Let me preface this by saying I’m in now way an audiophile of any kind, I’m just a road weary traveler looking for headphones that fit my current lifestyle. With that said, I am now the owner of the Bose QC25 and the Beats Wireless Studio headphones. In reality these were replacements of my Audio Technica headphones that I had before. I also just happened to get the Beats since I needed to burn off some useless miles.
I bought the Bose QC25’s last year and so far they’ve served me quite well. I like how it takes a single AAA battery to activate the noise canceling and that I can use it without the noise canceling if I don’t want to. It also folds up pretty nice in the case. The Bose uses a cord thats inserted into my iPhone or iPad depending on the device that I’m using and I can actually take calls on it. Compared to the Audio Technica’s, the Bose was way better in terms of sound and for noise canceling. I mean come on its a Bose! I did run into trouble a couple of months ago when one of the ear cups wouldn’t transmit any sound and I had to warranty replace them. While overall pretty painless, that meant the headphones lasted less than a year before they broke. The replacements work just fine and I get another year of support so if they break again I can just replace them.
I haven’t done a lot with the Beats headphones yet. I have been able to pair them with my iPhone 6 just fine and when you turn them on it pairs fast and the noise canceling is on by default. I don’t know if you can turn off the noise canceling part but the sound quality out of these suckers is pretty awesome. Granted I haven’t used them on a plane which is the real test of these bad boys but I’ll get a chance to do that this next week. The Beats came with more cords, one for charging and one for using it with my iPhone so I can talk on the phone with it, I think there is a third one that I haven’t figured out what that one does yet. I have yet to read the instructions for it. I do know that I can control the volume and at least advance tracks forward by just pressing the button on the side. Thats pretty bad ass in my book. It doesn’t fold as flat as the Bose but thats a small thing since they’re practically the same when I shove them in my backpack.
I’ll see which one I keep in my work bag long term after the test this week going up to NY for work. I keep my headphones on almost the entire trip so it sucks a lot of juice. I think the only downside is that I would need to charge the headphones every so often instead of just replacing the battery but thats a small thing really and it saves the environment since I’m not burning through batteries.
All in all, these are two pretty different products but they’ll serve the same purpose for my travels. I can’t wait to test the Beats this week so I can finally pick a winner. Technically the loser won’t be traveling with me but it will probably be used at home instead so I don’t have to unpack my primary headphones or I’ll give them to my wife so she can use them for when we travel as a family.
Wonger's Ramblings 