The 9 noise-cancelling headphones that our team recommends picking up during Black Friday
Read our full review of the Bose Quiet Comfort Ultra headphones.
Who it’s for:
Over-ear headphones can be great for blocking out noise, but less great for comfort when they’re too heavy or squeeze your head too much. If you’re someone who wants to wear your headphones all day, the Bose QuietComfort line was made for you. We’ve previously tested the QuietComfort 35 IIs and the QuietComfort 45s, and the QuietComfort Ultra was easily the most comfortable of the three.
They’re also the most expensive at $429, so you will be paying a premium, but with Black Friday approaching, we’ve seen them drop down to $329, so grabbing them during the shopping holiday season is a good bet for saving money.
Why we picked this:
The Bose QuietComfort Ultra headphones up the ante on the long-popular line from the brand, giving you all-day wear with spatial audio.
We don’t know how Bose improved on the design as much as they did, but we wore these headphones for hours — on flights, with glasses on, all day — and they wore through it all without squeezing or feeling heavy. To drop the royal Mashable we for just moment, I (Lead Shopping Reporter Bethany Allard) can attest to these easily being headphones I could wear all day, and I wasn’t alone in that feeling. Shopping Reporter Sam Mangino also recently tested out these headphones, and found that their biggest draw was their comfort, noticing that she didn’t experience the same ear aches she might get after wearing her Sony WH-1000XM4 for the same amount of time.
She did say, however, that their active noise cancellation and sound profile were good, but not great. In her opinion, she found them to be a bit lacking, noting that the ANC “is really good at blocking out low-pitched noises, [but] it can’t wholly block high-pitched sounds unless you turn up the sound to unhealthy volumes.” Personally, I found the ANC to do the job for me, but most of the noise I block out on a day to day basis isn’t super high-pitched.
Where Mangino and I really agreed is that the ear cup controls and multipoint pairing leave much to be desired, especially at this price point. It can be difficult to easily connect with the button that acts as the on/Bluetooth pairing button — sometimes it’s immediately responsive, and sometimes you have to press it a few times, and wait in between for it to properly turn on and connect. Like past QC headphones, these also can be touch and go with multipoint pairing, but I found them to function better at least than the QC 45 headphones, which often made audio have small skips with more than one device connected.
Finally, these headphones weirdly don’t offer passive playback, so you will need to rely on them being charged whether you’re listening wired or wirelessly. Thankfully, Mangino and I found that it was surprisingly hard to run down the battery on the Ultras, even if you’re regularly using ANC and spatial audio. Ultimately, if what you prize above all else is comfort, we think these flaws will feel worth the trade-off.