Review Bose QuietComfort 35 Headphone Renewed | Mobile Accessories

Building on the company’s heritage of noise cancelling headphones, the Bose QuietComfort 35 feature both wireless and wired connection in addition to an enviable build quality and good sound performance – provided you like the “Bose sound”.

With a price tag which is considered fairly expensive in the consumer headphones world (~$380), the Bose QuietComfort 35 are a solid product with few flaws.

Disclaimer: the local press agency kindly loaned me the Bose QuietComfort 35 I used for this review.

TL;DR: recap

Pros	Cons
Sleek and appealing design Superb comfort Excellent active noise cancelling and passive isolation Plenty of battery life Upgradeable firmware (via app)	Cannot disable ANC No aptX support Non-replaceable battery Sound balance won’t appeal to everyone

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The Bose QuietComfort 35 come with a hard carrying case, a micro-USB cable to charge them, and a cable to connect them to various sources without Bluetooth. This cable has a 3.5 mm jack on one side and a 2.5 mm jack on the side which goes into the headphones, therefore you cannot use a cable with two 3.5 mm jack connectors and you are tied to using Bose’s cable. This is an inconvenience which could easily be avoided and a choice on Bose’s side that is difficult to understand, since it prevents users from using “normal”, more universal cables.

Design & Comfort

 You never change a winning team, so Bose stuck with a design which is very similar to the QuietComfort 25’s. Of course there are obvious differences, given the fact that the QC 25 were wired headphones and the QuietComfort 35 are wireless, but the overall appearance is almost indiscernible.

Earcups are made of machined aluminium and plastic, as is the headband. The latter is covered in Alcantara tissue with a generous amount of soft padding; the earpads are made of artificial leather. The structure seems to be resistant in its complex, although it appears a bit flimsy in a few spots (i.e. the hinges). The overall build quality is commendable, however, and the headphones seem to be built to last. They’re available in two colours: black and silver.

The Bose QuietComfort 35 weigh in at 234 g, which is not feather-light but neither too heavy to bear. In fact it’s still fairly little a weight for a full-size Bluetooth headset.

The QuietComfort 35 are fairly large, being over-ear headphones, but they come equipped with foldable hinges which help reduce the size and make storing them easier. I have one single complaint about this: if you keep them on your neck, they fold with the earpads upwards, which may be slightly inconvenient. I will get into more detail in an upcoming comparison article, but the Sony MDR-1000X do a better job at this.

There’s a small switch on the right earcup which can turn on the headphones and put them in pairing mode when long pressed. The side hosts three buttons: vol+, multifunction and vol-. Beneath them are two LEDs, one for battery status and the other for Bluetooth (we’ll get on functions later on), and the micro-USB port for charging. The 2.5 mm jack receptacle is on the left earcup.

As I already wrote in the Bowers & Wilkins P3 Series 2 review and in the Plantronics BackBeat Pro 2 review, my scalp is unfortunately very sensitive. As a consequence, wearing headphones often leads to lots of pain, unless I use some kind of cap or other very soft thing to interpose between my head and the headphones. Despite all this, I could wear the QuietComfort 35 for more than one and a half hours before feeling the urge of taking them off – quite an accomplishment! The earpads are soft and do not cause too much heat to accumulate, so these should be nice to wear in the hotter season.

Extra Features & Battery Life

Bose’s headphones are mainly renowned because of their noise cancelling abilities – they are among the best in this category and Bose itself marketed the first products with a noise cancelling technology. Now, the Bose QuietComfort 35 are an evolution over the QuietComfort 25, which were arguably the best full-size headphones made by the company. Not only do they keep every positive aspect intact, they also make noise cancelling better.

