I impulsively purchased the Beoplay Portal (Xbox Edition) when the price dropped to $178 on Amazon.
it's still less than a week since I started using it, but I think I can give a super short (actually short) summary of how it compares.
Beoplay Portal (Xbox Edition) Summary
Update: added Bluetooth performance.
Update 2: after more back to back listening vs the Sonys I changed my opinion from "equal" to "right behind" the Sonys. added more context to make what I am describing about the sound clearer.
just wanted to quickly say, I don't have an Xbox and I bought the Portals to use them just as bluetooth ANC headphones. I will be testing and judging them based on this use.
Sound: wow I would actually say these sound Hi-Fi. out of the box with B&O's default tuning (optimal is the name of the default EQ) it sounds slightly V-shaped and a bit “cold”. female vocals sounded a bit on the thin side and the male vocals also didn’t have that natural depth to them. bass extends deep and treble is tastefully present without leaving the vocal range behind (vocals are more forward than they are on the Korg's). after a few days of working out how the circular EQ worked, I ended up in the "warm" but slightly "energetic" area where I found vocals and instruments to sound natural while still preserving the impressive bass and treble clarity they had out of the box. Portal's also have some noticeable sound-stage like the Korg's do.
in terms of overall sound comparisons though, I say the Portals are just behind the Sonys (even though they are quite different). the CH720N just have a different sound, I would say they sound "cleaner" and more upfront. having more precise control over the EQ helps the Sonys as well (better than B&O's circle EQ).
but the Portal's definitely win in the bass extension department, they dig deep down to 20hz and there is a noticeable sub-bass shelf so you can't miss it. the Portal's perform similarly to the Korg's in bass extension (but the Korg's bass region in more neutral/natural with more present mid-to-upper bass). if anything the Portals seem to exaggerate below 30hz which gives them that Hi-Fi sound but it means upper bass is definitely subdued. while the CH720N seems roll off from about 35hz and at around 20hz it's not as present.
one drawback of the Portal's sound however, is the lack of maximum volume. I noticed this straight away when using them. while I use the Sonys at 50% to 60% volume for normal listening, on the Portal's I was at 80% most of the time. it's loud enough for me, but some users may max them out and need more volume than what it provides at 100%.
the reason I describe the sound of the Portals as Hi-Fi is because it’s tuning reaches many aspects without appearing to have any big shortfalls in a single area. bass energy/extension is great, vocals are not completely recessed, treble has clarity and to top it all of it has some sound-stage. comparing it to the top of my ranking for music the CH720N the Portals do not have the last word in detail, but the CH720N's lack emotion and spaciousness even though technically being better performers IMO (except for sub-bass but that's less important for music). the Portals have more overall depth and emotion which give the sound more character, especially together with the sub-bass extension it truly is a Hi-Fi sound IMO. but I suspect this type of sound really does require the user to focus to appreciate it.
edit: to put it simply: CH720N have a more clinically superior sound that gives you everything (I think I prefer this more clarity over better sound-stage), while the Portals are more enveloping in their sound and give you a powerful experience, the way I perceive the Portals is more spacious and as if everything is breathing (although I wouldn’t exactly call it natural). if anything critical to say about the Portal’s sound, it sounds almost like there is a very minor reverb going on with the entire sound (like I said “breathing” but not sounding 100% natural - is B&O doing this deliberately with DSP? I don't know).
