Best noise-cancelling headphones
Noise-cancelling headphones isolate you from distractions, so you can concentrate on your music. ANDROID ADVISOR STAFF report
Noise-cancelling headphones are one of the most popular types of cans, and for good reason. They block out ambient noise that can distract from you enjoying your favourite tunes. While they’re particularly useful for air travel and daily commutes – especially via public transport – they’re also great at isolating you from athome noise pollution, whether that be your dog barking, the whir of your computer’s cooling fans, or your neighbour’s lawn mower.
Noise cancellation can be accomplished in two ways: through active or passive measures. Our focus here is on the former. The latter isn’t a technology per se; rather, it refers to how much ambient noise a headphone will physically block. Closed-back over-ear
headphones and in-ear headphones with memory‑foam tips offer the best passive noise cancellation.
Headphones with active noise cancellation (ANC) identify sound waves associated with noise and electronically generate an inverse sound wave that cancels it out. Here’s what we mean: a sound wave is similar to the ripples in a pond. Toss a pebble in the pond, then introduce ripples of the opposite pattern, and you’ll smooth the pond’s surface. Active noise cancellation works in a similar manner. Microphones mounted on the headphone analyse ambient sound waves and then produce inverse sound waves that will cancel them out.
As you might expect, the ANC technologies from some manufacturers are incredibly effective; others, less so. We’ve tested models from AKG, Bose, Bowers & Wilkins, JBL, Libratone, and Sony and found them to be very good.
Adaptive noise cancellation is the most sophisticated type of ANC. It operates on the same principles, but adapts to your surroundings to apply more or less of the effect and to even bring in sounds from the outside world.
Some adaptive noisecancelling solutions even take into account how fast you’re moving, the air pressure around you, and whether you’re likely in a plane, taking a walk, or holding a conversation. Many operate in conjunction with
a mobile app on your smartphone.
Some individuals find that ANC headphones exert pressure on their ears, creating a similar sensation to being under water. If you find ANC headphones to be uncomfortable, you’ll prefer a model with good passive noise cancellation. That type of headphone deliver other benefits, too: They’re the least likely to colour the music you’re listening to, and they don’t need batteries. On the other hand, not all headphones with passive noise cancellation are wireless.
BEST NOISE-CANCELLING HEADPHONES Sony WH-1000XM4
Price: £349 from fave.co/34P4TV7
Two years ago, when I reviewed Sony’s WH-1000XM3 active noisecancelling headphones, I said that Sony had finally eclipsed Bose in this category. And I wasn’t the only one to say it. Now, the company is back with the all-new WH-1000XM4. While these new cans don’t advance the ball by a lot, they nonetheless are my new top recommendation for music lovers looking for great-sounding headphones that also deliver terrific noise cancellation.
Key improvements include a proximity sensor that automatically toggles play/pause when you put the headphones on and take them off, support for Sony’s LDAC high-res audio codec (a common feature on highend digital audio players), and multipoint connection via Bluetooth 5.0 (so you can connect to two sources at once). Sony made other very small improvements to the hardware and software, too; but for the most part, those are just tweaks to a winning foundation.
Let’s dive into the specifics that make Sony’s WH‑1000XM4 so great, and why the older WH-1000XM3 – which are still available and can be found for about £90 less if you shop around – remain a great value.
The same great hardware, refined
The Sony WH-1000XM4 maintains the signature look this line is known for, with subtle gold accents and minimal buttons. Most of the controls are still handled by taps and swipes on the right ear cup. I’ve grown accustomed to this but it’s never been my favourite means of navigation. The easy-to-find Power button sits on the bottom of the left ear cup, along with a Custom button that can be programmed to either select Ambient Sound Control options or activate voice assistants. It’s a minimal and classy design that still holds up years later, but the touch controls still present a learning curve.
The slim headband introduced in the previous model is very comfortable along the top of the head. Sony claims the newer model features slightly upgraded ear pads, which should help during long listening sessions, but I could barely tell a difference. The new set is more comfortable compared to the old model, but that could also be attributed to the wear I’ve placed on the older pair. I’ve worn the WH‑1000XM3 on plenty of long flights and encountered some pressure fatigue after many hours, so any upgrade in that area is welcome. Overall, it’s a comfortable design that sits snug on my head and melts away while I’m working. The swivelling cups and folding design are also retained, so the new model is easy to stuff in a backpack. I’m happy they didn’t mess with a winning formula.
