Despite once dominating the market for noise-cancelling headphones, Bose hasn’t had it all its own way in recent years. Rivals such as Apple, Sennheiser and Sony have all encroached onto turf that has historically been Bose’s stomping ground. Furthermore, noise-cancelling technology has become much more affordable, and consumers are getting more for their money. This could complicate things for Bose’s latest noise-cancelling earbuds.
The Bose QuietComfort Earbuds II claim to provide never-before-seen levels of active noise cancellation (ANC), but they are also one of the most expensive wireless earbuds we’ve ever tested. If they want to be considered among the best-in-class, there won’t be much room for error, so let’s see if they can deliver.
[content-egg-block template=offers_logo hide=price]Bose has figured out a way to customise both the audio response and noise cancellation of the QCE II to the individual user’s ear canal. CustomTune is the company’s proprietary technology, and it uses an audio signal – picked up by a mic inside each bud – to automatically calibrate ANC and sound frequency that best suits your ear. Bose doesn’t specify the details of the frequency response, but after having used the QCE II for a while now, we’re estimating they go from ‘extremely deep’ to ‘very high indeed’.
The sound is delivered by a pair of 9.3mm full-range dynamic drivers – one per bud, obviously – and the buds are wirelessly connected via Bluetooth 5.3. Because of Bose’s involvement with Qualcomm, the only codecs supported are SBC and AAC, which is a little surprising given that we were expecting Snapdragon Sound compatibility (the QCE II use the Qualcomm S5 Audio chipset). Perhaps that will change in the future with over-the-air firmware updates – Bose did say updates will be available in the coming months, but did not specify what we can expect.
Another feature that we hoped would be included in the QCE II is multipoint connectivity, which allows you to pair with two Bluetooth devices at the same time. To be fair, this is more common in wireless over-ear headphones and hasn’t made it to true wireless models yet, but it would be nice to have. Wireless charging would be similar. This is also surprising given that competitors’ cases now support wireless charging, and the Bose is a pretty premium set of buds to forego this feature.