I recently purchased some Bose NC 700 HPs to replace aging Bose QC25s which I have used happily for years. Before I made the purchase
I looked at the Sony WH1000XM3 and WH1000XM4, and also fleetingly at the Sennheiser PXC550-II. The review sites mostly said that the
Sony WH1000XM4s were the ones to beat, but I decided to go ahead with the Bose for a few reasons:
- I was happy with Bose QC25s I had.
- I felt that the Sony design with a bit chunky compared to the slimmer Bose 700s.
- When I heard samples of the microphone from both, I thought the Bose 700s sounded a bit better.
- The price of both were about the same at the time I bought them.
Having used the Bose 700s for a few weeks now, I am suffering a bit of buyers remorse. For extremely expensive headphones there are
a few things that disappoint me:
- You can’t listen to them while they’re charging. I don’t understand why Bose made this decision. Would charging have affected
the audio quality perhaps? I’m using my headphones a lot for Teams calls, and I would probably leave them plugged in during
the day when I’m in front of my computer if it was possible. Its really annoying when they’re running low and you just about
to take an important call. I guess they have trained me to plug them in each night.
- No on-device button to swap sources. I’m surprised there isn’t a button on the headphones to swap between sources. The headphones
can have two active connections to two different devices, and one live audio stream and it tries to swap automatically depending
on which device is playing. This works some of the times, but when it doesn’t you find yourself scrambling for your iPhone
to open the Bose music app because there is no way on the headphones themselves to verify or change the source.
- Audio skips from time to time. I’m getting this from my MacBook Pro and my modern iPhone when playing Spotify. Audio will
cut out briefly. I assume this is a some Bluetooth issue, but coming from the ultra-reliable cabled QC25s this is quite
jarring. Do people really put up with this?
- Audio delays in Teams calls. It’s hard to be certain, but I’m pretty sure that they introduce a audio delay (both ways)
when results in the satellite phone effect.
Overall, although the build quality is good and they sound fine I just feel like the software side is a bit half baked, particularly
for a $350 product.