For more protection in transit, the included carrying
case got a slight upgrade, too, with improved stitching and a stiffer shell that should last even longer. Other tiny upgrades to the case include cloth pockets for the zipper to recede into, and extra flap length on the divider. Apart from the stiffer case, none of these changes make a huge difference, but I appreciate the attention to detail Sony paid to things as minor as the carrying case. As before, provided accessories include a 3.5mm cable, a very short USB-C charging cable, and an airline adapter.
Sony claims the same 30 hours of battery life with noise cancelling enabled, and with my heavy mixed usage over the course of my review, I found the battery to last almost as long as the previous pair. Here again, Sony promises its optional power adapter will deliver the same quick-charge feature that provides five hours of listening time after just 10 minutes of charging, but Sony didn’t send that component, so I wasn’t able to test that claim. The stock USB-C cable charged the cans within a couple hours.
My favourite new feature on the WH-1000XM4 is a proximity sensor that
detects when you take the cans off, so as to automatically pause playback. The music resumes instantly when you put them back over your ears. This worked like a charm. I tried to trick the sensor by placing the headphones on my thigh, tightly around my neck, and even wore them like a crown and I never triggered a false positive. When I returned the headphones to my ears, the music quickly resumed with no problem. This feature alone would make me consider upgrading from the previous version, and not just because it should extend battery life.
Top-notch noise cancellation
As I’ve already mentioned, Sony holds the active noise-cancellation crown with its WH-1000XM3. The WH-1000XM4 feature the same HD Noise Cancelling Processor QN1 as the previous generation, but with a new algorithm. This chip processes ambient noise samples captured by a pair of sensors on each ear cup at a rate of 700 times each second. Be that as it may, my ears could barely discern any difference between the noise-cancellation performance of the WH‑1000XM4 compared to its predecessor.
Any noisecancellation strategy starts passively, with large ear cups that form a tight but comfortable seal around your ears to blunt the sharp edges of loud sounds and quiet the highpitch hum
of appliances.
This is an underappreciated aspect of the experience, and it’s where cheaper headphones typically falter.
Active noise cancellation filters out low and midrange frequency noise to a great degree, but filtering low-frequency noise is where active noise-cancelling headphones really shine – even if it can be disorienting for people experiencing it for the first time. Transient (high-amplitude, short‑duration) sounds can still penetrate this system, and these headphones do their best to clamp down on the signal, but it can be jarring if the transient is very loud.
I am at least as pleased with the WH-1000XM4’s active noise cancellation as I was with the previous generation. My daily life has been very different than what it was at the beginning of the year. I work out of my home instead of going to the office, and I travel infrequently, but I still appreciate how these headphones allow me to focus when I need to get work done.
My testing included things like spinning up the fans on my gaming PC, hanging outside in a park, and using a fantastic white noise machine to name a few. The previous model served me well during many hours of air travel and on public transit, and I have no reason to believe that the new model won’t deliver the same results.
I appreciate the Ambient Sound Control feature in Sony’s companion app that lets you tailor noise cancellation to your situation. These headphones sense where you’re wearing them and what you’re doing, and they tailor their noise cancellation accordingly. If you’re at home and relatively stationary, you’ll get full cancellation so you can concentrate
on your music. If you’re walking, the headphones will pipe in some ambient sound to improve your situational awareness (so you don’t get run over by a bus, for example). It’s a great system and the app lets you fine-tune these settings to your heart’s content; nonetheless, I quickly discovered that I preferred manually triggering my ANC settings using the Custom button.
Sony also provides ways to quickly override noise cancellation, pause or lower the volume of your music, and pipe in ambient sound if you need to stop and speak to someone without removing the headphones. This is also useful when you’re at an airport and need to listen for a boarding call. This Quick Attention mode was present in the previous model and is activated when you place your hand over the right ear cup. I didn’t use this feature much, preferring instead to take the headphones off. Unfortunately, Quick Attention mode cannot be defeated, and there were a few times when I accidentally triggered it while adjusting the fit.
