just wish they would add a proper mic in rather than line in
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I much prefer my Sony WH-1000XM3s to my qc25 and qc35. More comfortable, clearer sound and usbc
For use as a headset the qc25's win as they have better addon mic's
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Fully agree on the knockoffs, but that's also the problem here: The various lookalike $50 Chinese headsets have been around for at least a couple of years now, and yet the Puro Pro's are being marketed as a completely new product.
Personally, if I see a review of a new product that's virtually identical to the headset that's endured being unceremoniously stuffed in my laptop bag for years, I get suspicious. From what I can tell without an actual teardown, the only really unique feature of the Puro's is the SPL limiting. Now, that might very well be worth $150 to someone, but it does seem excessive.
At $200, I personally hope the reviewed headset actually delivers something more than just SPL limiting, a wooden box and a 400% price markup.
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Maybe someone could donate their clone to Jim so he can do us a side-by-side tear-down?
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I have replaced my old Micro-USB cables for cables with reversible plugs, so that issue is solved for me.
But that doesn't change the issue that the standard Micro USB socket has its shield only surface-mounted, therefore being fragile and breaking off easily from wiggling the cable too much.
The standard USB C sockets have its shield through-hole soldered for durability — and I remember that was a big point over Micro B when it got introduced.
Both (better) through-hole Micro USB, and (worse) SMD-only USB-C sockets do exist however, with the latter not being in the Type-C standard.
I therefore think that reviewers should try to open up devices and inspect how the ports are held. That could be the difference between a lifetime in years and a useful lifetime of a month.
But that doesn't change the issue that the standard Micro USB socket has its shield only surface-mounted, therefore being fragile and breaking off easily from wiggling the cable too much.
The standard USB C sockets have its shield through-hole soldered for durability — and I remember that was a big point over Micro B when it got introduced.
Both (better) through-hole Micro USB, and (worse) SMD-only USB-C sockets do exist however, with the latter not being in the Type-C standard.
I therefore think that reviewers should try to open up devices and inspect how the ports are held. That could be the difference between a lifetime in years and a useful lifetime of a month.
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I'm normally an anti-Bose guy myself, but here I am with my QuietComfort 35 II. If you check around all of the reviews from when the first version of the Bose QC35 came out, most professional reviewers approached with hesitancy based on Bose usually being overpriced. They all came away impressed and as seeing this as a wonderful exception to the rule. That's what led me to try my first pair of QC35. The build quality is good, the sound quality is great, and the ANC is very effective.
Also note that you can easily find the QC35 II for $200-250.
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I've owned both the I and II versions of the QC35, and there's no difference except for a button on the left earcup that cues Alexa and Google Assistant (though not Siri). It can also be set to change ANC levels.
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Not very complete list though. Beyerdynamic makes theirs in Germany. Sennheiser in Europe for all but the cheapest series (Ireland, Germany and Romania mostly). AKG makes their higher end stuff in Europe (Slovakia, Romania, Hungary). Austrian Audio in Austria, Ultrasone in Germany. Unfortunately you rarely can say "this and this label is not made in China", usually it is certain product lines. And even the, even then most US/European headphone (or any electronic product for that matter) usually contains parts Made in China.
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I actually have a set of Nuraloop (as yet unopened) on hand for testing, just got in this week! "Politely skeptical but open minded" is an accurate summation of where I'm at with that pre-testing.
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These are not $200 headphones, at best they're overpriced $70 headphones.
Take a look at the suspiciously similar options on Amazon, like these:
https://www.amazon.com/TaoTronics-Cance ... 084MKNGSQ/
I suspect they both come from the same OEM.
Take a look at the suspiciously similar options on Amazon, like these:
https://www.amazon.com/TaoTronics-Cance ... 084MKNGSQ/
I suspect they both come from the same OEM.
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You're approximately 130 posts too late. This has already been covered for the past four pages.
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really? colour is subjective. everyone's eyes are different. yet you'd never be satisfied with a monitor review that said "the colours were brighter than some of my other monitors". you'd say: put a damn colorimeter against it, calibrate it and give the deltaE!
I don't know why after so long we continue to be so ok with subjectivity in reviews of audio gear.
next you'll be saying "ah yes this power cable makes it sound better. subjectively of course."
editing to say that I like the bits of the review that should be subjective: how did they feel? were they comfortable? what was the battery life like? those parts are good. listening tests without data... not so much.
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Usually when it's a single driver that fails the problem is in the wiring and not the components themselves. a few minutes with a soldering iron (or melt with a match paste) could probably fix those Philips. Although, if you need the excuse I'm sure they're dead as a door nail and not worth your time to fix up.
With respect to personal studio reference monitors (or mixing monitors) you should know that while they'll sound exactly like what the signal puts out (provided you match impedance correctly), it's a lot of money which you could save by picking something that sounds good to you. Sometimes tracks are mixed for perfection but other times tracks are mixed to compensate for what consumer gear, or YouTube compression, or whatever anticipated factor is going to do to the sound. Anyway, all I'm trying to say is that your subjective listening experience may not be improved by going for reference monitors whether you strap them to your ear, put them on a bookshelf, or mount them on a post with fractal sound diffusers covering your walls).
