I know the industrial designer (and all-around amazing guy) who originally came up with the idea of the QuietComfort Open Earbuds. It has been my dream solution for years – to be able to use earbuds on a phone call, FaceTime, or other video conferencing call while being able to hear yourself clearly (self-voice or otherwise known as transparency). The only other solution is to have the calls on speakerphone or in an office with the audio being rendered to the room. This works at home when you’re not going to worry about distracting anyone else. But when you’re in a store listening to tunes and want to be able to hear anyone around you (say a teller), self-voice is very important.
So Joel’s great spark produced a lot of great work buy a lot of talented people. And I was beyond excited for the release. I already owned a pair of AirPod Pro 2 – and their transparency mode is excellent. Their play in the Apple ecosystem is obviously unrivaled. The sound quality they provide is wonderful, and their spatial play is quite satisfying. The audio ramping while in aware mode and you’re talking is delightful.
Bose is so close, but ewe though QC Opens are the most comfortable earbuds you’ll ever wear, they fail in a few specific areas.
- Even after the latest firmware update, you’ll experience an echo between buds – for a second or two at times.
- The audio quality for open-ear is pretty remarkable – but they can’t compete with an occluded experience.
- Because AirPod Pro 2 are occluded, they have more opportunity for DSP. This means they have a lot more control over what audio reaches your ear. QC Opens do not work in mildly loud to noisy environments.
- The vocal pickup microphone(s) on QC Open are borderline horrendous. So I can’t use them during video calls or else I sound like I am attending from the dark side of the moon.
- Multi-device support, new to the QC Opens, often gets hijacked – I’ll switch to my laptop, and immediately afterwards for some unknown reason, they will start playing on my phone again, which hijacks the BT stream from my laptop. I have to turn OFF multi-device support and manually choose between them in the Bose (used to be Bose Music) application. Bose can’t compete with the integration, but I’ve had previous BT devices behave properly.
So it comes down to software implementation, potentially hardware for the voice pickup, and open versus occluded earbud design. If Bose can nail the microphone pickup, the multi-point BT support, and the occasional mis-sync of BT signal – they have a true winner.
The transparency on the AirPod Pro 2 is nearly as good as open ear – so they are immediately usable and enjoyable. For me they are almost as comfortable as the QC Opens. I can forget I am wearing them, but I ALWAYS forget about the QC Opens because they are unmatched in comfort.
Charging on the QC Open is better too – I never have them seat incorrectly in their case. I have had that happen with AirPod Pro 2s. No idea how since the buds are wrapped so tightly by the case.
I hope there will be a QC Open Earbuds 2 that are improved. But then I’ll have to pay full price for them which will hurt. But with the improvements I mentioned, I think they could be the gold standard.