A new automatic override feature – Speak-to-Chat – can be enabled/ disabled in the app. When enabled, it recognizes when you begin to speak and pauses the music while pumping in ambient sound, so you can hold a conversation without any other intervention. In theory, it provides a better way to chat with someone than holding your hand over the earcup, but I found that it was prone to being triggered by a cough or someone else speaking while close to me. It will stay in this mode for 30 seconds by default, but you can tweak its sensitivity and duration in the app. I just never found myself in a situation where I preferred Speak-to-Chat to just taking the damn headphones off.
Audio quality and AI upscaling
Sony touts three other features that it says enable the WH-1000XM4 to deliver a high-end audio performance: the aforementioned new algorithm running on Sony’s QN1 processor, support for Bluetooth 5.0 and Sony’s own LDAC codec and Sony’s DSEE Extreme audio technology, which uses artificial intelligence – Sony’s Edge
AI – to restore in real time information that’s been lost when you’re listening to tracks that were compressed using lossy codecs such as MP3.
Like its older sibling, the WH‑1000XM4 supports the SBC and AAC Bluetooth codecs in addition to LDAC, but there is no support for any of Qualcomm’s aptX codecs. I found LDAC to be superior to the other two, so I used that primarily for this review.
The device you use for playback will also need to support your codec of choice, of course, so I relied mostly on a OnePlus 8 Pro smartphone for the task, as it’s one of few that do. LDAC support is more commonly found on high-res digital audio players.
I streamed tracks mostly from YouTube Music, conducting multiple critical listening sessions in a variety of playback situations with a long list of songs that I’m very familiar with to compare the WH-1000XM4 to the WH‑1000XM3 I reviewed in late 2018.
Both sets of noise cancelling headphones sound great for the price. If you’re looking for studio-grade equipment with minimal signal colouration, you shouldn’t be looking at ANC headphones anyway. But that doesn’t mean listening to music with ANC is a diminished experience. From a sonic standpoint, I discovered very few differences between the two new and older cans; in other words, there’s not much of a reason to upgrade if you already own the XM3. That said, I do enjoy really pushing my listening abilities, so here are some examples of differences I found.
I’ve already mentioned Sony’s DSEE Extreme audio technology, which is an upgrade over the DSEE HX tech present in the older WH‑1000XM3. Sony hypes this hard, so I was surprised to discover that for me, enabling it had the opposite of the promised effect: subtle details in the music – particularly
at higher frequencies played at lower volume – were lost. In Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven, the processing muted details in the fantastic acoustic guitar track – characteristics such as fingers sliding on the guitar neck, and the reverb that hangs overhead were diminished in the mix, lessening the beautiful depth of the soundscape.
In classic jazz tracks like So What, from Miles Davis, I noticed small details around the finger work on the upright bass were less present, and the high transients from the horns and drummer’s hi-hat brushes were slightly compressed. On the flip side, vocal tracks were far more present in the mix, not so much as to enable a depth separation from the instrumentation, but more like a mix of EQ boosting and stronger compression. Disabling DSEE Extreme brought back most of the fine details in instrumentation, as well some of the dynamic range, but it sat the vocals back down into the mix. Compared to DSEE HX on the XM3, DSEE Extreme on the XM4 felt like the signal was being normalized for more even instrumentation, while simultaneously emphasizing the vocal tracks.
This heavy-handed processing was revealed even more with heavily compressed tracks from albums like Metallica’s infamous Death Magnetic.
In these scenarios, the vocals again took centre stage, while the mid- to low-end was pulled back along with clean high signals. The full mix was more compressed and normalized than with DSEE Extreme disabled, and it didn’t do any favours to aggressive music like metal.
Sony’s documentation states that DSEE Extreme “upscales compressed digital music files” and “dynamically recognizes instrumentation, musical genres” with the goal of trying to “resort the high-range sound lost in compression”. So, my next thought was to listen to tracks that were poorly recorded and mixed to see if that’s where the processing truly shines. I loaded up some older punk recordings, such as In My Eyes, by Minor Threat, and set YouTube Music to its lowest bandwidth consumption/lowest audio quality setting.
