Write a commentFor most people shopping for audio gear, sound quality is obviously paramount. Or mostly paramount. Usually paramount? In your calculations for a potential pair of new headphones or earphones, how much weight do you give features? Are there certain must-have features, or is sound quality the only consideration?
For me, and I’d guess most of you, the answer is “it varies.” Sure, sound quality is vital, but in some situations, features might be nearly, or even just as, important. For instance, many generations of the Bose QuietComfort headphones and earphones had pretty average sound quality but offered superlative noise canceling. I wouldn’t fly without a pair. I also wouldn’t listen to them after landing, but would instead switch to some better-sounding pair.
These days I fly with a pair of Sony XM4s, which combine great sound and great NC. To me, that was more than enough to buy the Sonys, but like most mainstream true wireless earbuds, they have a bunch of other features. I rarely, if ever, use many of these. Some earbuds have endless features that I can’t imagine anyone actually cares about.
It reminds me of when I sold audio gear at Circuit City. Almost every A/V receiver we sold had 100 watts per channel (allegedly), a handful of inputs, and usually decoding for Dolby Digital and DTS. To differentiate themselves, they’d inevitably have an endless array of “sound modes” that typically added interminable reverb to poor, unsuspecting music tracks. I always thought these sounded terrible and couldn’t imagine why anyone would use them. Years later, working for Home Theater magazine, I learned from the pros that, yeah, they are terrible, and no one uses them. And yet, they persist. For manufacturers, they’re a vital line item for marketing.
Maybe I’m missing something. Maybe some people like these features. Or, as I’m starting to suspect, a distinct group of people likes each feature individually, and collectively that adds up to some important percentage of total users. With that in mind, here are a few of the features I’m talking about, with as little snark as I can manage.
- Find My: A neighbor once accused me of stealing one of his AirPods because he had dropped it outside (in the middle of the night), and it had pinged some Apple device in my house that was connected to my Wi-Fi. So his app said it was in my house. I can see some situations where this might be useful, but if the battery is dead or they’re just flat-out stolen, it’s not of any use.
- LED sanitization: Admittedly, this isn’t super common, but it was a feature of the LG Tone Free T90Qs I reviewed in September 2022. I can’t imagine this actually does anything, and unless you’re sharing your earbuds with a bunch of sketchy people, it’s just your own ear gunk. And if they’re that dirty, I don’t know, clean them?
- Leather: The Edifier Stax Spirit S5s I recently reviewed had swaths of leather, I guess to give them a more “luxe” appeal. Personally, I think leather is a waste of a perfectly good cow, but even beyond that, is real leather actually a draw for anyone?
- Voice assistant: This is practically a given these days, but I just don’t care. Do people really use voice assistants enough to justify this as a feature? I’m totally open to the possibility I’m in the minority on this one.
- Oxygen-free, diamond-encrusted adamantium cables: It’s a cable, man. Just be a cable. Copper is fine.
- Auto-adjusting ANC: I guess there could be some uses for this feature, but I always disable it. I either want noise canceling, or I don’t. There’s no “eh, half would be nice.” I suppose if some people are annoyed by “ear suck,” then having it reduce by itself when not totally needed could be a relief.
- Safe-listening counters: Don’t get me wrong, I like the idea of these, basically helping you keep tabs on the intensity and duration of music while you’re listening. It’s depressingly easy to damage your ears, and nearly all headphones/earphones can do that. However, these features only work in very select situations (e.g., all Apple products), and even then, not well. Is that “better than nothing”? I’d argue no. My concern is they’d give a false sense of security about your listening levels.
On the other hand, I love useful features like decent noise canceling, charging-case retransmission, fast charging, water resistance, a good app with EQ, a large variety of tips and “wings,” multipoint, mono mode, sidetone, and a few others. Do I like these enough to offset mediocre sound? Not when there are so many great options available. How about you?
. . . Geoffrey Morrison
