Bose QuietComfort Headphones are Escape Hatch for Noisy Skies at $199

Bose has spent years perfecting the art of quieting the world down and the QuietComfort Headphones, priced at $199 (was $349), are the latest result of that effort with an almost blissfully personal focus on comfort. These over-ear headphones arrive in a slim black box with a USB-C plug, a good old fashioned audio cable for when you need to go wired, and a compact travel case that’ll slip easily into your hand luggage. And the best bit is they weigh less than half a pound, fold up neatly when you need to stash them away and have earcups that swivel to fit snugly round your head – no more bulky gear here.

The magic behind all this lies in active noise cancellation which uses microphones to pick up the sounds coming at you and then churns out counter-waves to silence everything from droning engines to inconsiderate seatmates. Bose calls this CustomTune – a system that calibrates the noise cancellation based on the exact shape of your ears when you set the headphones up. So – the effect feels tailored and very much not generic. Long-haul tests showed that the cancellation stayed the course for hours on end – though it does tend to work best when dealing with steady background noise rather than sudden outbursts.

Sound is delivered via 40mm drivers that really offer a balanced sound profile – nice crisp highs for all you podcast fans, solid mids for vocal-led tracks and bass that kicks hard without overpowering everything else. And if you want to get really fancy you can use Bose’s Immersive Audio mode to create a wider soundstage that wraps itself round you, making it perfect for getting lost in a playlist even when you’re enduring a bumpy ride. There’s a choice of three EQ preset sounds in the Bose app, or you can fiddle about and create your own – and whenever you do, the changes will be reflected the instant you switch between them via a seamless Bluetooth 5.3 connection. And it doesn’t matter what you use – phones, computers, tablets or anything else – the Bose app will pair with it without so much as a whisper. SBC, AAC and aptX Adaptive are all supported codecs too, so you can stream in high quality when your device will let you.


Life on the battery is decent, coming in at 24 hours with noise cancellation and Immersive Audio turned on and 29 hours if you turn those features off – which is about as long as you’d want on a long haul flight, if it isn’t already. But if you do happen to run out of juice, plug in for fifteen minutes over USB-C and you’ll get three hours of entertainment to keep you going – enough to get you through a layover. On the right earcup, you’ll find volume controls, track skipping and a clever multi-function button that lets you either make a call or fire up your voice assistant – all with smooth action that doesn’t require any fiddling about. The left cup, meanwhile, has a wee capacitive touch strip so you can navigate through the Bose app. But there is one little catch – some people find that the touch sensors don’t work too well if your hands are sweaty or you’re wearing gloves.



The soft, protein-rich leather (the kind that’s made from synthetic foam that perfectly cradles your head without ever getting too hot & sore) makes these cushions a joy to use for long stretches of time. The real stainless steel headband does a great job of spreading the weight evenly and keeping just the right amount of pressure on – it never feels like it’s clamping down on you. Glasses wearers wont find any pressure building up, and the design works really well with people who have bigger ears. And good news for anyone who gets hot and / or sweaty after a few hours – this model breathes a whole lot better than Bose did before so you won’t feel trapped in your own sweat.


The Bose music app has all sorts of fancy features – firmware updates so you can always make sure the sound quality is the best it can be, a 5-band graphic equalizer so you can tweak the sound just the way you like it and advanced modes like aware mode (which lets you hear what’s going on in the background without having to yank off your headphones – perfect for catching gate announcements without missing a beat) or transparency enhancement for talks (which makes the person they’re talking to sound like theyre right in the room). It also integrates with Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa, making it easy to search hands-free & all that sort of thing. And if you’re in the Apple camp then you’ll be happy to know that Siri integration really is the best in the business. Multipoint pairing lets you connect two devices at once & effortlessly switch between them when your phone goes off in the middle of a movie.