Beoplay has better bass extension, while Sonys have more impactful 40hz~50hz mid-bass (bass heads might prefer the Sonys due to the physicality of the bass).
overall the Beoplays are right behind the Sony's in terms of sound for music, because even though the overall sound might be slightly lacking in absolute clarity compared to the Sony's, the Beoplays have deeper bass extension and a neutral vocal range (both male and female) with custom EQ applied. the Sony's tend to come across as a bit too warm with certain content which cannot be fixed with EQ but can you can get used to it over time. the only flaw I can pick out with the Beoplays sound is the upper-bass region cannot be increased without losing upper mid-range/treble detail using the circle EQ. but they have a habit of pushing upper-bass notes into the sub-bass region (because it's shelved) so with most content I listen to the issue is not as apparent and often your conclusion is the Beoplays bass sounds "Hi-Fi".
for movies the Beoplay's sub-bass strength is welcome, but honestly because of movies typically having more dynamic range their base line volume level is quieter, I was pushing the volume level on the Beoplay to 90% just to be able to hear the dialogue clearly (tested on the recent film "Babylon"). if you need your headphones to be loud enough for movies, the Beoplay Portal's may not be able to achieve it for some users. (my assumption around the Portal's lack of volume level is they must have hit limitations with the amp and just cut everything above the sub-bass in the DSP to create that shelf and keep control of sub-bass distortion levels)
ANC: the ANC on the Portals is disappointing and I think on a similar level to budget sub-$100 ANC headphones like the Soundcore Q30's etc. when you first turn on the ANC in a quiet room, the Portal cancelled the bass frequencies and you can instantly notice it's working just like most budget ANC headphones. on actually cancelling noise the performance was weak and could not even come close to the Sony.
first I tested it on a running gas heater, CH720N cancels 99% of the noise all that is left is a very very quiet white noise which can barely be heard even when nothing is playing. I then switched to the Portals and turned ANC on, I could still clearly hear the gas heater it sounded like a gas heater the only thing the Portal's did was remove the lower frequencies of the noise.
same story with the noise of rainfall on the roof when indoors. Sonys managed to cancel 98% of the noise of the rain, while on the Portals there was quite a moderately loud white noise (it did a better job than the gas heater, but still way behind the Sonys).
the ANC on the Portal's is it's weakest feature. yes it does something, but mostly just the cancellation of bass frequencies. the ANC on the $63 EFM Austin Studio's manage the same level of ANC for 1/3 the price.
this experience also makes me confident in my assumptions about how the CH720N's ANC works better than many initially perceive, it cancels mid-to-high frequencies very well but Sony neutered the low-frequency cancellation by not having the CH720N’s ANC system perform as well as their flagships when it came to cancelling bass frequencies. because of the weak bass frequency cancellation of the CH720N's ANC, many users can initially perceive this as "weak ANC".
Battery-Life: the Portals advertise 24 hours of battery-life with bluetooth audio connection and ANC on. I have run the Portals down to 50% and can say this is about accurate. although I have been using the Portals with ANC off for most of this initial testing I don't think it has had any positive impact on total battery-life, which was a bit disappointing I expected to get a bit of extra hours of use (maybe 30~35 hours total?) with ANC off. I guess those who plan to use them with ANC on all the time can be happy that they aren't missing out on much in terms of total bluetooth battery-life.
I have been using them at 70%~80% volume as I describe above in "sound:" and the Portals are still lasting roughly 12 to 13 hours of use until hitting 50%. so working as claimed.
Build Quality: top notch. again Sony's are top notch in a different way. everything about the Portal's design speaks premium. can't really describe it I guess it has to be more "felt" but the materials and design as well as how the parts fit together is very premium as one would expect from B&O paying for a higher price.
Comfort: clamping force was a little strong out of the box, I don't know if it's because they are marketed as "gaming headphones" maybe that's normal for gaming gear. but the earpad's are nice and supple (very soft as you push them with your fingers) so it's not uncomfortable. the headband on the inside has this "bamboo mesh" material, it's basically like a larger thread mesh feels no different to nylon type mesh etc. no issues with comfort but one thing I don't like about it is it will probably be hard to clean once it gets dirty, much harder than just doing a quick wipe of something that's pleather.
earpads are sufficiently deep and they are round in shape making them feel even more specious than your common oval shape earpads.