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Not sure if I missed it - does the article say anything about supported audio codecs over BT? AptX (LL or not) or AAC?
EDIT:
Since there's no such important information in the article and no one followed this comment, I googled myself - apparently they do support aptX (https://www.techhive.com/article/359642 ... eview.html)
EDIT:
Since there's no such important information in the article and no one followed this comment, I googled myself - apparently they do support aptX (https://www.techhive.com/article/359642 ... eview.html)
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I chose to focus on the part that I quoted because that was where you had transposed the two products' statuses in the market. The reality, as I understand it, is that there's a cheap established model and an expensive newcomer that might be the same thing, save for branding. (Or not, we don't know. But it's fishy.)
I'm assuming this was a good-faith error on your part, but I'm sure you can understand how your choice of words in the passage I quoted could have had a 'water muddying' effect on the conversation people were having, and was worth calling out.
That you spoke about the products the opposite way at the end of the next sentence, contradicting the previous sentence, didn't undo the water-muddying effect. Also, that next sentence was broader in scope, hypothetical, and more about other cases not necessarily Puro vs. Taotronics.
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Allow me to save y'all some money. No active noise-cancellation needed, these have passive noise cancellation that works great. They have a 40 hour battery life, are insanely comfortable, have great sound for just about everything, don't require a mic to pick up phone calls in blu tooth mode, have voice notification of startup, shutdown, and connect/disconnect, can be used wired, and use USB-C. They are also a quarter the price. HIGHLY recommended.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08B65B95Q
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08B65B95Q
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Looking over some of the comments I see some found seeming identical headphones for a much cheaper price. I wanted to point out there can be several areas of gray here.
1) The same mechanical enclosure was used with different electronics inside. (reuse of a high running enclosure made in Asia)
2) Same design inside and out but they allowed some compromise on the electronics. The design engineer has done a decent amount of work on the ANC circuit and as soon as its sent off to the contract manufacturer they want to substitute the expensive stuff including the microphone. Changing the microphone could greatly effect the ANC along with other analog components and ultimately effect the performance. (but now available at a much lower price)
3) The headphones are built as designed with the components spec'd out as tested and qualified. Just like the sound engineers intended it to be.
This is usually why people look to more prominent companies to maintain the integrity of the design without the compromise in performance to the end product.
The difference between the $70 and the $200 could simply be the oversight of the components in the headphones in order to maintain the performance of the design.
Much of this is not apparent to the end user or customer, you have to rely on the company to maintain it.
1) The same mechanical enclosure was used with different electronics inside. (reuse of a high running enclosure made in Asia)
2) Same design inside and out but they allowed some compromise on the electronics. The design engineer has done a decent amount of work on the ANC circuit and as soon as its sent off to the contract manufacturer they want to substitute the expensive stuff including the microphone. Changing the microphone could greatly effect the ANC along with other analog components and ultimately effect the performance. (but now available at a much lower price)
3) The headphones are built as designed with the components spec'd out as tested and qualified. Just like the sound engineers intended it to be.
This is usually why people look to more prominent companies to maintain the integrity of the design without the compromise in performance to the end product.
The difference between the $70 and the $200 could simply be the oversight of the components in the headphones in order to maintain the performance of the design.
Much of this is not apparent to the end user or customer, you have to rely on the company to maintain it.
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This feels more like a paid advertisement for some Chinese headphones that exist to charge you $200 for $50 headphones.
There's no comparison to the most recommended Bose QC35 II or Sony WH1000XM4 which both regularly drop down to $200 and are direct competition from major, well established brands.
This review calls the $200 Chinese headphones "almost perfect" yet doesn't even engage with the QC35 II/WH1000XM4 which feels disingenuous, hence this "review" reads more like a paid advertisement to give the $200 Chinese headphones a "legitimate review" from a reputable site. Ars needs to work on its tech reviews and apply some journalistic standards (compare to major competition, try to do some physical testing (freq response plots are very very common) other than one person with a big platform saying "I feel it's probably nearly perfect because it only clicks annoyingly at max volume"). I get its easy to put them on, see they work and exist competently (China's getting better), and then write an article saying they're nearly perfect - but it really is useless without tangible and common comparison points. And then it just comes across as a paid advertisement to legitimize these overpriced headphones.
There's no comparison to the most recommended Bose QC35 II or Sony WH1000XM4 which both regularly drop down to $200 and are direct competition from major, well established brands.
This review calls the $200 Chinese headphones "almost perfect" yet doesn't even engage with the QC35 II/WH1000XM4 which feels disingenuous, hence this "review" reads more like a paid advertisement to give the $200 Chinese headphones a "legitimate review" from a reputable site. Ars needs to work on its tech reviews and apply some journalistic standards (compare to major competition, try to do some physical testing (freq response plots are very very common) other than one person with a big platform saying "I feel it's probably nearly perfect because it only clicks annoyingly at max volume"). I get its easy to put them on, see they work and exist competently (China's getting better), and then write an article saying they're nearly perfect - but it really is useless without tangible and common comparison points. And then it just comes across as a paid advertisement to legitimize these overpriced headphones.