The QuietComfort 35 see a change in the way the microphones work: there are two now, so they can better pick up ambient noises and give an overall better noise cancelling experience. The microphones are on the same earcup, though, so you won’t have directional noise cancelling.
Noise cancelling won’t completely eliminate all sounds coming from outside, but it will just suppress lower frequencies, such as the rattling sound of a train or the drone of an airplane’s jet engine. If the passive isolation is good enough, you will not hear much of what’s around you – and this seems to be the case. I am writing this lines while being on a train and I can barely hear anything outside of the occasional high-pitched whistle of the train’s braking system. All other sounds just magically vanish. There’s still a bit of low frequencies which get through, but I suspect that’s because of bone conduction (my body’s bones directly conduct the sound to my inner ear).

The only caveat of the noise cancelling is the pressure it seems to create on the eardrum, which may cause fatigue after a while. There is no way to circumvent this as far as I know. What’s more, Bose does not allow to turn off noise cancelling while Bluetooth is on, so you can’t just use the headphones without ANC – you have to turn to the cable for that.

Bose developed a companion app for its Bluetooth products, Bose Connect. I tried out the Android version, which is anyway identical to the iOS one (and that’s a bad thing: it does not blend in well with the rest of the Android ecosystem). It’s a minimalist approach to a companion app, but a good one at it: the interface is simple and intuitive and all the features are just a tap away. The app allows to control music playback, to update the firmware of the headphones, to check the battery status and to edit connections. You can also set an auto-off timer and voice prompts (i.e. the headphones greet you and tell you the battery status when you power them on). Alas there is no equalizer in the app, so you cannot really tune the headphones to your liking from within the app.

The Bose Music Share feature allows you to connect two Bose wireless headphones to share music with someone else. The idea is great, but it is a bit limited (and limiting) given that only Bose product will work. That’s totally understandable, but not totally convenient in a multi-brand market.

Unfortunately the Bose QuietComfort 35 sport no aptX codec, but only AAC and SBC. Given that AAC is seldom found outside of Apple products, this means that most Windows and Android devices won’t be able to stream high-quality content to the headphones, but they will be limited to lower bitrate codecs. That’s definitely not a premium for premium headphones!

The multifunction button on the right earcup not only allows to play or pause, or to answer and end phone calls, but it activates the phone’s voice assistant on long press. It works with both Siri on iOS and Google Now on Android (I can’t assure it works with proprietary assistants as the ones by Samsung or Huawei).

Battery life is quite good, with the company claiming it to reach 20 hours. During my trials I could exceed that figure, but it of course depends on your listening volume. The not-so-good part comes now: the battery is non-user-replaceable, so when it will eventually die you won’t be able to take it out and insert a new one. The Parrot Zik does way better in this regard, having the battery tucked behind a simple removable panel. The second negative thing is the fact that the QuietComfort 35 shuts down when on charge, so you can’t use it wirelessly (and therefore have active noise cancelling) while you are charging it.

Sound & Specs

I usually burn in headphones for ~100 hours before using them, but in this case they had already undergone some burn in when I got them, as the sample has been used by various journalists around Italy. I used the Bose QuietComfort 35 both wirelessly with my Lenovo Vibe Shot and wired, with the Zorloo ZuperDAC.

Now, I usually include specs for the headphones I review, but Bose does not publish them. There are zero information about impedance, frequency range and sensitivity, among other things. This is a questionable behaviour in my opinion, but this is also a long-standing corporate stance which hasn’t interfered with Bose being one of the most renowned consumer audio manufacturers.

During my first hands-on experience I noticed the QuietComfort 35 offered a bass-centered sound, with bloated low frequencies. I do not know whether it was Bose’s demo tracks or any other setting in their demo units, but that bass bloat just isn’t that much in the review unit I got. Quite the contrary, in fact: bass, while not neutral anyway, often feels like it lacks impact and depth. These definitely aren’t a basshead’s headphones.

I will indulge in a bit of digression. Over the years I have noticed that bass-intensive headphones tend to be better for commuting, as the low frequencies coming from outside tend to tame the headphones’ bass. I found out this is also true for noise-cancelling headphones. The added emphasis on lows give the QuietComfort 35 the edge over better balanced headphones, as bass is better heard in noisy environments.

