The QuietComfort 15s mark Bose’s latest crack at acoustic noise-cancelling, promising great performance from the sounds you want and an absence of the sounds you don’t. We’ve put them through their paces, so you can find out just how good they are in our Bose QuietComfort 15 review.
With rivals Creative and Sennheiser offering several cheaper alternatives, Bose’s QC2 and QC3 noise-cancelling headphones haven’t had things all their own way. Now the QC2s have been replaced by the QC15s.
They’re comfortable to wear, with the soft ear cushions fitting even larger ears with room to spare. The earpieces swivel in both directions, and the headband is flexible but firm in holding the earpieces in place. The audio cable is detachable, so you can use the QC15s to block out noise from the outside world even if you haven’t got anything to replace it with.
The science of acoustic noise-cancelling is simple: ambient noise is sampled through microphones inside and outside each earcup, and is then neutralised by the production of opposition waveforms that cancel out sound before it reaches the ears. Bose claims the QC15s work across a wider range of frequencies than before, and the ear cushions establish a better acoustic seal.
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We had to press the QC15s into service at short notice when a seaside hotel’s enthusiastic live entertainer started to invade our sanity while we were trying to get some sleep. The results were astounding, with the resident crooner completely neutralised.
Use them to pipe your own choice of music to your ears, and the QC15s demonstrate all of Bose’s audio heritage. Tiny vents in the earcups help extend the spatial separation afforded by the around-the-ear design, and the result is a sound rich in clarity and detail. Just occasionally we picked up a slightly processed feel, as if the noise-cancelling and music-playing processes were getting in each other’s way, but otherwise we had no complaints with the sound quality.
The biggest disappointment is that the acoustic noise-cancelling is an integral part of how the headphones work, so without it switched on the QC15s produce no sound at all. This is a nuisance if the AAA battery runs out, but the battery life of 35 hours means you shouldn’t be caught out too often.
The QC15s are expensive, but worth the money if you have it to spend. They do two things well: make the most of the sounds you want to hear, and filter out those you don’t want to hear. And that’s enough for us.