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You sure repeated the word "Chinese" and "China" a lot. This was already posted in the forum, but wasn't mentioned in the article but Puro Labs is an American company based in San Diego. The founder/CEO, Dave Russell, created the company after his daughter became deafness due to overly loud headphones.
https://siouxcityjournal.com/lifestyles ... 0e6c0.html
From: https://purosound.com/pages/about-puro-sound-labs
While the device itself is made in China, literally what electronic tech product is not made in China these days? Are you calling iPhones, iPads, PS5, Nintendo Switch - CHINESE devices?
These Puro headphones might be overpriced if you don't care about the SPL volume limiting tech designed to prevent deafness that is the main feature of this company's products, but this review implies that sound quality and noise cancelling performance is also quite good so it's clearly not a pure knockoff. What's the point of reading a review if you already made up your mind a priori and don't believe the reviewer's first person account of build quality, comfort and performance of the product?
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I can kind of understand why a reviewer wouldn't cover this on a non-tech site but it's not even on the store page. Like, why would I want to spend this much if it only supports SBC and not even AAC or LDAC. I assume they would plaster that everywhere if they did.
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I ordered some after reading this and doing a little digging.
They sound (like they will be) amazing
I've had my eye on some wireless headphones for a while, and with the Airpods very hard to justify, and the Drop THX Panda's having mixed views, I was looking for a solid cheaper option. These seem to fit the bill well.
Thanks for the tip!
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Exactly. There’s also the matter that if you’re comparing against other BT headphones as part of a review, then there really should be at least some token mention that the comparison is like-for-like where codecs are concerned or at least a judgement call of “best available” codec for each product.
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>the sound was noticeably muddier than my reference Sennheiser HD 280 Pro studio headphones.
And you still recommend them? Why? The 280 isn't exactly the most clear set of cans out there to begim with. They are fine but not great.
So $200 for a set of headphones that are "fine but not great." I hope nobody actually took this review seriously.
And you still recommend them? Why? The 280 isn't exactly the most clear set of cans out there to begim with. They are fine but not great.
So $200 for a set of headphones that are "fine but not great." I hope nobody actually took this review seriously.
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That's exactly the reason why I'm still searching for kind of a Bluetooth-Sennheiser. Reference audio quality, open cup design, wireless. Even AKG has either sound quality perfection (e.g. K701, K702, etc.) or wireless (N700NC), but not both.
Edit: typo.
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This appears to be the same as the one available since 2018 under the Treblab label for $90.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0778V7RVR
The entire description including the "Power on", "Power off", features, timing, etc. match the headset I got in March 2018.
E
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0778V7RVR
The entire description including the "Power on", "Power off", features, timing, etc. match the headset I got in March 2018.
E
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No it's not, you just have to pay for it, like everything else in the world. The issue was never that China "makes everything", it's that people aren't willing to pay for their goods. Once you've break out of the habit of wanting to buy cheap, your options widens significantly.
For example, every one of the professional studio headphones by Sony are made in Japan, and professionals swears by them for their quality. Austrian Audio is a brand by engineers from AKG who left the company as AKG got bought out and eventually into the hands of Samsung, their headphones resembles old school AKG sound and are made in Austria. Beyerdynamic (another professional favourite) are made in Germany etc. There are Sony and Beyerdynamic professional headphones which had been in studios for decades with just earpads being replaced. They last so long that the slight increase in price easily justifies the cost over cheap Chinese junk.
If you keep buying cheap junk headphones, they are going to be made in Chinese slave labour factories for cost reasons. In other words, water is wet.
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SubWoofer2
Ars Scholae Palatinae
Even so, sometimes their products might not last all that well, and my experience with Sony's after-sales "service" has taught me two things. They expect all their customers to be early adopters of new technology who will buy new and not repair if their existing gear breaks down, and that Douglas Adams might not have had IBM in mind when he wrote that "they will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes". It should not take realistic threats of legal action to obtain a bare minimum of customer service. I'm with the previous poster who said, "never again."
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Is there a mode where they are wired AND turned on, allowing volume boosting, limiting, and noise cancellation? Or if you plug in the 3.5mm jack, are you stuck with 'dumb' headphones?
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Perhaps, but I agree with another poster in that there are fantastic cans to be had by AKG, Beyerdynamic, Sennheiser, Sony and others.
Here's another fantastic option - Grado. Brooklyn, NY USA:
https://gradolabs.com/
I'm a bit of a headphone nut, and in my opinion, Grado makes some of the world's best.
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Grado wireless is however made in China. Even with companies that make most of their products not in China, they usually still have some series made in China (usually the cheaper stuff or the electronically more involved - all the components makers are in China, so it is actually easier and more reliable to produce this lines in China than shipping all the wireless chips, batteries and antennas to Europe or the US).
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