the earpads have an odd shape to them, if you look at them the 6pm to 8:30pm area is slightly "bulging". I guess it's supposed to conform to the shape of the back of your head where it meets your jaw and give a better seal. I don't know about a better seal (doesn’t seem to isolate better than other headphones), but because the earpads press harder on your jaw, I noticed with the headphones powered off I could hear my blood pumping through a vein in my jaw (like a quiet gentle pulsating bass frequency). it's only in the left earcup and it is a weird sensation. you can't hear it when you are listening to something, but it had me thinking the headphones were faulty or something. if you turn ANC on the noise completely goes away. I tested by turning the headphones completely off and putting them on and the noise was still there, so it's definitely a physical noise I concluded it as blood pumping in a vein that was amplified by the physical materials and in the earcup.
here is an image from the user manual showing the bulge.
Bluetooth: this has multiple (two) Bluetooth pairing like the EFM’s do. after you pair the 2nd device, every time you switch on the Portals they will connect to the nearest paired device that is on/being used.
I find it very handy switching between TV streamer/iPad since I use those in separate rooms.
Bluetooth range is also great, up there is the Sonys.
Weird quirks and bugs: ok here is where things get a bit weird and disappointing for the price I paid. firstly even after 2 years since release, the B&O app is a buggy mess.
firstly after creating an account (required to use the app) and setting up the headphones which went fine. the app gives you a popup to "confirm ownership of headphones by tapping the earcup twice". it literally asked me to do this every single time I opened the app. for some reason the process doesn't work properly.
next while I was switching between EQ's and making custom EQ's. if I tapped through the EQ's and entered customization too quickly, the app would crash. it would just disappear and show the home screen of the device.
another more minor odd experience was going to "rename" my headphones, it would say "error" every single time and you couldn't change it.
anyway the last one isn't a big deal, but still if I paid $600 retail for these headphones I would sorely be disappointed in this user experience. even at $178 I am disappointed, I expected better from B&O.
also the touch sliders on each side work, but are a bit finicky and just a quirk. making small adjustments (to ANC level and volume) is difficult, I blasted my ears once already just by tapping the top side of the volume slider. they are also hard to locate because if you "feel around" for them you might trigger them. they might sound cool but in real world use the user experience is pretty poor.
Other notes: power on is just a single "quick press". I like this (most headphones are "long press" for power on) and apparently it was added with a firmware update according to firmware notes. it's a small thing but I appreciate the ease of powering on the Portals.
worth mentioning again, max volume on the Portals is quite limited and on average I need to be at about 25% higher volume level than all my other headphones.
charging was a bit slow, B&O claims it takes "2 hours to charge" but it took about 3 hours. battery must have been completely discharged. 3 hours to charge and you only get 24 hours use.
I already mentioned I am using these with bluetooth only, but worth mentioning that the extended sub-bass performance is with bluetooth connection only. apparently when connected to Xbox they have a separate tuning and are very light on bass and top-end extension (and even EQ is not able to fix it).
13/08/23: after multiple uses and comparisons, I have to state that if ANC is your ultimate goal I cannot recommend the Beoplay Portal's. while performing much worse at cancelling noise compared to the Sony CH720N, the Portal's have lots of cabin-pressure from using the ANC. the Sony's do not have any cabin-pressure at all even when cancelling more noise and using them for an entire movie.
Added 30/07/2023:
I thought I should also mention this since I remember reading online comments pointing out similarities between the Portal’s and the Beoplay HX’s (one saying the only difference was the arms attaching to the cups).
Do I think the Portals are just cut price HX’s?? No not quite.
I think it’s a good idea to think of them more as a pair of repurposed Beoplay H4’s.
Around the time of purchasing the Portals when their price dropped to $178, the H4’s were also around $203. So not only are they at a similar entry level Beoplay price but I think the internal components are likely comparable.
The differences are, the Portals have 25 hours battery-life with Bluetooth and ANC on, while the H4’s have only 19 hours battery and no ANC feature. The exposed cables coming off the headband of the H4 might also be a problem for some users.