I immediately detected most of the same compression tendencies. While I did notice a bit of smoothing of the lower bit depth with DSEE Extreme enabled in these instances, which provided a cleaner mix with less noise, it wasn’t enough for me to overlook the rest of the processing taking place.
After all my critical listening tests, my assumption is that DSEE Extreme acts as a more subtle and accurate normalize
function than what’s present in many music players, allowing listening to be more seamless between tracks and with an even experience between genres. I should emphasize that the effect is slight and might not even be noticeable to the average user – indeed, it didn’t greatly diminish my normal listening experiences – but I wanted to put my finger on just what this processing was trying to achieve and highlight it here. People like me who prefer to err on the side of accuracy are advised to leave DSEE Extreme turned off, but that’s just my opinion.
Without DSEE Extreme processing, I found the WH-1000XM4 exhibited a more accurate signal compared to the WH-1000XM3. The older headphones are fully burned in now, and they continue to provide a great listening experience, but the colouration – particularly in the low-end thumps and sharp highs – is noticeable when listening to the pair back to back. The newer model sounds a bit more muted in the mids and is slightly lacking in dynamic range – which indicates they are more accurate – but this is exposed only in extreme A/B testing. Without that direct comparison, these headphones provide a fantastic listening experience in many different genres. Sony has set a high bar for other ANC headphone manufacturers to clear.
The rest of the experience
There are just a few more details to cover when it comes to my day-to-day experience with the WH-1000XM4. Sony’s companion app, Headphones Connect has been consistently updated
throughout the years, and it remains a rock-solid experience for me. There are plenty of settings to tweak to your liking, and changes made to things like noise cancellation take effect immediately. Firmware updates for the headphones are handled automatically with little disruption, and I haven’t encountered any bugs, performance glitches or unwanted battery drain on my mobile devices. I’ve been burned far too many times by great hardware saddled with a horrible app, so it’s refreshing that it’s not the case here.
The Sony WH-1000XM4 includes a much-requested feature: Bluetooth multipoint pairing, which allows you to pair the headphones with multiple devices at once. This is handy because it allows you to use a laptop or a digital audio player for music playback, and still get audible audio alerts and phone calls from your smartphone. Multipoint was easy to set up and easy to use, and I didn’t have any problems switching back and forth between devices. Sony’s implementation does, however, suffer from one very unfortunate drawback: Bluetooth multipoint pairing is only available if you’re using the AAC codec. So, you’ll need to decide which is more important: high-resolution audio for music listening via LDAC, or the convenience of Bluetooth multipoint. I opted for LDAC; iPhone users, meanwhile, don’t have a choice – they can only use AAC with the WH‑1000XM4.
The WH-1000XM4’s microphone is the last aspect I’d like to discuss. While it never happened to me, many WH-1000XM3 users reported encountering technical problems with that headphone’s mic. That said, neither of these cans is a headset, so don’t expect great phone-call experiences from them. They’re adequate for a short call to a friend or loved one, but don’t rely on either for an important business meeting. The WH-1000XM4’s mic quality specifically is faint and cannot capture the vocal clarity needed for serious use. I can live with that trade-off.
Verdict
If you have £350 to spend on active noise-cancelling headphones, the Sony WH-1000XM4 get my highest recommendation. They deliver top‑shelf noise cancellation, they’re comfortable to wear, they’re packed with features, and – most importantly – they sound fantastic.
There’s not a lot here to warrant an upgrade recommendation if you already own the WH-1000XM3 – and if your budget is tighter and you find a great deal on those cans – you should definitely pick them up while they’re still
around. But if you want the absolute best of the best, look no further than the Sony WH-1000XM4. Adam Patrick Murray
BEST BUDGET NOISECANCELLING HEADPHONES Wyze Noise-Cancelling Headphones
Price: £79 from fave.co/3iwJPtS
When you really want to zone out, leave humanity or your environment behind, you need active noise-cancelling headphones. Few headsets cancel noise better than these Wyze Headphones, which are also one of the most comfortable headsets I’ve worn. You do pay a slight sonic price for this trick, but that simply means the sound goes from very good to merely good. The kicker: £79. Until I looked up the price at the end of my evaluation, I was thinking £150.
