Very happy they will be reviewed.

It would be great to compare the Active Noise Cancelling to previous Bose and Sony (and the Ultra when they arrive in lab). The ANC is meant to be improved but as your testing showed with Sony that isn’t always the case

I’m interested to see a comparison of sound quality with the QC 35 series (not just the 45s), since it seems like the 35s are widely considered to have better sound.

I’m interested in call quality and I would like to see comparisons with the QC45, NC 700, and QuietComfort Ultra.

Would it be possible to add benchmark to see how good headphones are at filtering background noise/music from speech?

Can you post review? You have usually posted reviews after 5 days. Now it is a gamble, sometimes you post after a week, but recently we have to wait 2 weeks or more. By that time other places posted reviews already.

Can you add a quick summary listing the changes over the 45 and 35 II?

Come on Bose, years later for another QC45? You can do better than this…

I hope price drop down soon. Better microphone and a bit better battery definitely isn’t enough for this price.

Oct 10, 2023 03:12 AM By Tathagata

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Would it be possible to add benchmark to see how good headphones are at filtering background noise/music from speech?

Hi Tathagata,

Thanks for the sharing what you would like to see. I’m assuming that you are talking about the microphone capabilities. If it’s the case, we cover how well the microphone handle background noise in the noise handling section of our review. If you would like to see things added to this section don’t hesitate to reach out again!

Oct 18, 2023 12:50 PM By  Alexandre Meunier

Hi Tathagata, Thanks for the sharing what you would like to see. I’m assuming that you are talking about the microphone capabilities. If it’s the case, we cover how well the microphone handle background noise in the noise handling section of our review. If you would like to see things added to this section don’t hesitate to reach out again!

Hi Alexandre! Yes thats it, I’ve overlooked this section, thank you very much!

What about the Weighted Phase Mismatch? Is there a balance problem with those headphones? I’ve seen on one other review that there is a flaw and that there is a channel imbalance in the design of the headphones, with two different units having the same graph reading.

Nov 17, 2023 07:11 PM By Steph_Champ

1

What about the Weighted Phase Mismatch? Is there a balance problem with those headphones? I’ve seen on one other review that there is a flaw and that there is a channel imbalance in the design of the headphones, with two different units having the same graph reading.

Hi Steph_Champ,

We’ll be taking a look into the Weighted Phase Mismatch results to see if we can find a conclusive answer to their less than optimal performance in that section.

Thanks, Matt

Does ANC work while the headphones are wired in directly to a device? Also, do they go into passive mode if wired? Just wondering if wired gives the same sound, or if there are issues with bypassing the Internal DAC / amp and ANC.

Nov 23, 2023 01:27 PM By grandalchemist

1

Does ANC work while the headphones are wired in directly to a device? Also, do they go into passive mode if wired? Just wondering if wired gives the same sound, or if there are issues with bypassing the Internal DAC / amp and ANC.

Hi grandalchemist

The Bose QuietComfort Headphones will work with ANC/Aware on wired mode. The Frequency Response will change when the headphones are connected passively, but when they are “On,” it does not change. You can read more about this in the Sound Profile box. Here is a quick Link to the FR comparing the two Link

Cheers, Dagobiet

Just out of curiosity did you guys have wind isolation turned off and made sure any other setting for anc was set to high when you tested them? I find it hard to believe my XM4s outdo these

Jan 27, 2024 08:26 PM By fortnite101

1

Just out of curiosity did you guys have wind isolation turned off and made sure any other setting for anc was set to high when you tested them? I find it hard to believe my XM4s outdo these

Hi fortnite101,

Thanks for your question.

The Bose QC Headphones were tested with Wind Isolation disabled in the Quiet ANC mode. We found Quiet to be equivalent to the maximum ANC level on the slider in a custom preset. Enabling Wind Isolation disables the ANC level slider, as it adapts the ANC level on the fly depending on level of noise/wind around you. We test for Isolation with any Wind Noise Reduction feature off as part of our standard methodology.

A significant reason for the difference in score is the Sony XM4s exceptional performance in Bass Frequency attenuation, which accounts for a higher percentage of the overall Isolation score. The XM4s are some of our best scoring headphones ever in terms of Noise Isolation.

Thanks, Matt

After buying the headphones after taking a look at this review, I have to say, my experience for the Microphone’s Noise Handling does not match the review’s. The noise handling was significantly worse in my experience. Furthermore, I even tried these headphones for a call in a busy cafe and compared them to my dad’s Bose QuietComfort Ultra, and the Ultra’s were actually better at isolating my voice for a call, yet the Ultra’s have a Noise Handling rating of 6.5 for the Speech + Subway Noise Handling field, while this has 8.5.

