Tag Archives: Bose

My Worst Purchases-Bose QC 35 II

Continuing with my series, the next entry in the list is the Bose QC 35 II headphones, which I regretted buying.

Bose QC 35 II
The Bose QC 35 II, stellar headphones

Don’t get me wrong, the Bose QC 35 II are great headphones, with stellar sound quality and impressive noise cancellation. I just realised after buying them that I am not a “wearing huge headphones in public” kind of guy.

A bit of history, my earphones of choice used to be the Bose Soundsport Wireless, which I happily used for a few years, but lost during my last trip to Xiamen, China. I was quite devastated and for some time, considered buying the same earphones again, but couldn’t find them anywhere in Xiamen. I almost bought Apple Airpods from the Xiamen Apple store, but somehow controlled myself because of the poor audio quality.

After returning to India, I saw the Bose QC 35 II on sale at half price and I had wanted to dip my toes into Noise cancellation, so bought it.

The sound quality & the noise cancellation blew me away (Sony MX3 performs even better they say, but I was a Bose purist then). However, after the first few days of use, the novelty began to wear off. I would feel awkward walking in public with them around my ears, sitting at my desk in office. Having phone calls on them looked even more awkward so I started regretting my decision very soon.

On top of that, Apple soon launched the Airpods Pro, which had everything I wanted in the original Airpods and I was done with the QC 35 IIs.

I eventually sold them to a couple of illiterate Gym Bros via OLX at almost the same price I bought them for, so the regret didn’t last for long.

Bose® In-Ear Headphones

I recently had the opportunity to use bose in-ear headphones and I was so moved by the experience that I had to write a post.
Firstly, I wanted to know what the hype is about bose products and why they cost so more. Maybe it was this because of which my expectations were high. These bose headphones are good, but not as good as I expected. If you’re looking for noise cancelling phones, these are not for you. They fight very lightly in the ears but are very very comfortable. I normally use the generic headphones that came with my phone, so I like to keep my equaliser to high bass. The bass on the bose is so strong I immediately had to turn my equaliser back to normal. I started off with sad but true by metallica and the depth of the sound blew me away. The song sounded amazing. Next I moved on to marooned from pink floyd’s division bell. Again, amazing, with the bass just a bit high, overwhelming the mid range. Coming back to life sounded amazing, the bass on high hopes
was physically irritating to my skull and I had to lower the volume. Bose also says on the package that the headphones produce “natural sound” which is not entirely true, as the music sounds enhanced in the low range.
To change the genre I turned to Dire Straits. I started off with So far away, continued to Money for nothing and finished off with brothers in arms. Again, normal songs sound good, the songs with already prominent bass tracks just overwhelm the mid-range. By this time i’ve listened to an hour worth of songs but the headphones are barely noticeable and so comfortable that if it wasn’t for the sound or the wires
hanging off, I would not even know they were there. I am normally not a fan of in-ear earphones, but these are really-really good.
Pros:

  1. Excellent sound quality
  2. Excellent comfort
  3. Good Bass
Cons:
  1. Bass sometimes too strong, overpowers mid-range
  2. Better earphones available within same range
If you listen to a song for the music, the clarity of the instruments, there may be better options available. If you want just loud music with thumping bass, this the the thing for you.

I myself have added the Klipsch Image S4 on my wishlist and will be getting these bad boys as soon as I get my pay at the end of the month.