These sound glorious, if a little anemic in the bass department (the bass is tight and responsive, but light compared to other comparable cans imo). Excellent clarity and detail throughout the upper mids. The major problem is the microphone.
Whenever anyone calls me, they can hear their voice echoed back to them at nearly full volume. It makes taking a phone call on these headphones nearly impossible without annoying the living hell out of anyone who calls. It kind of defeats the purpose of a convenient wireless Bluetooth set of cans to have an unusable microphone that requires me to remove them for a phone call, tbh.
KujoUPDATE: I contacted Audio Technica support to report that my unit was defective, since Massdrop was out of units and (as usual) has ZERO SAFETY STOCK available for replacement of defective devices.
Audio Technica TOOK NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR EVEN LOOKING INTO THE MATTER WHATSOEVER. DO NOT BUY THIS PRODUCT. IT HAS A DEFECTIVE MICROPHONE AND THE COMPANY KNOWS/DOESN'T CARE TO THE EXTENT THAT THEY CLAIM THIS IS HOW IT IS INTENDED TO WORK.
This is the answer I received:
KujoThanks for the buyer beware. I've heard good things about AT's products on the whole but if this is the kind of crap their customer support tries to pull, I won't be buying.
chris.ywI'm sorry, but that's just flat-out false. I have multiple pairs of Bluetooth headphones that function perfectly for calls with minor compression and great audio quality.
KujoI am on apple and made comparisons before, even apple's cheapest in-line mic works better than sennheiser fullsize headset. The issue lies in Apple. Apple locked its proprietary audio api and if any brand doesn't pay extra they can only access a general purpose audio api. This practically caused most headsets out there to under-perform in ios. Meanwhile Apple also tuned software so their own products delivers a high quality call. Apple's airpods (music aside) are equipped with the best performing mics these days, and you can call in a busy street without compromising call quality.
You are just wasting your time and money trying if you are very serious about call quality. I am on the fence of ditching my plantronics voyager. My friend's bose qc35's call quality is definitely (spotty) worse than voyager as he had it as well.
chris.ywAll the above may be true. However, I tried using these on my PC via bluetooth for meetings. Not good. So, I asked my wife to try them on her Android, not good either. The mic is not good.
Kris2014Yeah, I was responding to someone saying something different, which appears to be edited out now.
My point is that these are bad in the mic category and I tried them on all devices, not just an Apple device.
MalsBrownCoatMic wise. It sometimes depends on where the mic located. Just like a collar mic, if you really wear it near your collar and let chin stand in between with mic and mouth (right place is chest), it will sound bad regardless. Apple put mics on the bottom of the handle on airpods 2 (secret in their better performance), and removed it on airpods pro. You can search for comparison and see which sounds better, I would guess it is the 2.
BTW, if you want to see apple's optimization you have to use beats since it is the only officially intregrated device on apple that doesn't carry an Apple logo. Beats BT products on Apple is even giving a different battery gauge indicator than any other 3rd party brands. Put a beats on apple and android and you will see the difference in software.