In every enthusiast community you get these two camps.
You get these purists and you get these geeks.
Now the purists believe that greatness comes from distilling things to
their most basic, pure elements.
And then you've got the geeks who believe that greatness
comes from synthesising all the latest technology into one new hotness.
Slow food versus molecular gastronomy.
Cold drip coffee versus Nespresso pods.
In the world of headphones, you have companies like Grado, hand making headphones
in Brooklyn, and then you've got headphones like these: the Bose QC35 and the Sony MDR-100ABN.
Wireless Bluetooth.
NFC.
Active noise cancelling.
Active EQ.
More bells.
More whistles.
All the latest kind of lifestyle conveniences,
packed into these two black cans.
As a headphone enthusiast, I appreciate elegance.
I know that a lot headphone enthusiasts wouldn't give these headphones the time of day, because
of suspicion that somewhere between the NFC and the ANC and the If You Seek Amy, something
pure and something important has been lost.
But I'm also a geek.
And I want to see, you know.
If you pack everything including the kitchen sink into one package, just how
good it gets.
So which of these two headphones can be considered the Tesla of headphones?
Well, you're watching
Lachlan Likes A Thing, and let's find out!
So this video is not going to be a full review of either of these two headphones.
Just because
I'm planning to do one of those later, when I've had more time to compare these to a wider
field of alternatives.
These two headphones are basically matched feature for feature.
So what this video is
going to try and do is it's going to try to answer a few questions.
Which of the
two headphones has a smarter design?
Which of these two does wireless better?
Which one
does noise cancelling better?
And which one of these, well, sounds better?
Both of these
headphones retail in Australia for $499 AUD, and for that much cash, you want to make sure
you're getting the whole package.
Now let's start with the basics.
Now I think both of these headphones in the black colour
are tremendously handsome looking headphones.
Now both the QC35 and the MDR-100ABN are around ear headphones, and they weigh a bit more
than your average portable headphone.
The Sony weighs 290g, and the Bose weighs a bit
more at 310g.
But despite the additional weight, I actually found the QC35 is significantly more comfortable
than the Sony.
In fact, I found the QC35 has the same easygoing fit around the ear fit
as the QC25.
They're like slippers for your ears.
And they don't have the subtle weight
of the wire dangling off the headset.
In comparison I found the Sony much less comfortable, with
stiffer ear pads and a less even weight distribution overall on the head.
Now the Sony isn't uncomfortable
- it's about average in my experience - but it never disappears on the ears the same way
the Bose does.
So, because of the huge comfort advantage of the Bose, I'm going to have to give it
a win in the design department.
Let's move onto wireless.
Now by the way, can I just say that I've never really seen
the appeal of wireless headphones before, but now that I have two of them, I’m kind
of totally sold.
Because for some reason not having the cable hanging off the side of the
headphone just feels oddly liberating.
You aren't tethered to your device.
You don't
get tangled up in your cables.
I found you can get the occasional hiccup from the wireless
connection from both of these headphones, but by and large I found the connection pretty
stable.
It's in the implementation of the wireless pairing where there's a big difference between
the Sony and the Bose.
Now with the Sony you can pair up to 8 devices, but like with most Bluetooth devices I've
used, you can only actually connect to one device at a time.
So the Sony will automatically
connect to the last paired device when you turn it on, and if you want to switch devices
you have to disconnect it from the device, and connect it from the other device.
Now the Bose does things differently.
The Bose can actually connect to both devices at the same time.
So for instance, these days I always carry around an iPhone and and an iPad with me
I always carry around an iPhone and iPad with me.
Now with the Bose, I can be listening
to music on my phone, and a friend can send me a video on Youtube, and I can stop the
music playback on the phone and start the video on the iPad, and the Bose will automatically
switch over between the two.
And that's really convenient.
So, based on my experience, I'm going to have to give, again, this round to the QC35.
Next, noise cancelling.
Now Bose has generally always been considered the King of the hill
in noise cancelling.
Is the Sony a contender?
Unfortunately, not quite.
Now the Sony does
a pretty good job at actually cancelling out noise.
It's not quite as good as the Bose
in terms of blocking out speech or car noises, but I'm not going to lose sleep over the performance
difference between these two headphones.
Both dramatically cut down on environmental noise
and both let you hear both more detail in your music as a result.
The problem is that with the Sony the noise cancelling circuit produces a lot more audible
electronic noise than the Bose.
The Sony's ANC is always kind of fizzing away, with electronic
chirps.
Again, it's not a problem in a noisy environment, you just won't hear it.
But when
it's a little more quiet or you are listening to music with more kind of open, empty passages,
the Sony's electronic noise is kind of obvious.
Now another issue I found with the Sony is that the micropones on the bottom of the headset
tend to amplify wind noise when you are outdoors.
Probably because the wind is blowing right
over the top of these microphone openings like the opening of a bottle.
It’s very
distracting on a windy day and again it doesn't happen with the Bose.
Now in comparison the noise cancelling on the Bose is near silent.
Remarkably it's even
more quiet than it was on the QC25.
This is as good as ANC gets, and it's just crazy fantastic.