Design
The Wyze headphones I tested come in basic black, sport low-latency/low-power Bluetooth 5.0, and as I said, are among the most comfy I’ve tested. The ear cup pads are extremely plush, and my ears never came close to making contact with the speaker grills. The adjustable headband is firm, but not too tight, and the cushion for the top of your head is as comfortable as the cup pads.
The one area where I’m now going to be critical of all headphones is controls. The controls on the Wyze (noisecancellation button on the left, power/up/ down/enter on the right) are as well placed as any I’ve experienced, but after the joystick on the Marshall Major IV,
everything else seems dated. That’s not a knock on Wyze, just a plea for all vendors to adopt a superior design.
The left cup is home to the 3.5mm input jack, and the right cup houses the USB-C charging port. The outside of the right cup is also used as a touch surface to control your voice assistant. Wyze includes both audio and charging cables, as well as a simple carry bag. There’s no 1/4-inch adapter or airline adapter included.
I’d like to compliment Wyze on its quick-start guide, which is succinct, but thorough and far easier to read than some of the tiny booklets other vendors provide. Kudos as well for all-paper/cardboard packaging and no shrink wrapping. You can easily recycle everything but the phones themselves. (Although that’s also possible in most locales, if you take the trouble.)
There is of course an app that allows EQ’ing the unit and choosing the level of ambient noise reduction.
Performance (noise abatement and sound)
There’s no arguing the efficacy of the Wyze ambient nose reduction. As these are over-ear headphones, they block a lot of noise without an electronic assist. With active noise cancellation (adding a phase-opposite signal to the audio) enabled, they become very, very quiet. If I were on an airplane, they’re definitely one of the sets I’d consider bringing along.
On the other hand, activating noise cancellation slightly alters frequency
response. The Wyze headphones sound very good without cancellation enabled, and merely good with it on. That’s the nature of the cancellation beast, but I will say I hear ever so slightly less difference in sonics between the two modes with my Sony WH-XB900H headset.
Sans said noise cancellation, the bass was spot-on, round and punchy without sounding like a subwoofer. Unless of course, you’re a subwoofer fiend. (Is that still a thing?) Separation? They’re headphones. It’s perfect. The mid-range is clean and accurate, though I’d opt for just a tad more in the upper regions. There are just enough highs for my taste, though I wouldn’t say no to a pinch more. Younger ears will wonder what I’m going on about.
My above comments are on the default settings. The EQ seemed to work well with cuts and gain with the bass, but I didn’t notice huge gains in the mids or highs no matter how many dB I boosted. The sound doesn’t need much tweaking anyway, so no biggie.
Run time was very good, but I didn’t quite make the 20 hours Wyze claims. I saw around 16, but then I left them (offear) playing at a relatively high volume.
Overall, I’d have no problem using these headphones as my daily drivers if I wasn’t currently stuck on, yes the Marshall Major IV’s. But those don’t do noise cancellation, so I’ll take the Wyze on the plane, and they’re also in my listen-to-recording-mixdowns brigade.
Verdict
As I’ve said several times now, the Wyze headphones are super comfortable and do a stellar job of shutting off the sound
from the outside world. They sound good if not great in that mode, and very good when not cancelling noise. Head to head, I’d give a slight nod to the aforementioned WH-XB900n’s in terms of sound. Then again, the Sony’s (£150) are far more expensive. Jon L. Jacobi
BEST NOISE-CANCELLING HEADPHONES FOR GAMERS Bang & Olufsen Beoplay Portal
Price: £449 from fave.co/3gbORdM Bang & Olufsen – B&O – is about to turn the headphone world on end with the launch of its Beoplay Portal, a high-end noise-cancelling headphone whose meticulous industrial design, pristine audio performance, and underlying technology make it the first premium headphone that will easily satisfy the audiophile, the road warrior, and the hardcore gamer with a single product.
