Bang & Olufsen are well known for their beautiful craftsmanship and unique design language. With the B&O Earset, they bring about the retro design with a premium feel that shines through in the design and, more importantly, the sound.
Let’s break down the B&O Earset and see what its about. But before we head into this, if you want a truly wireless pair of headphones, check out our review of the Beoplay E8
Watch my unboxing and initial impressions video:
Design
It’s my personal opinion that the Earset is the best looking thing that B&O has made recently. With the Form 2i, holding the second place (though for some reason, the product pages for the Form 2i are “missing” from the B&O websites, strange).
The Earset’s have a beautiful aluminium look, with a lovely soft rubber being the other main material. They use some other materials, but honestly these are the two you will see the most and boy are they good. I was honestly drooling so much that someone actually had to come and wipe my mouth!
The earpieces are connected via one cable with a remote/mic unit in the middle. A standard design for this kind of earphones.
You can get the B&O Earset in two colours; White and Graphite Brown. A simple lineup, but honestly you don’t need more. The ones we got our hands on were obviously the white ones. While the brown ones look great in pictures, the white ones are the ones I would choose.
The materials feel amazing in the hand and it’s all just beautiful crafted… ok ok I’m gonna begrudgingly move on…
The earpieces themselves do not actually seal your ear, so it’s not the true “in-ear” design that has become the norm. But that’s where the whole 90s vibe comes in. The huge chunky sides and the loop that goes around your ears screams 90’s child!
The loops also have quite a few adjustment options, but the earpieces themselves are a fixed size, and though you get “pads” in the box they might not work well for all ears, so best you try them before you snap them up.
The earpieces have two sound canals at the bottom that help produce some great sound.
Features
Starting with the loops around earpieces, there are many degrees of freedom on these. You can adjust the height, the curve and the angle. All very good for the various ear and head shapes.
The movements are also very very smooth… like VERY SMOOTH! You have to honestly try it to believe it, i still can’t get enough of it. *wipes drool from keyboard* yeah I’m still drooling over them.
The Earset is charged using USB-C, which is really quite cool because there are not that many headphone choices in the market that actually use USB-C. True to B&O’s legacy of always being on the edge of technology, they apply that here as well.
You get a 3 button remote with the B&O Earsets. The buttons are volume up, volume down and the middle button that does many actions (play/pause/power/skip/previous/voice-assistant). The remote also doubles as the microphone. The remote is also very well designed, and minimal such that it doesn’t have any indication what the buttons actually do. While the buttons are nice and clicky, I found them a bit small for my liking.
For the equalizer buffs, you can use the Beoplay app where you can change the audio profile of the Earset to something you prefer. You can do this using the ToneTouch feature. This is really up to your taste and liking, but it is definitely worth mucking about with because its very good.
The Beoplay app is a very basic app and what bugs me is that on iOS the app is over 100mb… meh a small matter in my opinion.
Sound
The most important part of any audio device is… how it sound.
Well like the design, the audio profile on the Beoplay Earset is mind blowing. There are a few tracks I listen to in order to truly test out earphones, speakers etc. While these may not be truly scientific, they are songs I know in and out and it helps me judge the sound better.
Thanks to the Earsets, I was able to actually enjoy the rock songs at a whole new depth. With a band that has a bass guitar, lead and rhythm all on electric, all playing concurrently, sometimes you miss all the nuances of the music.
With the B&O Earset I was able to enjoy the depth of every instrument individually and if I choose to focus on the bass, it’s so clear that I can mentally isolate out the rest of the instruments and just enjoy that bass line. For a music fan listening to music on the Earset is almost like a religious experience. Some songs I honestly felt like I heard some parts of music that I never heard before.
I do think that the B&O Earset have a superior sound quality, especially when it comes to rock, classic and jazz. As I mentioned, you can really hear the clarity in the bass on the earphones, but for many of the hip-hop and rap fans, this is not the same bass you hear in that genre.
