Audio-Technica ATH-M50xBT Wireless Bluetooth On-Ear Headphones, Black

First, and most importantly, these headphones handle their core functions very well...they sound great, have a reliable wireless connection, and great battery life. Plus, the ability to use them as wired headphones is a very handy addition. The rest of the tech could be better though. There is an app for the headset, but it's very simple. You use it for firmware updates and other than that, all it does is provide a battery percentage display and documentation. There are no EQ or sound settings, no customization of controls, etc. When you first use the app it will want to update the headphones which they say can take up to 90 minutes on an iPhone! The update didn't take that long but it was close and when it's done they expect you to do some hand gymnastics by holding down the 3 physical buttons along with the touchpad button while you simultaneously press the restart button on your the device app! Who thinks of this process? Then once it's done, the app tells you that you now need to plug the headset into a computer. I didn't have a PC nearby. hand, so I just plugged it into a wall adapter and that seemed enough to reset it and get it working again, but the update procedure is far from elegant. They're closed-back headphones but they still leak quite a bit of sound. They don't have any kind of active noise cancellation, but seal out a good amount of outside noise, especially at higher volumes. The volume level gets quite loud for most music, but some quieter tracks sometimes made me want a little more volume. When using a wired connection with decent gear, you can get a bit more out of these headphones, but it takes expect it. Charging is via an included micro USB cable (no adapter included) and is quite slow...7 hours for a full charge. There is no quick charge functionality. It is also quite strange to change the headset from one device to another. There is no pairing procedure that you can simply initiate by pressing a button etc. The headset will automatically connect to known devices when you turn them on, so you should disconnect all connected devices and wait for the headset to time out after about 30 seconds or so...at this point it will go into pairing mode and you can connecting it to a new device. This is quite a cumbersome and unintuitive process. Also the earbuds don't like the cold. I used them for about 20 minutes when it was -5 degrees and they stopped working. The sound would come back occasionally after that, but it was very intermittent and constantly cutting out, it is therefore essentially unusable. To be fair, I know a lot of wireless/battery-powered headphones have issues with the cold. My biggest issue is the controls. There are 3 physical buttons and then they mixed up a touchpad for your device's assistant. The touchpad on the side is finicky and can be difficult to activate consistently. It has a nice little sweet spot with no clear visual or tactile indicator. When it works, the assistant often has trouble understanding you too... I don't know if it's because of poor mic quality or something else thing. It's a bit strange that they combined physical buttons with a touch button... it creates an inconsistent experience. Worse still and potentially a deal breaker for me is that the rewind function just doesn't work to play previous tracks. You have to hold the volume buttons down for an extended period of time to activate the skip. Besides being slow, it works well to skip forward or backward to the beginning of the currently playing song. To skip back further, the problem is that it takes so long to reactivate the skip command that it keeps to restart the current song which has already started playing again. It is not possible to go back to previous songs unlike other headphones which allow you to press a single or two buttons more quickly to skip. Physically the headset is fine. Everything is plastic but seems durable. The clamping pressure is above average and the ear pads are thinner than average. The headband is quite firm on top of the head. aren't the most comfortable headphones I've tried, but they didn't really cause any discomfort either. Obviously that's something that varies from person to person. the headband for more compact storage. Pros: - Good sound with decent but controlled bass - Reliable wireless connection - Great battery life - Can be used wired or wireless Cons: - Poorly thought out controls that don't let you skip to previous tracks - Touchpad temperamental - Poor microphone and speech quality - Could have better comfort - Slow charging time - Lack of functionality - Horrible update process - Very clunky procedure to switch between devices - Doesn't work in cold weather. Overall, I wouldn't recommend this headset at its full price...there are better choices in this range that are much more feature rich. At its $100 price tag that it often sells out for, but it's a decent buy if all you're looking for is a quality pair of headphones with no bells and whistles. Just be aware of potential control issues /comfort.