New Microsoft Surface Headphones 2 - Matte Black

New Microsoft Surface Headphones 2 - Matte Black

• Make sure this fits by entering your model number.
• Spectacular Omnisonic sound wraps you in your favorite music, shows, and more.
• Power through your day with up to 18.5 hours of music listening time [2] or up to 15 hours of voice calling on Microsoft Teams [4]. And, listen to almost an hour of music with just a 5-minute charge
• Soft, over-ear pads are breathable, lightweight and comfortable.
• Intuitive touch controls let you skip tracks, answer/end calls, and get hands-free assistance.
• Full charge now lasts up to 20 hours [2]. Listen to almost an hour of music with a 5-minute charge.

Buy Now : New Microsoft Surface Headphones 2 - Matte Black

Brand : Microsoft
Category : Electronics,Headphones, Earbuds & Accessories,Headphones & Earbuds,Over-Ear Headphones
Rating : 4.2
ListPrice : US $249.99
Price : US $232.99
Review Count : 1244
SalesRank : 0

New Microsoft Surface Headphones 2 - Matte Black

• I was interested in getting a pair of bluetooth headphones, mainly for when I\'m travelling but also for everyday use around the house. I\'ve never had a pair of active noise-canceling ones before and that\'s not a feature I would say was very important to me going into this, but I figured if I\'m shelling out I might as well try out the tech.I looked at a good number of contenders, and eventually narrowed it down to these versus the Sony XM3s or XM4s. People seem to generally think the Sonys sound better and have superior battery life, but the dealbreaker for me was the widespread reports of the XM3s wonking out in cold weather conditions (I live in Alaska). It\'s possible they\'ve fixed that on the XM4s, but I didn\'t really want to chance it. Also, the touch controls on the Sonys seemed a little troublesome to me.Anyway, I caught these Surface Headphones for a little cheaper on Prime Day, and decided to give them a shot.The quick shot on this for those just looking for a verdict is that I\'ve had a mostly pleasant experience with them from day one.The headphones came almost fully charged, which is always a nice, if minor touch. They also come with their own carrying case, which has an internal mesh pocket for also carrying some cables. And speaking of cables, the headphones come with a USB-C cable and a 3.5mm cable with a mic built-in. This is important because even though these headphones have a mic for hands-free, the mic is disabled during wired usage.These are, in my opinion, comfortable headphones. The cushioning is not as large and thick as on my Status Audio CB-1s, but I don\'t feel any fatigue wearing them. The headphones have a nice but significant heft to them, and look unassuming and reasonably elegant. They DO NOT fold up completely for portability, but the inclusion of a carrying case helps me overlook this.The controls are simple. For buttons, you have a power button and a dedicated mic mute button, which I appreciate. Then you have control dials. You can rotate the outer ring of each of the cans to control volume and noise-canceling. This is also simple, which I like. And then finally, the flat area on each side of the headphones is a basic touch surface for play/pause, forward/back, and the voice assistant (like Cortana or maybe Siri). This is where I have run into issues. You tap once to play/pause, twice and thrice for forward and back, respectively, and hold for the voice assistant. The single tap and hold gestures work fine, but the double and especially triple tap gestures have been pretty unreliable for me, such that I\'ve stopped using them entirely. What often happens is it ends up recognizing a triple tap as some mixture of a single and double tap instead.The headphones also talk to you. When you turn them on, the first thing you get is a notification on how much battery is remaining. It also tells you when it connects to a device, using a text-to-speech engine. It also tells you when you hit the minimum or max on noise-canceling levels, which is nice because it serves as a reminder for which direction to turn the dial when you want to lower or increase noise-canceling.Also of note, the headphones automatically pause when you take them off, and resume when you put them back on. This is a nice feature I suppose, but I think it would be nice if you could disable it.Other features… It has an accompanying app, for Windows, Android, and iOS. The app lets you rename the headphones and remotely set noise-cancelling, and on Windows it is also how you set up some additional features for Office that I\'m not very familiar with. Probably the most important thing the apps let you do though is update the firmware and customize the equalizer. It would be great if you could also customize the touch gestures via the apps, like change single-tap to forward or something like that. But you can\'t. Also on Android, the app floats a constant notification while the headphones are connected. That\'s a little annoying and redundant, so I forcibly disabled that notification via the system notification settings. There have been no negative effects from this, from what I can tell.The headphones can be used passively over a 3.5mm cable, with or without battery life. In this scenario, they become just like any other pair of detachable over-ear headphones; you cannot use the active-noise canceling, and the Bluetooth radio shuts off (in fact, you have to reboot the headphones to use them normally after connecting a cable). The volume dial still works, though.These headphones use multipoint, and to good effect. You can connect to multiple devices at the same time, and the headphones switch between them without a hitch. For example, I use these with my laptop and my phone. I can listen to a podcast on my phone, pause there, then open up a video on my laptop and the headphones will automatically switch to outputting from my laptop. It\'s really good.Call quality with the mic seems good. I tested it briefly on a Discord call and everyone gave the thumbs up that they could hear me perfectly clearly, even in comparison to a dedicated boom mic that I usually use.As for noise cancelling… as I said at the beginning of the review, these are my first ANC headphones, so I don\'t really have a point of comparison. But I will say, I\'m impressed by the concept itself. I can see these being killer on an airplane, and when I realized that I then felt a lot of shame for killing my ears turning up the volume with standard earbuds. I look forward to the next time I get to fly with these headphones, whenever that will be. Otherwise, the two big use cases I\'ve had instead are vacuuming and dish cleaning. These will effectively cancel out the noise from both, allowing me to listen to stuff from my phone or computer, and at a reasonable volume too. I\'m super into