The Earset does miss out on the extreme lows that a good hip-hop, electro, house sound requires. While it doesn’t completely kick the bucket, it doesn’t have the extreme punch that you would want to get from those songs.
I personally think this is because the earsets don’t actually seal your ears. If they did, you would get the effect from the pressure that builds up from the “vacuum” like feeling from the in-ear style of headphones. But this doesn’t apply here so it wont give you the full experience you are after.
I think it’s a good time to point out that ambient noise does leaks in. For some this is a problem, for others it may not be. In the 90’s the in-ear trend had not yet picked up, and most headphones wouldn’t block out the outside sound and wouldn’t sit completely nestled inside your ears. Keeping with that the Earset also follows that design. This has an advantage and disadvantage.
You get the ability to listen to your music without being completely isolated. Personally I preferred that for the longest time, except when I wanted to… you know… be isolated. Nowadays I take my cheap JBL T110’s and sometimes not even put music on, I just put them on to drown out the noise.
The earset can’t do this and so you can expect to hear the noise around you in a crowded and busy place. 90’s kids will argue that it’s the real way to listen to music, I think it’s about personal choice. At work I didn’t mind them at all, but on the metro… ah well, I didn’t mind them then either… everyone was busy feeling jealous of my delicious B&O headphones!
I say pick your battles and take an informed decision, I guess that’s the whole point of a review isn’t it. Ok I’m digressing…
The Mic on the Earset are pretty good, they do the job of ensuring you have a clean and clear conversation with the person on the other end (this is not a product placement… hit me up in the comments if you got the reference).
Tried the mic on Skype, normal cellular calls and even did a simple audio recording, the sound was good. Seal of approval from the person on the other end I was having a conversation with.
Fit and Comfort
The Earset can be a bit of a mix bag in terms of comfort. For the most part they fit me perfectly, they were snug to my ears and eventually I forget they were even there. I was pausing the music and having conversations with friends, colleagues and my family. As I mentioned already, these are not the true in-ear experience, so they may not work for everyone. The only issue was that sometimes my ears did hurt, so I had to adjust the Earset and then it was good for another few hours. I don’t think they are meant for long listening sessions.
The Earset also are not the best friends of glasses. Yes I have glasses and I don’t really need to wear them all the time. When I did wear them, I put the Earset on first, and then the glasses. This meant the glasses were over the loop, a bit strange but it wasn’t uncomfortable.
Surprisingly, even after using the Earset for a few days now, I struggle to put them on. I know I will eventually get the hang of it, but it’s not the most elegant process at the moment.
Battery and Connectivity
The Beoplay Earset are rated to last for about 5 hours which sounds a bit disappointing. I went through my entire (Ramadan timings) work days without having to charge them once. I think the 5 hours is a conservative estimate since the Earset go into low power mode in about 15 minutes of no music, pleasantly surprised. The Earset also takes 2 hours for a full charge or give you about 1 hour of playtime in 20 minutes.
As far as connectivity goes, this will depend on the type of device you are trying to connect to. Hold the middle button till it starts blinking blue and then they should connect quickly. I didn’t have any hiccup swith the connectivity. The B&O Earset are Bluetooth 4.2 and so work perfectly well with most bluetooth devices.
One thing to point out, on the iPhone you can see the battery percentage in the battery widget, which I thought was really cool.
At work I was using the Earset with my Macbook and they worked like a charm. Normally I was hooking them up to my iPhone and that worked brilliantly as well.
Price
The Earset is priced at 1,199 AED (yikes!)
Availability: Bang & Olufsen stores, Virgin Megastore, Harvey Nichols, Jumbo Electronics, Dubai Duty Free, iStyle and selected Etisalat premium lounges from end of May 2018.
Verdict
If the Earset fits… get them!
I can only tell the loud music junkies, isolation introverts and hip-hop fans to stay away. Everyone else, get these because you will not be disappointed at all. Do try before you buy, because the fit may not suit everyone.
I loved the sound, the build & design and overall experience. The price is something that might put you off, but remember they are B&O, give great sound and are wireless. So I think the price is justified… and I don’t say that often.
