Bose Headphone 700: The future of active noise cancelling headphones?

After much clamoring from techies online, Bose finally announced the successor to their popular QC35 Series II noise cancelling headphones. And they did much more than just upgrade a few features and slap a “III” on the end.

So much new

Bose’s new flagship over-ear noise cancelling headphones debut a futuristic design and come with a new name as well. Dubbed the Headphones 700, they are much more streamlined and slim looking than the QC35s. In fact, the smooth lines are more reminiscent of Sony’s WH-1000XM3 headphones. Given that many sites have called the 1000XM3s the most comfortable headphones you can buy, it makes sense that Bose would draw a lot of inspiration from their competition.

However, the Bose Headphones 700 are much more than a new design. The headphones feature a deep integration with voice assistants. Bose is so confident in this that they claim “you’ll be able to remain seamlessly connected to your phone without looking at it or even touching it.” This is very exciting up till now voice assistant integration in headphones (with the exception of the Siri exclusive Airpods 2) has left a lot to be desired. Of the three assistants, Amazon’s Alexa and Google Assistant are both built in, though Alexa is the only one at the moment that gets full wake word ability.

Other notable specs included USB type C charging, a 20hr “full featured” battery life and an eight microphone system that picks up and isolates your voice while cancelling out the noise around you. The amount of cancellation is controllable with 11 different preset levels to select from on the fly. Bose has also ditched the button style controls of the QC35 II, instead opting to go primarily with touch-based controls on the right earcup. Given the mixed success other headphone makers have had perfecting this feature, it’ll be interesting to see the feedback once these are released.

The other new feature which we still need a lot more information on is Bose AR. Bose calls it a “first-of-its-kind audio augmented reality platform” and claims it allows users to “experience fundamentally new ways to travel, exercise, learn, play, and more by augmenting your world with content for your ears instead of your eyes”. This sounds really awesome, but because this feature will depend largely on other companies utilizing the Bose AR SDK within their apps it seems more like a tech demo than an actually useful feature.

Price & Availability

Like smartphone makers, Bose is betting people want premium features and are willing to pay the price for them. The new Headphone 700 will cost $399, $50 more than the QC35 Series II. They’ll come in essentially the same color options — Triple Black and Luxe Silver — and will start shipping June 30th. Preorders are open now.

Are these the headphones of the future?

With Bose announcing these headphones alongside two new wireless earbuds that aren’t due out until at least the end of this year, it certainly seems like they want to position the Headphones 700 as the next evolution of headphones. And judging from the specs and features, they aren’t far off from doing just so. Though 20hrs of battery life is actually less than the Sony 1000X M3s offer, the voice assistant integration and augmented reality platform sets the Headphone 700 well ahead of all other current ANC headphones. Add in an even better version of Bose’s legendary noise cancellation and these could very well be the headphones of tomorrow (and possibly a few years after that).