Now luckily the Sony DOES have a switch that lets you turn the ANC off.
And this is great
when you're in a quiet place where the environmental noise is already lower than the electronic
noise from the ANC, and it's useful in case you actually want to hear what's going on
around you.
So for that reason I think the Sony that the Sony is a good workplace headphone.
It's going to be good because you can choose whether you want to tune the people around
you out.
But even if the ANC on the Sony is turned off, the DSP chip is still active on
the Sony and that STILL produces electronic noise by itself.
So, I can pretty confidently say that Bose still remains the market leader when it comes
to noise cancellation.
That's 3 points to the Bose.
So here's the last part of the comparison: sound.
Now this is sort of a tricky round.
And here’s something that I should mention about both
of these headphones: now both of these headphones come with a cable and you can use them with
a wired connection.
But even with a wired connection they're both best used still with
the headset turned on and using battery power.
Because when you turn the headset off, this
also turns off the DSP circuit which turns off the equalisation.
And without the EQ on,
these headphones sound awful.
They sound hollow, they sound stuffy, and they sound compressed.
So obviously they've used the EQ to compensate for some of the compromises they had to make
to fit in all the rest of the kind of tech into these headphones.So all my comments about
the way these two headphones sound apply to how they sound with the EQ turned on, which
is basically how you’re always going to be using these headphones anyway unless you
run out of charge, which in my experience, is not particularly often because they both
hold charge pretty well, and they give you warnings and prompts and that sort of thing.
The 100ABN carries the new Sony house sound, which is like the Sony MDR-1A and the Sony
MDR-Z7.
That means that the Sony is not a natural sounding headphone - it has a thickened
up, chesty lower midrange.
It's got an emphasised and solid bass punch, a dip in the mids somewhere
around the lower female vocals, and then you got this spike in the treble - around where
cymbal shimmer lies.
So it's a somewhat distinctive, even uneven signature.
But it's also a dynamic,
fun sounding headphone.
It's kind of V-shaped without sounding overly harsh or strident.
And in particular, it has this really nice wide, detailed and diffuse sounding soundstage.
The sound from the Sony isn’t so artificial that it stops the Sony from being a good all
rounder, but it is not necessarily the most natural sounding of headphones.
I think it
works particularly well with electronic music where the kind of sculpted bass and the treble
kind of really punch through when the music gets textured or layered and complex.
The Bose, in comparison, is kind of harder for me to evaluate.
Because one thing is the
Active EQ on the Bose actually changes at different volumes.
So at all volumes, I can
definitely say that the Bose is a much warmer sounding than the Sony.
It's got more of an
even tone but it definitely has more emphasis on the mid-range.
So it sounds warmer.
It
sounds slightly better than the QC25, because it doesn't have that strange kind of brassy
mid-range that the QC25 has.
But with the active EQ, at low volumes, the QC35 sounds boring and sleepy because there's
too much bass and the treble is rolled off so you're missing detail.
At higher volumes,
the EQ applies more treble, and as a result the QC35 sounds much less compressed.
It's
more balanced and musical and lively and a much closer match to the Sony.
But it still
doesn't get all the way there, because in the bass the QC35 is still less tight and
solid than the Sony.
Not necessarily just in terms of quantity but the quality of the
bass.
And at the same time the treble just feels less detailed.
You don't get that nice
sense of soundstage.
At the end of the day, at all volumes, I think the Sony sounds more special.
Now whether
it's electronic or acoustic music, I think the Sony sounds more atmospheric because of
that soundstage and because of that one two punch of the bass and the treble detail.
Now
it's definitely closer to sounding like a $500 headphone than the Bose.
This isn't to
say that the Bose sounds bad.
I think it sounds more natural than the Sony, and it's probably
the better all rounder.
But to me I think the Bose plays it a little too safe,. it often
sounds too compressed, and thats disappointing for the price.
So I'm going to give this round to the Sony.
Overall, this was actually sort of a hard comparison for me to make.
Because I actually
like both of these headphones a lot.
Now hands down, I think the Bose is probably the safer
recommendation.
It's more comfortable, it's easier to use, it cancels noise better, and
I think for most people they're going to say 'it sounds pretty good'.
While I don't think
the Sony quite matcesh up to the Bose in terms of design cleverness, I don't think it has
any fatal flaws either.
So I like the way the Sony sounds, and for a portable headphone,
I've actually enjoyed using it most of all just kind of paired to my computer.
At the end of the day, it's going to be your call.
When I started both this review, I actually
expected to be pretty disappointed by both of these headphones.
But now that I've actually
tried them, I've been sort of really impressed.
Because turns out this is expensive technology,
but it's mature technology now.
And for most portable music listeners, headphones like
these represent the future.
And the future is sounding pretty good.
Now just because I wanted to keep this video from becoming too overwhelming to watch, there's
a whole bunch of stuff I haven't covered in this video that I KNOW that you are just going
to ask me.
So I'm happy to answer questions in the comments below about these headphones.
And if you have either of these headphones, please let me know your experience in the
comments.
I'd love to hear it.
If you found this video helpful, then why not like and subscribe for more videos?
I'll
see you next week, and as always, happy listening!