This is further shown in videos like this which show that the noise handling for the Ultras is better in dynamic noise environments like a cafe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9qkbqk1Kak

I’d advise the Rtings Team to take a second look at this, since as it currently stands, marking this as the #1 headphones for taking calls is a bit misleading. Personally, I think the Logitech G Pro X 2 seems much better for mic noise isolation, aside from not having ANC.

EDIT: Alienware also released a new gaming headset recently called the Alienware Pro Wireless Headset. That seems to have great noise isolation for the mic AND ANC as well! That is also a very promising candidate for the best wireless headset for calls.

Nov 16, 2024 04:20 PM By jesuisahmedn

3

After buying the headphones after taking a look at this review, I have to say, my experience for the Microphone’s Noise Handling does not match the review’s. The noise handling was significantly worse in my experience. Furthermore, I even tried these headphones for a call in a busy cafe and compared them to my dad’s Bose QuietComfort Ultra, and the Ultra’s were actually better at isolating my voice for a call, yet the Ultra’s have a Noise Handling rating of 6.5 for the Speech + Subway Noise Handling field, while this has 8.5. This is further shown in videos like this which show that the noise handling for the Ultras is better in dynamic noise environments like a cafe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9qkbqk1Kak I’d advise the Rtings Team to take a second look at this, since as it currently stands, marking this as the #1 headphones for taking calls is a bit misleading. Personally, I think the Logitech G Pro X 2 seems much better for mic noise isolation, aside from not having ANC. EDIT: Alienware also released a new gaming headset recently called the Alienware Pro Wireless Headset. That seems to have great noise isolation for the mic AND ANC as well! That is also a very promising candidate for the best wireless headset for calls.

Hi jesuisahmedn,

Thanks for your input! We’re going to take a look at the QC Headphones again, and retest the microphone recording quality and noise handling. If we have new measurements and recordings to add we’ll update the review with new information and adjust the score accordingly.

Thanks, Matt

Hi @RTINGS.com,

This is quite a dramatic shift in Noise Handling performance—from 8.5 down to 5.0? That’s effectively a drop from “Champion” to “unusable” in noisy environments. What happened?

I actually bought these headphones thinking, Yes! Finally, a headset with great ANC and excellent phone call quality combined. I would like to better understand what changed between the two testing methodologies that led to such a significant scoring difference.

Thank you in advance for your feedback.

PS: I can confirm that I did not experience the same amazing results in real life as you reported in your first test. However, the headphones were still very capable of handling noise. I was able to take calls in very challenging conditions. Although the person on the other end could hear some background noise, they consistently reported that my voice was clear and loud, with background noise effectively muted.

Dec 09, 2024 10:33 AM By winterstalevf

2

Hi @RTINGS.com, This is quite a dramatic shift in Noise Handling performance—from 8.5 down to 5.0? That’s effectively a drop from “Champion” to “unusable” in noisy environments. What happened? I actually bought these headphones thinking, Yes! Finally, a headset with great ANC and excellent phone call quality combined. I would like to better understand what changed between the two testing methodologies that led to such a significant scoring difference. Thank you in advance for your feedback. PS: I can confirm that I did not experience the same amazing results in real life as you reported in your first test. However, the headphones were still very capable of handling noise. I was able to take calls in very challenging conditions. Although the person on the other end could hear some background noise, they consistently reported that my voice was clear and loud, with background noise effectively muted.

Hi winterstalevf and thanks for this great question. It’s certainly a pretty stark change in the results for noise handling. We haven’t changed our methodology for testing noise handling since we first tested these, nor has there been a firmware update (from what we can tell). Unfortunately, it seems that we made a mistake when testing these initially, that was likely due to to incorrect alignment on our testing head or incorrectly calibrating the speaker we use to simulate background noise. The result is now much more in line with the QC45’s noise handling, which makes sense given they’re by and large similar headphones.

Your experience with the QuietComfort’s seems in line with the noise handling audio samples we provide though. While the scores can be helpful for a quick assessment, we encourage users to listen to the samples themselves to get a better idea of noise handling performance. We apologize for any confusion this change in results might have caused, but hope you’re still enjoying the headphones!

Thanks Rtings for helping me choose headphones - thanks to You I hit the jackpot . At first I didn’t listen and chose what I thought were better headphones but it turned out I was wrong… To this day I don’t know how Bose did it but the sound and noise reduction are excellent of course generally speaking..Best all rounder I ever had :)

May 24, 2025 06:33 PM By Candidate

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Thanks Rtings for helping me choose headphones - thanks to You I hit the jackpot . At first I didn’t listen and chose what I thought were better headphones but it turned out I was wrong… To this day I don’t know how Bose did it but the sound and noise reduction are excellent of course generally speaking..Best all rounder I ever had :)

We’re glad to hear that! (no pun intended). It’s always nice to hear our reviews helped someone out, we’re glad your happy with your headphones!