I disagree. The great customer support is just PR and an image they managed to create. When it comes down to costing them money to do the right thing, they don't.
The headphones won't turn off, but Bose refuses to make it right for the users:
I had the same problem as you and was very disappointed. Up until this problem I was very happy with the QC35, which I have used for hundreds of hours.
I followed the below YouTube video a few weeks ago, and the problem has not returned.
The process took about 20-30 minutes and was relativity easy, however some parts are quiet small and it took a few tries to get them into the correct position.
The problem is the switch becomes loose and touches multiple contacts, making the headphones turn back on. Don't bother with all the other troubleshooting advice Bose has told people to do (updates, resets, pair & unpair etc), the problem is a physical problem with the switch.
Bought my partner a pair of these (super expensive) headphones as an Xmas present and her experience is a little similar. Battery life on hers plummeted after about 18 months to the point where if they're fully charged at night, by the morning with no use they're at 20% or less.
Was super unimpressed with Bose support, both in store and online - they offered to wind back the firmware for us, or our other option was buy a new pair.
It's interesting reading about this not-turning-off bug as maybe something like that is happening which is killing the battery overnight.
That sucks :( My QC35 are one of my favorite purchases still, something like 5+ years on. The battery life is simply astounding. I've worn them on entire journeys, from lounge to plane to plane through customs and to my destination and been shocked to find them with 40% battery life reported remaining after 16+ hours of constant use.
It sounds like there's absolutely something faulty with her product, and Bose customer support should really step up and make it right.
Mine are 3.5 years old. I use them daily during all working hours and sometimes weekends.
The only thing that went thus far were the leather cups (twice) that are fortunately easily replaced. OEM are $$$, while after market alternatives I found to be just as good and are only $.
My battery is still strong. Probably around 10-12 hours of use.
Are these "leather cups" you're talking about these "ear cushions" (https://www.bose.com/en_us/products/headphones/headphone_acc...)? If yes, then that's only 30-40$, which does not seem unreasonable for a product you use so intensively? I replaced mine after about 2 years. I remember the sound insulation being a _lot_ better afterwards.
I have the same experience on the battery: my pair is almost 3 years old and I can go about 2 days of work (~12 hours) before I have to charge them.
> The only thing that went thus far were the leather cups (twice) that are fortunately easily replaced. OEM are $$$, while after market alternatives I found to be just as good and are only $.
The analysis in the page discussed in this thread doesn't match what you're saying: knockoff cups are inferior and degrade noise cancellation.
No, that’s not what the analysis said. It said that the one pair of aftermarket cushions were of inferior quality. No findings were made of all aftermarket cushions.
I don't have anything to sell, if you want to roll the dice on aftermarket earcups, knock yourself out :)
But you paid 300-400$ for headphones, to me it's worth paying the OEM premium just to make sure they keep delivering the quality and experience I was looking for initially when I paid the high price. Otherwise, you might as well buy the lowest priced noise canceling headphones: you'll get a commensurate experience but you won't break the bank.
An ear cup is an ear cup, hardly military precision required in manufacturing. I got a pair of aftermarket cushions for my QC35s and I found them to be more comfortable, if there's any difference to noise cancelling I certainly haven't experienced it. Why pay 3 times more for something that does the same job, doesn't matter if I paid $1000 for them.
You're right - there's no reason to pay 3 times more for something that does the right job.
The problem is aftermarket cushions may not do as good of a job at passive noise reduction.
Follow the link and check if you have the right number of clips on your aftermarket cushion. Obviously this isn't the full picture but is certainly a large piece of it.
The question isn’t whether the aftermarket cushions perform at the same level as OEM, it’s whether they have sufficient performance for ‘outoftheabyss’s needs. If they’re good enough, why pay more?
> it's worth paying the OEM premium just to make sure they keep delivering the quality and experience I was looking for initially
And I am the guy who spent 4 times a few hundred on AKG studio headphones but replaced the ear cups with some much, much cheaper but better feeling ones.
> My battery is still strong. Probably around 10-12 hours of use.
Mum bought new last year because pads were worn, I got her old set - uses a single AAA battery and lasts across the globe and back (~30 hours). Unfortunately she didn't like the new rechargable set, and neither do I..
I got a pair from AliExpress. I didn't notice a significant change in noise cancelling performance (active or passive). But I'm not a picky listener anyway. YMMV.
Another user elsewhere in this HN thread says it might be caused by an app keeping the microphone awake — that the hardware on/off switch might be software-controlled, which does somewhat make sense if you want to “shutdown” the headphones firmware and disconnect the headphones before powering down...
If you do this, while simultaneously keeping a practise of wearing out your user's battery with no option to switch it off and no option to change a worn out battery (except to buy a new device) — then calling this a PR move is not far fetched.
Bose might care, but they care magnitudes less when it goes against their environmentally unsustainable business practise.
I managed to get a free replacement and upgrade to QC II for my out-of-warranty headphones just by asking nicely a second time after the first offer of a discount. There’s a lengthy thread on their forums posting the phone number you need to call.