To my knowledge in the past the Beoplay range was H4, H7, H9. The HX (H10) is the next version of the H9i so the way I see it, the HX is 2 levels up from the H4 and the Portals.
it's still less than a week since I started using it, but I think I can give a super short (actually short) summary of how it compares.
Beoplay Portal (Xbox Edition) Summary
Update: added Bluetooth performance.
Update 2: after more back to back listening vs the Sonys I changed my opinion from "equal" to "right behind" the Sonys. added more context to make what I am describing about the sound clearer.
just wanted to quickly say, I don't have an Xbox and I bought the Portals to use them just as bluetooth ANC headphones. I will be testing and judging them based on this use.
Sound: wow I would actually say these sound Hi-Fi. out of the box with B&O's default tuning (optimal is the name of the default EQ) it sounds slightly V-shaped and a bit “cold”. female vocals sounded a bit on the thin side and the male vocals also didn’t have that natural depth to them. bass extends deep and treble is tastefully present without leaving the vocal range behind (vocals are more forward than they are on the Korg's). after a few days of working out how the circular EQ worked, I ended up in the "warm" but slightly "energetic" area where I found vocals and instruments to sound natural while still preserving the impressive bass and treble clarity they had out of the box. Portal's also have some noticeable sound-stage like the Korg's do.
in terms of overall sound comparisons though, I say the Portals are just behind the Sonys (even though they are quite different). the CH720N just have a different sound, I would say they sound "cleaner" and more upfront. having more precise control over the EQ helps the Sonys as well (better than B&O's circle EQ).
but the Portal's definitely win in the bass extension department, they dig deep down to 20hz and there is a noticeable sub-bass shelf so you can't miss it. the Portal's perform similarly to the Korg's in bass extension (but the Korg's bass region in more neutral/natural with more present mid-to-upper bass). if anything the Portals seem to exaggerate below 30hz which gives them that Hi-Fi sound but it means upper bass is definitely subdued. while the CH720N seems roll off from about 35hz and at around 20hz it's not as present.
one drawback of the Portal's sound however, is the lack of maximum volume. I noticed this straight away when using them. while I use the Sonys at 50% to 60% volume for normal listening, on the Portal's I was at 80% most of the time. it's loud enough for me, but some users may max them out and need more volume than what it provides at 100%.
the reason I describe the sound of the Portals as Hi-Fi is because it’s tuning reaches many aspects without appearing to have any big shortfalls in a single area. bass energy/extension is great, vocals are not completely recessed, treble has clarity and to top it all of it has some sound-stage. comparing it to the top of my ranking for music the CH720N the Portals do not have the last word in detail, but the CH720N's lack emotion and spaciousness even though technically being better performers IMO (except for sub-bass but that's less important for music). the Portals have more overall depth and emotion which give the sound more character, especially together with the sub-bass extension it truly is a Hi-Fi sound IMO. but I suspect this type of sound really does require the user to focus to appreciate it.
edit: to put it simply: CH720N have a more clinically superior sound that gives you everything (I think I prefer this more clarity over better sound-stage), while the Portals are more enveloping in their sound and give you a powerful experience, the way I perceive the Portals is more spacious and as if everything is breathing (although I wouldn’t exactly call it natural). if anything critical to say about the Portal’s sound, it sounds almost like there is a very minor reverb going on with the entire sound (like I said “breathing” but not sounding 100% natural - is B&O doing this deliberately with DSP? I don't know).
Beoplay has better bass extension, while Sonys have more impactful 40hz~50hz mid-bass (bass heads might prefer the Sonys due to the physicality of the bass).
overall the Beoplays are right behind the Sony's in terms of sound for music, because even though the overall sound might be slightly lacking in absolute clarity compared to the Sony's, the Beoplays have deeper bass extension and a neutral vocal range (both male and female) with custom EQ applied. the Sony's tend to come across as a bit too warm with certain content which cannot be fixed with EQ but can you can get used to it over time. the only flaw I can pick out with the Beoplays sound is the upper-bass region cannot be increased without losing upper mid-range/treble detail using the circle EQ. but they have a habit of pushing upper-bass notes into the sub-bass region (because it's shelved) so with most content I listen to the issue is not as apparent and often your conclusion is the Beoplays bass sounds "Hi-Fi".