Soundstage seems a bit compressed when using Bluetooth, even though it’s decently wide for closed-back headphones; it really opens up if you connect the cable and disable ANC. Instrument separation also improves and sound becomes more natural. Detail retrieval seems to be better using the cable, too. When using Bluetooth instrument separation is decent, but it’s difficult to accurately separate sounds in more dense tracks. Stereo imaging is good, as you can easily pinpoint instruments in a good few tracks.

Sound is a bit dark and is generally not very detailed, even when the headphones are driven by cable. The “Bose sound” is heavy on bass, therefore this is to be expected. The result is a musical sound, which will please both electronics lovers and classical addicts (if they’re not too picky) and everything in between – a nice feat in itself. One thing I noticed, though, is that tracks often appear dull and lack depth below a certain volume threshold.

I’d describe bass as powerful, in the sense that it packs a punch and is more than a neutral-sounding headphone would offer. It’s not very deep, although it’s well controlled and it has a nice texture. It is rounded and it takes a central role on the stage. In Koyaanisqatsi, Philip Glass’ masterpiece, both the organ and Albert de Ruiter’s baritonal voice appear full and upfront. Pray for Rain by Massive Attack highlights the fast decay of bass, which makes in turn the rhythmic side better and more enjoyable.

Midrange is decently detailed and natural. I listened to Cesare Cremonini’s Maggese album and his voice is warm, with a nice presentation in front of the listener. Marmellata #25 (“jam number 25”) showcases the headphones’ ability to render the small nuances in the voice and the small details of the singer’s peculiar way of pronouncing words. In Vàli’s Dypt Inne I Skogen bass is actually more than one would expect from an acoustic guitar, leaving the midrange slightly behind. It is nonetheless an enjoyable listening experience.

What surprised me is the treble. It’s not overly detailed nor too much extended, but it’s very musical and quite natural. It’s crisp and airy enough, so it contrasts the bass a bit and opens sound. I prefer brighter sounding headphones, as I explained in the RHA T20i review or in the Xiaomi Piston Pro review, but I did not find myself wishing for more treble listening to Bose’s QuietComfort 35. It actually is a bit piercing and at times sharp, so what I wished for was a bit more resolution. It is otherwise fast and varying enough to come out as enjoyable most of the time.

A comparison with the Sony MDR-1000X and the Plantronics BackBeat Pro 2 will be published in a few days.

Final Thoughts

What you’re looking at is a very nice pair of headphones. Some have dubbed them “the best wireless headphones ever made”, but I beg to differ. The Bose QuietComfort 35 are really, really good, but only if you pit them against ANC headphones – and even then, they are not that good sounding if you compare them with other ~$350 wireless ANC headphones. Wired headphones around the same price (i.e. Meze 99 Classics) crush them on sound quality.

Given the commodity of noise cancelling and wireless, though, this is a price I’d be happy to pay – there’s nothing like hearing silence around you when you want to relax and listen to music. They are incredible in the way they isolate your from your surroundings, thanks to a winning combination of both effective noise isolation and active noise cancellation. The only comparable headphones I ever listened to in this regard were the Parrot Zik 2.0, which were even better – but also costed way more back then.

The BoseQuietComfort 35 are a solid product most will like – they seem to get just the right blend of all the elements to make them work very nice. Bravo.

Review The Best Bose QuietComfort 35 II noise cancelling headphones

As we mentioned a few weeks ago, Bose has updated its QuietComfort 35 headphones. Now they’re the QuietComfort 35 II noise cancelling headphones. As with the model they replace (which we reviewed here), they are Bluetooth models, but with some significant upgrades. I’ve had the new model clamped over my head for many, many hours over the past week. What did I find?

Description

What I found startled me. I will get to what it was that startled me soon, but first some facts and figures.
Well, actually, there aren’t too many. Bose is one of those companies that doesn’t like to talk about specifications. Power output? Like Rolls Royce, it’s sufficient. Speaker drivers? Heh, it’s Bose, so the details don’t matter. Check out the website and you’ll find their size – which is kind of the same as most headphones – their weight, which is 310 grams – and the lengths of the audio and USB cables supplied with them. Frequency response? Sufficient, I guess.
More importantly, codec? Since nothing is mentioned, we’ll have to assume the basic SBC codec and not aptX or aptX HD or AAC. Bose is not listed on the aptX website amongst the brands using its technology.