Exquisite industrial design, premium materials
The Beoplay Portal represents the pinnacle of B&O’s legendary industrial design. My review sample came in black anthracite, but the Portal is also available in grey mist and navy.
Lifting the Beoplay Portal out of the box is a sensory-confounding experience.
Your eyes see an aluminium and leather-wrapped headphone that you know from experience should have density and weight; but your tactile senses hold something that is impossibly light at a mere 282g.
Everything about the Beoplay Portal screams high end. The top of the headband is covered
in a gorgeous, durable cowhide, while its memoryfoam earpads are wrapped in genuine lambskin. The ear pads are thicker than I’ve seen on other B&O headphones I’ve reviewed, creating a deeper cavity for your ears. They’re also tapered and provide an extra tight seal all around your head.
I’ve been constructively critical of past generations of B&O headphones for being uncomfortable to wear for long listening sessions, but that’s not the case here. B&O wrapped the underside of this headband with a bamboofibre textile that is both durable and breathable. Gone are the days when a B&O headphone would cause me fatigue or pain from the top of its headband. The Beoplay Portal features a unique offset padding to relieve any pressure on the top of your head. In fact, when you look at the headband, you’ll see the offset as a slight V-shaped notch at the headband’s midpoint. I spent hours and hours wearing the Portal – including falling asleep while wearing it – with no discomfort whatsoever. Kudos to B&O’s design team.
The Beoplay Portal’s brushedaluminium arms expand – no, glide
– with a smoothness that I’ve not experienced with any other headphone. It’s pure butter. There’s no clicking, no stuttering of any kind. Let the arms go and voilà, they lock solidly into place like pure magic.
The aluminium discs on each ear cup exemplify B&O’s focus on form and function. Light seems to dance across them; and on closer inspection, you’ll notice that the light spreads into a subtle coloured gradient. In low light or gaming environments rich with colour LEDs, you’ll be drawn to
the eye-catching effects the materials create. B&O told me the company used a proprietary anodization technique it first developed for its Beosound One NY Edition loudspeaker.
As with previous-generation B&O headphones, the discs have a functional aspect too. Tap twice quickly on either ear cup to pause and twice again to play. If you’re on a call or using the Portal in conjunction with Zoom or Teams, tapping twice mutes/unmutes the call.
Oddly, the Portal does not come with any sort of carrying case. B&O typically accessorizes their headphones with a luxurious carrying pouch of some sort, but not here.
The Portal sports Bluetooth 5.1 and multipoint Bluetooth. You can add up to eight devices and have two devices paired at a time. Note that gaming connections take priority.
Touch Bar volume control
Each ear cup features a vertical Touch Bar that is (in my opinion) one of the most outstanding features of the Portal and is, for now, unique to this headphone. Once you use the Touch Bar, you’ll never want to go back to buttons or gesture-based controls. This vertical bar is mounted flush on the left and right ear cup, with a small bump at the end that orients you to the sliders’ boundaries. The right slider controls the headphone’s volume. Slide your finger up to increase volume and down to decrease. The left slider controls the Portal’s adaptive noise cancelling and transparency. Slide up for transparency and down for ANC. When you’ve hit the limit of either, the headphone will give you a distinct, gentle prompt.
The most brilliant part is the fine-tuning B&O has performed. Not only does sliding your finger up or down feel completely natural but the speed at which the volume increases
or decreases is Goldilocks perfect – and it worked every time. I tried to see if I could get the Touch Bar to misfire by laying down on a pillow or rubbing my head on a headrest. The Portal would have none of it.
Noise cancelling and transparency features
Active noise cancelling is a modern marvel; but when done wrong, it can wreak havoc on a headphone’s sonic performance. In my experience, B&O has never had the best noise cancelling performance, but they’ve always delivered superior sound thanks to their tuning. The Portal improves upon the company’s ANC performance while maintaining a high bar for audio reproduction. You won’t hear any overt hiss, and the underwater effect that so many competitors suffer from is not a factor here. My review unit had two strength settings for transparency, and two for adaptive noise cancellation. A B&O representative told me a future firmware update will increase this to five gradients for each, allowing you to fine-tune each setting to your environment and preference.