that. The ambient noise amplification, by contrast, is a bit uneven/unnatural sounding, though. Somehow that doesn\'t surprise me, but if I want ambient noise I kinda just end up removing the headphones a lot of the time.Obviously these are headphones, and headphones are supposed to sound good. Well sadly, this isn\'t really the review you\'ll want to be reading for an in-depth opinion on sound quality. I\'m not an audiophile, and the things I listen to most with these (audiobooks, podcasts) are inherently not that high on bitrate anyway. I think these headphones sound great, and that\'s about the most I can say on the matter.The headphones are rated to last 20hrs on a charge, which is already less than a lot of other competitors, namely the well-known Sony XM4s. But in my experience you\'re more likely to get ~17hrs. It\'s not terrible, but I hope they do better in their next iteration.All in all, these are easy to use, reasonably stylish headphones that tick most boxes for me. They could use some improvements here and there, like in customizing the controls and in battery life, but I enjoy using them and feel good about my purchase.Edit 5/31/2021Knocking a star off of these. They have an issue I\'ve encountered recently where they often disconnect from my devices, unprompted, and go back into pairing mode. I\'m not sure what\'s causing it, but it happens frequently enough to annoy me.Edit 8/21/2021The disconnecting issue seems to have disappeared, but I have another issue. These SURFACE headphones made by MICROSOFT, the WINDOWS company hitch in audio constantly when playing anything from my SURFACE computer, also made by MICROSOFT, the WINDOWS company. They work flawlessly with my phone, but I can\'t get them to play anything reliably from my Surface Book, even though they connect just fine.
• It\'s 2020, the year of USB-C, Bluetooth 5.0, sophisticated touch controls, aptX like codecs, multi-point connectivity, and of course the every improving \"active\" noise cancellation experimentations in high-end headphones.And just when I thought Bose would reign as the absolute supreme with NC700 with its build, touch controls, call quality, noise cancellation (Sony XM4 tad better in this department but sorry - too bass heavy for me), balanced sound stage (audiophiles, settle down, these are $250 consumer grade Bluetooth headsets, not your Planar or Grado, or tube amplifier driven Sennheiser), there came a pleasant surprise from...Microsoft!?The Surface Headphones 2 is an absolute joy to listen to and checks almost all the boxes for me. Priced at a modest $250, I am not going to say that there aren\'t other / better options out there, but this overall \"package\" from Microsoft really hit the spot for me, at least.The case: Absolute perfection. Slim profile, rugged, and looks very business-friendly.The headset: Big ears, rejoice! Perfect fit and roomy. Not too clamp heavy unless your head dimensions are inhuman. The cushion materials are very good but may attract oil / dust so best to keep them in the case when not in use, and it will need a mild wipe down every now and then. The build is solid otherwise.The controls: Absolutely amazing rotary dials and the touch controls are fine. There is a very handy mute button, too. Every once in a while they will not respond to my touch but once you kind of figure out what that touch surface likes (hint: fleshy part of your fingers - not nails), you\'ll be just fine. Another hint: if you want to skip to next (two taps) or previous (three taps), do those taps very quickly for them to register every single time.The sound quality: I do not believe in the concept of headphone burn-in, because let\'s face it, it\'s got almost nothing to do with the headset, but more your ears adjusting to the new headset\'s sound stage. A bad sounding headset is a bad sounding headset now and in a year from now. I believe in initial impression. As soon as I put these on and started my test track, it brought a smile to my face, just like its competition Bose (again, Sony XM4 was too bass heavy for me). An open, crisp, wide sound stage with very sufficient bass, and a little more emphasis on mid-frequencies, but overall very very pleasing. It is a keeper. About initial impressions, I recently I tested an AKG 371 BT and while a name brand, it was somewhat disappointing given its fit, form, and mainly sound quality as soon as the test track started, so back it went.The noise cancellation: The rotary dial is awesome for controlling noise cancellation and volume super quickly. Noise cancellation has max, medium, low, pass-through, and amplified surrounding settings, the last two great for phone calls that will require a bit of side tone (you hearing your own voice) that feels more natural. The noise cancellation is on par with Bose NC700, which is more than enough. Please do not expect either of these headsets (even XM4 for that matter) to fully drown out high pitched sounds. Noise cancellation works on low frequency continuous hum like jet engine noise and a little bit helpful for mid frequencies like reducing the harshness of people chatter. If you have a dog that barks or a baby that cries, that\'s on you, it\'s not the headset :)The call quality: Very good. No complaints unless you are taking calls standing at the top of the mountain with heavy wind or in heavy traffic. Even then, you can be heard but don\'t expect work meetings to go well in those situations. Moderately noisy coffee shop or home settings are perfectly fine for these.The connectivity: It\'s got Bluetooth 5, so its range shouldn\'t be an issue. No latency when watching videos. It also can connect to two devices simultaneously (say a phone and a tablet), and even if you are listening to your tablet, it\'ll stop whatever is playing if you get a phone call. Cool! Even Microsoft Windows 10, with its atrocious Bluetooth management, connects to this seamlessly (it\'d have been shameful if it didn\'t). The app is OK - nothing to write home about. If you have a Windows 10 machine for work and need something that\'s not Jabra or Plantronics, this is highly recommended.TL;DR: This is a very 2020 generation headphone with USB-C and Bluetooth 5.0. Get it if you don\'t want Jabra or Plantronics for your Windows 10 ecosystem. Great call quality but won\'t cancel heavy winds, great sound stage with sufficient emphasis on bass, comfortable fit for big ears but may not be for overly large heads, excellent controls, case and the headset built-to-last, multi-point connectivity is A-OK, the app is alright.Side Note: Only if you have small / mid-size ears (e.g. if the original AirPods fit you very well), and do not care about noise cancellation, you may want to try Surface Buds. They didn\'t stay in my ears at all, so back they went.

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