for movies the Beoplay's sub-bass strength is welcome, but honestly because of movies typically having more dynamic range their base line volume level is quieter, I was pushing the volume level on the Beoplay to 90% just to be able to hear the dialogue clearly (tested on the recent film "Babylon"). if you need your headphones to be loud enough for movies, the Beoplay Portal's may not be able to achieve it for some users. (my assumption around the Portal's lack of volume level is they must have hit limitations with the amp and just cut everything above the sub-bass in the DSP to create that shelf and keep control of sub-bass distortion levels)
ANC: the ANC on the Portals is disappointing and I think on a similar level to budget sub-$100 ANC headphones like the Soundcore Q30's etc. when you first turn on the ANC in a quiet room, the Portal cancelled the bass frequencies and you can instantly notice it's working just like most budget ANC headphones. on actually cancelling noise the performance was weak and could not even come close to the Sony.
first I tested it on a running gas heater, CH720N cancels 99% of the noise all that is left is a very very quiet white noise which can barely be heard even when nothing is playing. I then switched to the Portals and turned ANC on, I could still clearly hear the gas heater it sounded like a gas heater the only thing the Portal's did was remove the lower frequencies of the noise.
same story with the noise of rainfall on the roof when indoors. Sonys managed to cancel 98% of the noise of the rain, while on the Portals there was quite a moderately loud white noise (it did a better job than the gas heater, but still way behind the Sonys).
the ANC on the Portal's is it's weakest feature. yes it does something, but mostly just the cancellation of bass frequencies. the ANC on the $63 EFM Austin Studio's manage the same level of ANC for 1/3 the price.
this experience also makes me confident in my assumptions about how the CH720N's ANC works better than many initially perceive, it cancels mid-to-high frequencies very well but Sony neutered the low-frequency cancellation by not having the CH720N’s ANC system perform as well as their flagships when it came to cancelling bass frequencies. because of the weak bass frequency cancellation of the CH720N's ANC, many users can initially perceive this as "weak ANC".
Battery-Life: the Portals advertise 24 hours of battery-life with bluetooth audio connection and ANC on. I have run the Portals down to 50% and can say this is about accurate. although I have been using the Portals with ANC off for most of this initial testing I don't think it has had any positive impact on total battery-life, which was a bit disappointing I expected to get a bit of extra hours of use (maybe 30~35 hours total?) with ANC off. I guess those who plan to use them with ANC on all the time can be happy that they aren't missing out on much in terms of total bluetooth battery-life.
I have been using them at 70%~80% volume as I describe above in "sound:" and the Portals are still lasting roughly 12 to 13 hours of use until hitting 50%. so working as claimed.
Build Quality: top notch. again Sony's are top notch in a different way. everything about the Portal's design speaks premium. can't really describe it I guess it has to be more "felt" but the materials and design as well as how the parts fit together is very premium as one would expect from B&O paying for a higher price.
Comfort: clamping force was a little strong out of the box, I don't know if it's because they are marketed as "gaming headphones" maybe that's normal for gaming gear. but the earpad's are nice and supple (very soft as you push them with your fingers) so it's not uncomfortable. the headband on the inside has this "bamboo mesh" material, it's basically like a larger thread mesh feels no different to nylon type mesh etc. no issues with comfort but one thing I don't like about it is it will probably be hard to clean once it gets dirty, much harder than just doing a quick wipe of something that's pleather.
earpads are sufficiently deep and they are round in shape making them feel even more specious than your common oval shape earpads.
the earpads have an odd shape to them, if you look at them the 6pm to 8:30pm area is slightly "bulging". I guess it's supposed to conform to the shape of the back of your head where it meets your jaw and give a better seal. I don't know about a better seal (doesn’t seem to isolate better than other headphones), but because the earpads press harder on your jaw, I noticed with the headphones powered off I could hear my blood pumping through a vein in my jaw (like a quiet gentle pulsating bass frequency). it's only in the left earcup and it is a weird sensation. you can't hear it when you are listening to something, but it had me thinking the headphones were faulty or something. if you turn ANC on the noise completely goes away. I tested by turning the headphones completely off and putting them on and the noise was still there, so it's definitely a physical noise I concluded it as blood pumping in a vein that was amplified by the physical materials and in the earcup.
here is an image from the user manual showing the bulge.