With ANC enabled, the Portal provided a black background from which music burst. I tested this headphone in the presence of noise generated by HVAC systems, boilers, air purifiers, and more. In each instance, these cans did a superb job of reducing ambient noise so I could focus my attention on the music. I did not, however, have an opportunity to evaluate B&O’s new ANC algorithm on an aircraft. And all that said, Sony and Bose – in that order – still do active noise cancellation even better.
The Portal comes with a 3.5mm analogue cable and a 6-foot USB-C to USB-A cable that does double-duty as a charger and as a digital audio transport for a computer, smart device, or gaming console. I found out the hard way, however, that you can only use the Portal as an active headphone. If its battery runs out, you can’t switch to the 3.5mm analogue jack and use it like a plain old headphone.
Built with gamers in mind
Gamers – particularly Xbox owners – will dig the Beoplay Portal because it takes advantage of Microsoft’s protocol for stable, low-latency, uncompressed, wireless audio with an Xbox Series S/X or Xbox One. Plug Microsoft’s Xbox Wireless Adapter for Windows 10 into your Windows 10 computer and you’ll get the same support on that platform. Should you want to use the headphone with a mobile Android device, there’s support for the aptX Adaptive codec via Bluetooth. The AAC and SBC codecs are also supported.
Bang & Olufsen has replaced one of the most ubiquitous features of gaming headsets – the boom mic – with what it calls the ‘virtual boom arm’. Instead of mounting a single mic on the end of a flexible stalk, the Portal uses an array of microphones that use directional beamforming technology to isolate and amplify your voice while screening out background noise. Whether you’re trash-talking an opponent, making a phone call, or participating in a video conference, your voice will come through clear as crystal. And a feature called ‘Own Voice’ will use the Portal’s
mics to pipe your own voice through the headset, eliminating a common annoyance with headsets of all types.
I did, however, experience an occasional anomaly with my iPhone 12 that I couldn’t quite pin down. When lifting/shifting one of the ear cups off my head and placing it back again, people on the other end of the call could no longer hear me unless I broke and then restored the wireless connection to my iPhone.
B&O was not able to provide me with the latest version of its mobile app, which has been updated with unique features for the Beoplay Portal. But I did get a one-on-one briefing as to what you can expect from the updated software. Once you pair the Portal to the
Bang and Olufsen app, you’ll have the option to activate one of three gaming DSP modes: Gaming, FPS (first-person shooter) and RPG (role-playing game). It was inferred that more gaming DSP modes will become available down the road. In the meantime, you can create custom EQ profiles of your own. In case you’re wondering, the Portal does not feature audio head tracking.
The Beoplay Portal headphone sounds glorious. If you’re a fan of B&Os voicing – a crisp top end, a pristine midrange, and a tight bottom end – you’ll experience it in full here. I used a combination of high-res music files and streamed content via Tidal, all played through my Roon Nucleus media server. The Beoplay Portal revelled in creating deep, rich musical layers that are not commonly experienced through headphones. Going through my endless Rolodex of female vocalists: Adele, Alicia Keys, Holly Cole, Norah Jones, Pink, Sarah McLachlan, and Suzanne Vega to name but a few, I always heard crisp, clear, and full bodied vocals.
The near sub-sonic bass lines on Bonnie McKee’s
Trouble, Sade’s Soldier of Love, and Natasha Bedingfeld’s These Words were exceptional. B&O’s balance between killing outside noise and delivering intoxicating musical reproduction is among the best I’ve heard. Switching between various ANC modes, I could barely discern any impact on the music whatsoever. Unlike some of the competition, whose ANC will dull the top end or muddy the midrange, there was none of that with the Portal.
Verdict
The Bang & Olufsen Beoplay Portal is a triple-threat wireless headphone that everyone can love: The discerning music listener, the road warrior looking for sonic isolation on the go, and the hardcore gamer rocking the latest console or PC hardware. The Portal really can do it all: Entertainment, relaxation, and productivity. But what seals the deal for me is the head-turning design, luxurious feel, and that killer Touch Bar volume control. Theo Nicolakis