These appeared at my doorstep today.
After spending some time with them, I’m happy to add them to my growing collection, but can’t say I’m overly impressed.
Build wise, I think they’re fantastic. I like the soft coating on the matte earcups and the overall muted/understated aesthetics, which I think is perfect for travel use.
Comfort wise, not the best. Although the interior pad diameter is sufficient for an average ear, the heavily padded and weirdly shaped tilted driver housing touched my ears and created some hotspots after an extended use. I wish the pads were slightly thicker or a bit firmer. Of course YMMV.
As expected, and although sound out of the box was respectable, it was nothing to write home about. I think they’re more or less in line with other popular ANC options. However, after playing around with the limited in-app EQ, I was able to get them to sound closer to my liking, and much more natural sounding. I’m glad it doesn’t have the fake treble shimmer that I get with the QC35s. Bass on the other hand was bit sloppy, perhaps in an attempt to keep up with the quantity. I think the overall sound is respectable, considering its wireless ANC roots.
When ANC is on, there is a very pronounced low-level hum that is more present than on the QC35s. And when ANC was off, I thought the overall sound was considerably worse vice ANC on. The adaptive sound control was a bit frustrating/annoying too. When automatic switching (based on activity) is on, there is a loud beep whenever the status changes. And the ambient sound when turned-up was lackluster and didn’t sound natural at all. I also noticed a slight channel imbalance, perhaps due to the proximity sensor inside the left earcup. The motion control is bit glitchy as well. When I put my hand over the right ear cup for the quick attention mode, it would sometimes activate the voice to chat function instead, which was frustrating.
Overall, can’t say it’s a big step up from the Bose QC 35 or other competing ANCs for that matter. On the surface, they seem feature packed. Unfortunately, a lot of the advertised features on this HP feel more like a gimmick than useful functions.
And as always, YMMV.