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So, for really serious listening, you’ll be wanting to plug in. But, to be fair, the limitations on quality due to the SBC codec are usually not too dire.
It was a little quick in dismissing the dimensions. How big a set of headphones are when planted on your head generally doesn’t matter much. But these headphones fold up nicely to go into their semi-hard carry case. Because the earcups swivel before you fold them up, the case ends up only 50mm thick and so fits into brief cases and such reasonably well. Better than most headphones.


They are over-ear models with closed backs, so you get some isolation from external noise. The active noise reduction works in the usual way: environmental sound is captured, adjusted, inverted and fed back into the signal to cancel the original noise. Bose says that there are microphones both outside and inside the earcups.
On the right ear cup is a physical power switch. It slides on and off, and pushed a step further it engages pairing mode. Behind the right ear cup is the volume up and down rocker with an indented play/pause control in the middle. I found it easy to start using this reliably.
That play/pause also works for fast forward and rewind, track skipping and so on by the usual double and triple presses and holds. It also works to answer calls, hang up and so on.
On the left earcup is a single button. Using the Bose Connect app (iOS or Android) it can be assigned to controlling the level of noise cancellation, or invoking Google Assistant (not Siri).
The headphones work without power, but of course require a wired connection in that case.
Bose says that the battery is good for twenty hours of operation, and that a fifteen minute top up of power via the Micro-B USB socket will deliver another 2.5 hours of performance.

Setting up

One way to start listening is to just plug it in. The audio cable is 1.2 metres in length (the specifications helpfully inform us). At the headphone end is a 2.5mm plug. At the other is a standard three-conductor 3.5mm plug. The cable is quite thin and is clearly not designed for hands free operation, nor for any kind of volume control.
Incidentally, unlike past Bose practice, there is no two pin airplane adaptor included.

Caption:You can name them something convenient (left), and the Bose Connect app also gives instructions


But normally you’ll connect with Bluetooth. You can pair the usual manual way. You can pair via NFC – tapping an NFC capable phone on the front of the right ear cup and then confirming it on the phone. That worked with both a Samsung Galaxy S7 and a Huawei Mate 9. But you’ll probably want to pair using the “Bose Connect” app which allows you to make settings, handles firmware updates and can change the function of the left cup switch between Google Assistant and Noise Cancellation control.
All these ways worked quite well. I did manage to get the headphones confused at one point – although arguably it was me who was confused, since I wasn’t certain quite which devices I had at some point paired – and I could no longer get NFC to work. But there’s a simple method to purge all connections (you’ll need to download the proper manual from the Bose website) and all was fine thereafter.
Up to eight sources can be paired with the headphones at any one time; up to two can be “connected” at the same time; only one (of course) can actually be playing through the headphones at a time. You can manage the connections individually through the app rather than having to purge them all.

Listening

I first listened to Bose noise cancelling headphones fifteen years ago. They were the very first consumer model produced by Bose: the QuietComfort QC-1 headphones. Since then I’ve used the QuietComfort 2 models (2003), and the QuietComfort 3 (3007), along with models from a number of other brands, big and small.
And I’ve decided that the Bose QuietComfort 35 II noise cancelling headphones are by far the best I’ve ever used. They are amongst the best for sound quality, and enormously better with noise cancellation. Amazingly so.
Last week I was agitated. I knew the headphones were coming for review. And I was flying on Wednesday and Thursday, so it would have been the ideal test. Sadly, they didn’t arrive in time. So I did the next best real world test. I mowed the lawn.
The noise cancellation delivered by these headphones was wide ranging in frequency and very, very deep. While mowing I could listen to music at a very low level, and hear it all with complete clarity. The sound of the lawnmower disappeared to the gentlest of hums.
It’s hard to convey how extremely well they quietened everything.
Sharp impulses? I can barely hear my own typing, even though I’m pounding away in my customary unrestrained manner on a mechanical keyboard. Even rapping the metal handle of a heavy fork on the glass top of my desk barely breaks through unless I get quite violent.
All that was with the noise reduction at the higher level. At the low level the noise was increased to a gentle background level, with music and voice from the material I was listening to still easily audible over the noise.

