Etiketter

Wednesday, September 6, 2017

Bose in-ear QC20: Good, bad and the ugly


This post sure is a (very) old one - yes, from 2017 - but I think it's still interesting today when ANC in wireless earbuds is all the rage 

 Noise cancelling tech is extremely cool – especially for folks like me who have major trouble coping with noisy surroundings. As to consumer earphones with NC, #Bose is probably the most widely known brand on the planet. I hardly ever listen to anything else than ‘spoken word’ using headphones when I’m commuting or sitting in a plane; this also means that I definitely need to have functioning NC. Further, big cans are out of the question – I hate that kind of bulky gear when I’m on the move – so in-ear phones is the only alternative that works for me and Bose Quiet Comfort 20 has been around for several years. Presently, I have my second set but I sure am not going to get a third one; more about that further on.

If you read QC20 reviews – http://bit.ly/BoseQC20Reviews – you’ll notice that pretty much all of them are very positive and many give these earphones solid and even extreme top scores. Basically, there is just one thing you’ll mostly see noted as a downside: the high price. The way I see it, all things considered, is that the price is actually so high that it is completely out of whack – and in my book the final verdict is definitely not as positive as that of those reviews.

Okay, the good stuff to get started: I find the QC20 very comfortable to wear, several hours even – this is probably due to the fact that they don’t go deep in the ear channel at all but yes, they do stick out a bit. However, most of the sales pitch is about the noise cancelling feature and it sure works but there are caveats. The low rumble of, say, a jet engine way too close to my airline seat doesn’t bother me at all when I switch on the electronics (and yes, you can use the set even if the battery is flat but don’t expect much audio fidelity) but you sure still hear the baby crying behind you, loud and clear. With other words: midrange and high pitch noise does cut through, in spite of the NC magic. So do also conversations close to you, providing you’re not blasting rock music full volume of course. The very slim battery that charges through standard micro-USB has plenty of stamina and might actually outlast that of your phone.

Then the bad part : the very design of the set, the way it is intended to be used – the cord clip fastened to the front of your shirt and the earbud cords hanging from the ears – also means that the second an earpiece is not properly stuck to your ear, there is a fair chance of it falling down just far enough to splash into your coffee and that earbud sure takes the other one with it in the fall. Don’t drink coffee? Well, even if there’s no drink involved it’s a real pain having the earpieces dangling from the shirt clip and yes, the buds do sometimes come tumbling down when you least expect it (yup, a comfy loose fit also has a downside). Sure, you can have the cord behind your neck; I did that quite often but it turned out to be a bad move in the long run due to the lousy quality of the cables. Read on.. Some additional not-so-great findings: the plastic cords are loud when touched, the whole set – including the battery/electronics part – is welded together and can’t be repaired and even slight breeze causes wind noise that the electronics can’t defeat.

Here comes the ugly , then. The build quality of a very expensive piece of kit like the (original) QC20 should be top notch – but it’s definitely not. The cables are made of cheap, kinda stiff plastic that after a couple of years just starts disintegrating and there’s quite simply nothing you can do about it: http://bit.ly/BoseQC20cable

There is a newer version of the set apparently equipped with better quality cables – those have a blue-greenish streak along the length of the earphone cables: http://bit.ly/BoseQC20New That’s the main visible difference I know of. See to it, you get those in case you decide to purchase the QC20!

About the audio : what you get is okay – the tailored Bose sound but far from anything that could be described as reference audio though. Your pile of cash buys you functional, compact in-ear noise cancelling and the Bose brand, not top notch audio. There is a very faint hiss from the electronics, too, but it really doesn’t bother me at all.

So, I mentioned in the beginning I have my second QC20 set now. Yup, got a ‘special deal’ through Bose customer service to get ‘a brand new set’ to replace my broken one and expected to get the latest version – but didn’t. Basically, I ended up paying what anyone would have done, after checking the online offerings a bit. Bummer.

Bottom line for me is that when you get used to in-ear noise cancelling phones, there’s no going back to the bare bones gear. I sure hope the cables of my present QC20 set won’t give up completely until well built units from other manufacturers are widely available. Compact, in-ear phones featuring powerful noise cancellation that can be precisely fine tuned by the user should be just around the corner.

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