I'm always amused by how often just being nice to people manages to unlock customer service doors. Listening to people in the offices I've worked in talk on the phone has been pretty eye-opening about how terrible, entitled, and just plain mean people can be when things don't go perfectly.
I'm sure there are bad customer service people out there, but I really wonder how often reports of bad customer service are actually just pointing out that the poster was a jerk. See also Yelp reviews.
Being nice even when the company is at fault pays off. I ordered a base model Dell XPS 15 (i3 8gb) which got delayed about 3 weeks. After going back and forth with the support I finally asked nicely if it's possible to get an upgrade as a make up for the time lost. I received a maxed out model (i7, 1tb SSD, 32gb, GPU and 4k screen).
Only if the number for real customer service is publicly available, which I'm guessing it's not if it's considered a magic phone number buried deep in a forum somewhere.
I'm not going to down-vote your post, but I do disagree utterly. The linked article from Bose blew my mind on how far they are willing to go for customer support.
What has your experience been with the multipoint feature of Bose QC35 IIs? I'll make do with above average noise cancellation; doesn't have to be top shelf in that aspect. I mainly want multipoint[1] and Bose I've been told does it absolutely seamlessly more so than the Jabras, Sennheisers etc.
[1]
What is Bluetooth multipoint, and why isn’t it more popular?
I was considering several different pairs including the Bose and picked up these as I couldn't stomach the cost of the more expensive headphones. At 60$ they are great, the noise cancelling is good enough. The battery life is amazing. I can sit down at my desk and use them all day while connected to my laptop and phone. If either device reports a "Call" coming in it gets priority and I hear the ring. 10/10 Experience for the price.
Very positive. IMHO they have the only Bluetooth implementation that doesn't suck. I had no problem with having it paired to multiple devices and switching from one to the other.
Flawless. It's connected to my work laptop and phone at work, and my personal laptop and (same) phone at home. Never gets confused, just "$device_name disconnected" when I leave one place and "$device_name connected" when I get to the other.
It's so jarring to use anyone else's Bluetooth products after using them. It's so smooth.
It's a start, but personally, between my work phone + laptop, and personal phone + laptop, along with misc other devices, means that I find myself in the app switching devices more often than is ideal. It's a bit cumbersome. Better than competing products, way better than trying to manage without, could still use additional improvement to support additional devices.
Incredibly, the Sony WH-1000XM3 (the 3 in XM3 is because this is the 3rd generation of the product) at this point still doesn’t have it. Similar price range, and maybe the closest direct competitor to the QC35/700 series in terms of audio quality and noise cancelling, yet it’s still missing this feature.
Have the same issue with mine and many times the battery would've discharged when I need it the most. Horrible switch design. Someone on their forums posted how you can fix it:
> So I removed the old switch slider and spring, used 96% ethyl alcohol to clean the bottom part of the switch left on the PCB (filled it with alcohol, let soak for a few minutes, then used tiny cotton wool balls and a pair of pointy tweezers to clean the contacts, then dried it off using compressed air).
When it comes down to costing them money to do the right thing, they don't.
The investigation outlined in this would have cost a lot of money.
The headphones won't turn off, but Bose refuses to make it right for the users
There are plenty of countries (outside the US) with powerful enough consumer protection agencies to force Apple to change it's practices (eg, the ACCC in Australia[1][2]). If this really is a widespread manufacturing fault we'd see them forced to act elsewhere.
> If this really is a widespread manufacturing fault we'd see them forced to act elsewhere.
Pretty much every Apple product is far more popular and has a higher public profile than any one Bose product. It's entirely plausible that Bose gets away with not fixing flaws because the products and their flaws simply don't get enough attention.
I've had a great experience with Bose. The only premium product I bought were the QC35s, but they replaced mined even after 2 years (in EU) due to a sound issue.
I'm impressed with this reach out, something Apple are unlikely to do (even though I use their prem products)
I’m sorry you had a bad experience, but mine was fantastic. When I had problems with my pair of Bose headphones they immediately sent new ones, even out of warranty.
I also had a great experience with Bose costumer service a while ago. I had them for more than one year. The audio was cutting off in one of the headphones. I emailed them about the issue and I got a new pair mailed to me right away. No fuss. I didn’t have to mail mine first. They got a customer for life with me.
I bought my first pair of QC 20’s in 2015, and experienced mechanical failures over the years as you might expect. They replaced the first two pairs free. Then they let me buy the next two at cost. Considering I use them about 70 hours a week every week, I think their customer service has been absolutely fantastic. I’m waiting for their in-ear noise-cancelling wireless earpods that are due out this year. I don’t care how much they cost.
Huh. I bought my Sennheiser PXC 450 nearly 15 years ago, and used it daily, as well as on regular transatlantic flights, for about 8 years and I only had to replace batteries and ear cushions and one cable, never the whole thing. That's a crazy rate of device replacement.