Bluetooth: this has multiple (two) Bluetooth pairing like the EFM’s do. after you pair the 2nd device, every time you switch on the Portals they will connect to the nearest paired device that is on/being used.
I find it very handy switching between TV streamer/iPad since I use those in separate rooms.
Bluetooth range is also great, up there is the Sonys.
Weird quirks and bugs: ok here is where things get a bit weird and disappointing for the price I paid. firstly even after 2 years since release, the B&O app is a buggy mess.
firstly after creating an account (required to use the app) and setting up the headphones which went fine. the app gives you a popup to "confirm ownership of headphones by tapping the earcup twice". it literally asked me to do this every single time I opened the app. for some reason the process doesn't work properly.
next while I was switching between EQ's and making custom EQ's. if I tapped through the EQ's and entered customization too quickly, the app would crash. it would just disappear and show the home screen of the device.
another more minor odd experience was going to "rename" my headphones, it would say "error" every single time and you couldn't change it.
anyway the last one isn't a big deal, but still if I paid $600 retail for these headphones I would sorely be disappointed in this user experience. even at $178 I am disappointed, I expected better from B&O.
also the touch sliders on each side work, but are a bit finicky and just a quirk. making small adjustments (to ANC level and volume) is difficult, I blasted my ears once already just by tapping the top side of the volume slider. they are also hard to locate because if you "feel around" for them you might trigger them. they might sound cool but in real world use the user experience is pretty poor.
Other notes: power on is just a single "quick press". I like this (most headphones are "long press" for power on) and apparently it was added with a firmware update according to firmware notes. it's a small thing but I appreciate the ease of powering on the Portals.
worth mentioning again, max volume on the Portals is quite limited and on average I need to be at about 25% higher volume level than all my other headphones.
charging was a bit slow, B&O claims it takes "2 hours to charge" but it took about 3 hours. battery must have been completely discharged. 3 hours to charge and you only get 24 hours use.
I already mentioned I am using these with bluetooth only, but worth mentioning that the extended sub-bass performance is with bluetooth connection only. apparently when connected to Xbox they have a separate tuning and are very light on bass and top-end extension (and even EQ is not able to fix it).
13/08/23: after multiple uses and comparisons, I have to state that if ANC is your ultimate goal I cannot recommend the Beoplay Portal's. while performing much worse at cancelling noise compared to the Sony CH720N, the Portal's have lots of cabin-pressure from using the ANC. the Sony's do not have any cabin-pressure at all even when cancelling more noise and using them for an entire movie.
Added 30/07/2023:
I thought I should also mention this since I remember reading online comments pointing out similarities between the Portal’s and the Beoplay HX’s (one saying the only difference was the arms attaching to the cups).
Do I think the Portals are just cut price HX’s?? No not quite.
I think it’s a good idea to think of them more as a pair of repurposed Beoplay H4’s.
Around the time of purchasing the Portals when their price dropped to $178, the H4’s were also around $203. So not only are they at a similar entry level Beoplay price but I think the internal components are likely comparable.
The differences are, the Portals have 25 hours battery-life with Bluetooth and ANC on, while the H4’s have only 19 hours battery and no ANC feature. The exposed cables coming off the headband of the H4 might also be a problem for some users.
To my knowledge in the past the Beoplay range was H4, H7, H9. The HX (H10) is the next version of the H9i so the way I see it, the HX is 2 levels up from the H4 and the Portals.
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