These Weird Headphones Blew My Mind – Video

Hey there folks, I review a lot of headphones and these just might be the most unique and interesting ones that have come across my desk this year. They’re called the NWM One Wireless and they’re open over ear headphones. I’m going to tell you what’s good about them and what’s not so good about them. Let’s go do this now. You’ve probably never heard of NWM I had until recently. But it’s a relatively new brand developed by N TT Sonority, the audio engineering arm of Japan’s largest telecommunications company. Aside from the fact that there are no ear cups, just a ring pad to hold the drivers in place around your ears. What’s a little strange is that there’s no branding on the headphones themselves. No logo, nothing. These don’t even come with a carrying case that could be branded with a logo and you can barely see the R on the headphones that lets you know left from right, which is slightly irritating. But if you’re going to streamline the Minimus Tech products, the design has its appeal and the headphones are certainly lightweight at 100 and 85 g and also seem pretty durable. They do have a bit of metal in their construction and they are comfortable once you get them on your head in the right position. My only two complaints are that while the drivers swivel, the earpieces don’t, they’re fixed and I could do with a touch more padding on the top of the headband. I should also note that the silicone ring that sits on your face takes a little getting used to. It’s got some give to it and it is generally comfortable, but I’m just so used to plush padded memory foam ear pads that the ring felt a little weird at times. The obvious benefit to having a completely open ear over your headphone is that you do get really nice ventilation. There’s a bit of a breeze here. It’s about 75 degrees. I usually don’t like wearing over here headphones on super hot days, but these feel really nice with my ears are air conditioned. Nothing steaming up. The downside is like, you know, there’s sirens in the background, there’s people around and I can hear all that. I have the volume on pretty low. There was a horn beep there, but I can talk to my camera woman here without taking my headphones off, which is also a good thing. There were three things I was surprised about first the price these lists for $300 which seems like an awful lot. I was sort of expecting them to be more like 100 and $50. But to their credit, they sound surprisingly good for open headphones. Each earpiece is equipped with a 35 millimeter driver along with a 12 millimeter tweeter and they sound quite respectable. Some people have said they don’t get quite loud enough that may be an Android thing, but I used them with an iphone 14 Pro and I didn’t have an issue with the volume. They don’t produce a ton of bass, but they sound fuller than I thought they would and also offer decent clarity. And not surprisingly, they sound quite open with a wide sound stage. Sound wise. They just can’t quite compete with a good set of $300 noise, canceling headphones, but they did exceed my expectations for this type headphone. The other thing that’s surprising is that they leak very little sound. Apparently they’re equipped with active phase cancellation to reduce sound leakage. Something I’ve started to see in open ear buds. People had to stand quite close to me to hear anything coming out of them. I have it about 30% volume. So I can, I can talk to you and hear you. I can barely hear them. To be honest, I could kind of hear the music but not too much. I’ll go, I’ll go to 60%. Yeah. Ok. I can, I can hear the voices of the song. I’m at about 70%. I can sort of hear something. Yes, I could definitely hear it, there’s a surprising amount of bass from, from, you can’t even tell where anything is kept. This sound quality actually sounds good. I thought maybe it would sound like raspy or something like that. It’s not as noise canceling as you think it is. But it sounds pretty cool. I think these are, no, I like it a lot. I also thought these were good for voice calling. People said they could hear my voice. Well, even in fairly noisy environments and said they heard very little background noise. I could also hear them well, though it did become a little harder to hear them when I had a lot of noise around me because these are open headphones after all. As far as other specs go, these are equipped with Bluetooth 5.3. There’s both point Bluetooth pairing and US PC audio for wired listing on computers and smartphones and tablets with USB C ports. Battery life is rated at 20 hours at moderate volume levels. They support the A A CS BC and LC three audio codex as well as the new or AAS feature that lets you hear Bluetooth audio broadcasts in public spaces like gyms. And finally, there’s a companion app for IOS and Android. It’s pretty rudimentary but has an equalizer and allows you to do firmware upgrades. All in all. I gotta say, I thought the NWM one was a pretty cool headphone. It’s too expensive and feels a bit beta or expensive me, but it’s pretty well designed. It did exceed my expectations for sound quality and overall performance. Is it the future of over ear headphones? I’m not so sure about that, but I do think we could see more open over ear headphones going forward at the right price. They’d be worth having in your headphone arsenal, particularly for those hot days when wearing over ear headphones just isn’t fun. But let me know what you think. Does the design of these headphones appeal to you or are they just too weird? I’m David Carney for cnet.com. Thanks for watching.