Bose QuietComfort Earbuds Review: The Price Is Right – Video

Hey there folks, I’ve got Bose’s new, more affordable, quiet comforter ear buds here. They cost 100 and $79 come in three color options. And I’m gonna tell you what’s good about them and what’s not so good. Let’s do this. Ok. So if you did a double take on the name of these earbuds, I did two and by two, I mean that Bose released the quiet comfort ear bud two a few years ago and now it’s gone backwards by naming these the QC ear buds. But the idea going forward is that this will be the more affordable midrange model. While the ultra earbuds will be the flagship. These new qc earbuds have a totally new design. Their shape reminds me a little bit of Bose’s old sports wireless earbuds, which didn’t have active noise canceling. While these do, they also have a similar ear tip and stability band system to the ultras that really helps you get a secure fit and that fit is one of the strengths of these earbuds. Those earbuds tend to be a little larger than a lot of buds on the market. And they typically offer a comfortable secure fit with three sizes of ear tips and stability bands to choose from, got a tight seal and really secure fit using the largest ear tips and the medium sized stability bands. I had no problem running with these buds. They didn’t budge my ears and they’re IP X four sweat proof and splash proof. As I said, they have active noise canceling and it’s really good, very close to what you get with the flagship Ultras. They also have a transparency or an aware mode as Bose calls it and I found it to be natural sounding with only a very faint hiss, no problems there. These buds also sound quite good like Bose’s earbuds and headphones. They’re designed to work well with a variety of music genres and offer generally smooth punchy sound is very pleasant to listen to while some competing buzz offer a little more detail and clarity. The bass has good kick to it without sounding boomy. These don’t sound quite as good as the ultras which have a tad more depth and extension to them. But I did think these buzz play loud and most people should be satisfied with their sound quality. You can also tweak the sound a bit as Bose has added a customizable five band equalizer to its new QC Earbuds app that app has been designed exclusively for these buds. It doesn’t work with the ultras but use different firmware and a Qualcomm chip set that supports Qualcomm snapdragon sound and it’s Adex adaptive Codec. These support the A AC and S BC audio Codec buds have a few features not found in the ultras for starters. The charging case has wireless charging. The case is a bit big and feels a little cheap in comparison to the ultras case. But Bose has finally added wireless charging and the battery life is good. You can get up to 8.5 hours of playback time at moderate volume levels. That’s with noise canceling. On. The second new feature is the ability to toggle between noise canceling on aware mode and a new offsetting. Some people really wanted that offsetting which does help conserve battery life. These don’t have the ultras immersion mode that wides the sound stage a bit and is kind of a spatial audio mode. But Bose says the immersion mode is coming soon though it could be months before we see it. The buds also have some interesting voice control features including the ability to snap a selfie using a voice command through the buds. I found the voice commands to be a bit hit or miss. You have to say, hey, headphones to activate the voice command mode and sometimes it kicked on and sometimes it didn’t. When I said the W command, when it’s working, it allows you to skip tracks forward and back and raise a lower volume. Among other things, there are also the more standard customizable touch controls, other features include ear detection, sensors and multipoint bluetooth pairing that you can’t have multi point on to use those voice commands. Because if you’re paired with two devices simultaneously, the buds don’t know what phone to issue the voice command for Bose says the earbuds have three microphones for noise, canceling and voice calling. I was a little disappointed with the voice calling performance. The buds do a decent job reducing background noise but caller said my voice sounded muffled at times or went in and out while I was talking. All right, I’m gonna test call here in the streets in New York City with fellow editor Josh Goldman. Josh, I’ve got uh my usual here if I like, I got a little bit of wind. How do I sound it over? Uh Your voice quality is OK. It’s a little muffled and not really clear. Uh But for the sounds behind you, the noise cancellation is really good. I can’t hear anything on the street. Uh If there are cars passing, I wouldn’t know it. I tested them in the noisy streets of New York City and under those harsh conditions, they just didn’t quite perform up to level other premium buds. I’ve tested recently including the airpods four Samsung Galaxy Buds, three Pro and Google Pixel buds Pro two. Hopefully, my review sample wasn’t wonky, but I thought the voice calling performance could be better and hopefully we’ll get a firmer update that tweaks the algorithm. So my voice comes through more clearly in noise environments. Those are the bos quiet comfort, ear buds in a nutshell to sum things up. I think they offer a comfortable secure fit. They sound very good and have top notch noise canceling. I like the new features particularly the voice commands, but the voice control doesn’t work as well as it does with the Galaxy Buzz Three Pro. For example, I do think the buds in case are a little big compared to other ear buds and the voice calling performance wasn’t great with my review sample. The long and short of it is I came away liking these QC earbuds. They have some definite strengths and are certainly worth considering, especially when they get discounted to 100 and $40 or less. But they do have some small shortcomings, a few of which may be able to be addressed via firmware upgrades. As always, let me know what you think in the comment section, particularly those of you who own them already. I’m David caring for C net.com. Thanks for watching.