Cation:Of course, headphones have firmware updates these days. This one’s is delivered by the app


No plane, but I could fake it. I’ve got a video recording I took in a plane in my accustomed rear seat. I played it on my desktop computer and wound up the volume to 95dB average (C-weighted). I have a very good sound system on my desktop, with solid bass down to 30 hertz so the result was pretty realistic. The results were the same as with the lawnmower. The all-encompassing noise faded to a hearable but eminently ignorable level. With a creepy side-effect. I could hear other things from my flight. I could now hear the food trolley. Something being dropped. And the soft tinkle of voices. Not clearly enough to make out what was being said, but they were clearly voices. All that was completely inaudible without noise reduction.
There was a very slight sense of ear pressure with the noise cancellation on high. That’s a feeling I often experience with noise reducing headphones. If feels like the pressure on your eardrums is slightly higher than the pressure inside. It is mild and disappears the moment you start listening to music, and is completely unnoticeable when there’s significant external noise.
At the highest level the noise reduction also generated a little bit of barely audible hiss. Again, noise on the outside or music on the inside effectively eliminated this.
The headphones give plentiful, sometimes excessive, voice feedback. When you change the level of noise cancellation a female voice tells you the level. If you press a button that causes a connection, or slide the power switch briefly over the Bluetooth position, the voice tells you the name of the connected device. The pronunciation of “Huawei” was hilarious. It also keeps you informed of battery level, which was particularly welcome.
The sound quality was good to very good. Some Bose headphones have been a bit too full in the bass in the past. These were nicely balanced. Listening critically with a cable connection to the highest quality music, they didn’t have quite the sense of openness and “being there” as my preferred $700 wired headphones deliver. But falling short of them is no shame.

In fact, they sounded fine: musical, certainly adequately detailed, and voice was very clear. Treble was extended, the depth of bass was impressively vast. But, you know, even though Bose points out that without power you’re not getting the benefit of the EQ, I thought there was noticeably higher transparency and openness to the sound when played via a wired connection with the headphones switched off.
With their own Bluetooth connection there was plenty of gain available from the headphones so there was never any problem with insufficient volume levels.

Wires

If the battery runs down – or even if it doesn’t – you can still use the headphones via the wired connection. If you’re doing that some of the functionality goes away, even when there’s power in the headphones. If you have the headphone switched off, then of course there’s no noise cancellation (nor any of the standard EQ). If you have them on, and there is power, then the noise cancellation is locked onto the maximum position. It can’t be turned to the lower level.
Nor indeed does the volume control work when wired, even though the internal amplifiers must be running in order to run the noise cancellation.
I guess Bose is effectively saying that you’re only going wired if you’ve run out of power, or you’re on a plane and will thus need full noise cancellation.
I have no quibbles with the battery life claims. One negative aspect of the design is that the noise cancellation circuitry won’t work while the headphones are being charged. When on a very long flight, you might want to take the opportunity to plug them in for a top up whenever you’re taking a rest room break.
The Google Assistant function worked very nicely. But in the end I like to be able to readily control the noise cancellation level so I returned the control button to that function.
Finally, I fluked an experience of the dual connection capability. I was listening to something being delivered by my iPod Nano when my Samsung phone rang. The headphones paused the Nano, and I was able to take the call using the headphones as though the phone was the primary connection. When it finished, I pressed the play/pause button and the Nano content resumed from where it had left off.
That’s good design.

Conclusion

The Bose QuietComfort II headphones are very effective Bluetooth headphones with the best ever noise cancellation. The best ever. I love them.