Target’s iconic ‘Expect More. Pay Less’ slogan could well be the motto for today’s noise-canceling headphones market. Once the reserve of first-class aeroplane travellers and music fans with the cash to splash, they are much more accessible nowadays, with active noise cancellation (ANC) technology increasingly found in the best headphones under $100.
Not only that, but such budget noise-canceling headphones often have features and specs that rival those of much more premium pairs.
Price gap widening; spec gap shrinking
Of the handful of budget and mid-range noise-cancelers I’ve tested over the past month, from the $50 JLab JBuds Lux ANC to the $100 Audio-Technica ATH-SB300BT and the $249 Cambridge Audio Melomania P100 SE, every single pair has trounced my $449 Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones 2 (and plenty of other popular premium models) for battery life.
One pair supported a technically superior Bluetooth codec, while another even offered one of Bose’s headline attractions – spatial audio. Bluetooth Multipoint and Transparency modes are virtually ubiquitous, and touch controls don’t always elude budget models either.
Someone shopping for new ANC headphones may cross-reference the specifications of entry-level and flagship models and, very reasonably, wonder how pricier pairs could possibly justify their premium.
It isn’t just features that have made headway in budget ANC headphones of late either. I remember the first wave of affordable noise-cancelers sounding pretty compromised over ‘standard’ similarly priced wireless headphones – somewhat understandably, considering the added implementation cost of this ‘shiny new’ ANC technology. And it wasn’t uncommon for the audio presentation to seem as if it had been dragged through mud when ANC was activated.
Fortunately, ANC is now cheaper for manufacturers to execute (in part due to the availability of lower-cost, higher-efficiency audio chipsets and higher-quality microphones) and generally much less detrimental to performance.
Finally, while I’d pull the Bose pair out of the lineup as the most handsome, I wouldn’t put such a wide gap between their prices on aesthetics alone. It perhaps doesn’t help that the headphone fashion of the day is seemingly minimalist.
Just look at the flagship Sony WH-1000XM6, Sennheiser Momentum Wireless 4 and Sonos Ace… black, grey/white, little-to-no ornamentation; bling is clearly out. Unless you’re Apple or one of the luxury hi-fi-come-headphone brands, of course.
All this is to say that premium pairs, with their less standout specs, arguably ordinary designs and ever-increasing price tags, have a steeper uphill battle on their hands to pull in consumers than ever before.
But do they actually have a leg to stand on? I ditched my $400 Boses for the aforementioned $100 Audio-Technicas (my favorite of my budget haul) to find out. Here’s what I found…
Specs have caught up…
Audio-Technica’s ATH-SB300BT aren’t actually the best featured headphones for their price. (That particular medal would more deservedly hang around the neck of the $100 Sony WH-CH720.)
They don’t have a companion app for EQ adjustment or the other few (mostly wowless) functions typically offered for budget models, nor do they support Bluetooth codecs beyond the ‘vanilla’ and pretty lossy SBC and AAC.
Meanwhile, the Boses support one of the highest-quality codecs, aptX Adaptive, which is a valuable feature if you own an aptX Adaptive/HD-compatible phone, and have a dedicated app that allows you to adjust EQ and ANC strength.
It’s a tug of war when it comes to wired listening. The Boses deliver audio through their USB-C and 2.5mm sockets, but both methods require the headphones to have battery remaining. The Audio-Technicas, meanwhile, only offer cabled listening via their 3.5mm jack, not their USB-C charging port, meaning you have to carry around an extra cable.
That said, wired listening here doesn’t require battery life, which I believe is the more attractive benefit. After all, there’s nothing worse than a pair of headphones being completely redundant if you’re caught short.
Speaking of which, the Audio-Technicas win the battery round, delivering 60 hours with ANC activated compared to the Bose’s 30 hours. That’s the manufacturers’ claimed figures anyway.
In real-world usage, listening at decent volume levels, I recorded that 14 hours of listening drained the Audio-Technica’s battery life by 20 per cent, while roughly the same amount of hours took a 50 per cent hit on the Bose’s juicepack.
(As an aside, this isn’t necessarily Bose scrimping on chipsets or not prioritising battery life, but could, to some extent at least, be due to the greater battery-draining processing needed for their more powerful ANC and audio.)
But the Boses strike back with one of the most convincing spatial audio implementations I’ve heard, and while I wouldn’t call it particularly valuable for music listening, it is much more so for movie watching.
Ultimately, your priorities (and to some extent the audio source you use) will determine which pair offers the most practical features for you.
As headphones to wear, I’m siding with the Bose – but again, there’s not much in it. The Boses are better looking, there’s no question about that, and I prefer their lighter, less oppressive feel and fit, particularly after two or more hours of wear.
Still, the Audio-Technics are also secure fitting and comfy (if a little too warm after an hour or so), mostly due to their pillowy pleather earpads. And I prefer using their physical volume buttons as opposed to the Bose’s slow-going touch capacitive volume slider, even if they are uglier.
… but performance hasn’t
Up until this point, the QC Ultra 2 don’t convincingly justify their $300 premium over the ATH-SB300BT, which epitomize just how far budget noise-cancelers have come in recent years. Their sound quality is surprisingly mature for the price, too – solid and full-bodied, with decent enough clarity and insight, if a little tonally skewed – bass-heavy and treble-light.
But this is where the Boses begin to pull away. The Boses are also on the richer side, albeit more tonally balanced, and notably clearer and crisper, particularly in the mid and upper frequencies.
Play Waxahatchee’s Right Back To It, and MJ Lenderman’s electric guitar is more rhythmically coordinated with the accompanying banjo pattern, Katie Crutchfield’s Americana-infused vocal drips with texture, and the bass guitar plays a more grounding, as opposed to dominating, role in the mix.
Over to Charli xcx’s Von dutch, and the Boses lean into their upper-mid crispness, propelling the upbeat synths forward with enthusiasm and plotting them more precisely in an open soundstage with greater instrument separation.
It’s an altogether more upfront, musically cohesive and engaging sound. And you know what? Sonically, the Bose-rivalling Sony XM6 and B&W Px7 S3 put even further distance between themselves and the Audio-Technicas.
Where the Boses gain most distance over the $100 headphones, however, is with their noise-canceling performance. Now, the QC Ultra 2’s ANC is unrivalled – at any price. I’ve reviewed $1000 ANC headphones that don’t trouble their sound-blocking ability. So despite the ATH-SB300BT proving decent sound blockers at their level, I wasn’t surprised by their comparable inferiority here.
How inferior? On a train, for example, the Boses completely shush all noise but the highest-frequency voices in the carriage, while the Audio-Technicas drown out the very lowest rumble of the train tracks but can only reduce the rest to be less distracting than they were.
Budget vs premium ANC headphones: where we are today
Every couple of years, new flagship ANC headphones from the likes of Bose and Sony arrive to take wireless sound and/or ANC effectiveness to the next level – sometimes incrementally, sometimes more significantly.
It’s a credit to the development of behind-the-scenes drivers, processors and wireless technology, and the audio engineers finding ways to improve their implementations, that wireless sound is still creeping closer to wired quality and that noise cancelation is almost as effective as it could be.
That keeps the best-performing premium ANC headphones relevant and, indeed, worth it for headphone listeners who value, and can afford, those performances cheaper headphones can still only aspire to.
For the rest of us, however, it’s encouraging to know that performance quality is evolving at the affordable end of the market too, while features and design are no longer areas of discrepancy.
Five years ago, you couldn’t get the sound quality, ANC efficacy and genuinely useful everyday features from $100 headphones. Today, as the Audio-Technicas go to show, you absolutely can.
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