My PXC 450 still going strong as well, I think 7 years now. I have replaced the cushions once and will have to do it the second time soon, but will most likely continue using these at least for some years as they just don't seem to break. I have looked into wireless options, but so far I haven't really seen enough benefit to switch. And my worry is that once I switch, I need to get new ones every second year do to headphones just breaking or battery dying. I really don't want to do that, for many obvious reasons. I have also a lot of good higher end headphones that so far I have been able to fix every single obe with manufacturer spare parts when they wore down.
I find that alarming you need to get new headphones so often. I've used my boses while commuting for over a year now with no trouble luckily, but this doesn't sound good.
My office headphones have always been Beyerdynamics. I've owned a pair of dt880s and now dt1770 pros and used them almost daily. The 880 I bought in 2003 and 1770 in 2016. Both work with no trouble and deliver perfect sound. I expect them to last for a few more decades...
The qc20s are earbuds, it's been my experience that they die more often. Partly from being in bags and pockets, and part from the wire-bud connection breaking down. Part of the reason I only buy mmcx models, so you can replace the wire when it wears out
I bought a pair of Etymotic Research ER4p IEMs in 2011, and was not even remotely gentle with them. They worked fantastically until 2017, at which point one of the cables came loose, and while I could have replaced the cable for $50 (Alas, not a user-servicable part), I decided that I wanted a second pair as a backup, and the replacement has user-servicable cables. My father, who is somewhat kinder to his electronics than I am, has been using the same pair of ER4p's since 2008 or so.
I went through 5 pairs in 18 months but it was because I slept with them in, and realized that was the source. Have had one pair die in 3 years when I don't sleep with them in, and I'm pretty careless (they fall on cement sometimes, get banged against the car door, etc).
Beyerdynamics make great headphones, have had my dt770 for 8 years. Their earbuds on the other hand; I have not owned a pair which lasted through the warranty period (3 pairs).
Wow. I bought mine back in 2009ish, they survived till around 2014 after near daily use. I wanted Bluetooth so i upgraded to the qc35 and they’re my current pair. I am super brand loyal now, but i will admit my AirPods are taking a lot of my ear time.
Doesn't sound unrealistic if you consume a lot of audio media when working and in your free time.
168 hours in a week, minus the 70 hours leaves 98 hours free. Lets say you sleep 8 hours a day, 56 hours each week. 98 - 56 leaves 42 hours where they are not sleeping and not wearing the headphones. More than enough for showers!
I think I also listen to music or podcasts for around 9-10 hours a day currently, one way or another (for example, I usually listen to music while showering, way more fun). Most of the time I have background music on, unless I'm outside hiking or social gatherings. Then one of my hobbies are making music... But right now I'm doing 0 hiking and 0 social gatherings, so lots of music.
I listen to music almost all my waking hours as well, but with speakers.
It makes my ears too itchy inside if I wear cupped headphones for more than 3-4 hours straight. My theory is that it build up humidity from my body but it's not ventilated because the headphones' cups are tight.
Anyone else with that problem? How do you avoid itchy ears after wearing headphones for longer times?
> How do you avoid itchy ears after wearing headphones for longer times?
Don't! I also have the same problem if I wear headphones for too long, usually 2-3 hours, so about the same as you (got the Bose QC35), so I usually only use those headphones when I want to make sure I remove bright noises from the environment, like airplanes.
Otherwise, at home (which is 100% of my time because of the lockdown) I use speakers (same for showers, using speakers). Then office environment I usually have my in-ear headphones that have superior bass compared to my headphones and I can wear them for the full day without feeling anything on the top of my head or my ears.
I wish! But I have the pleasure of working in an "open office"... I have to wear headphones (or 3M construction earmuffs/PPE when I don't want music) just so I can hear myself think in the middle of all the chatter.
Yeah, I feel you. Try getting some in-ear headphones or similar, that doesn't wrap around your entire ear. Switching between in-ear and headphones makes the problem go away for me (I also normally spend a lot of time in a office room with 10 other people from different departments, all together, so noisy environment)
I have the QC35 and besides the noise cancelling they are crap. The bluetooth drops off when I'm sometimes only 8m away, the battery life is low, but the most annoying thing for me is the multi devices connectivity. They will connect to both my iphone and mac at the same time, but never in the way I intended to. A lot of times I need to turn off the bluetooth on the iphone, or turn the phones on and off several times, or desperately try to connect/disconnect the phones to the mac, do this a few times a day and see how it feels. There is no option on the phones to switch between devices, or even to stop multi connectivity, the phones know better and will connect to the device which is 'closest'. Good luck when you sit at the desk with the laptop and the phone on it. The only way is to use the Bose supplied app, which is full of dark UX patterns. Every time it asks me to create a Bose account, to connect my other social accounts, etc. And it doesn't even solve anything, do I really need to open my iphone and open the Bose app to turn off a connected device every time I start the headphones?
By comparison my Beats solo are much better, for range battery and connectivity, but they don't have noise cancelling.
Except that I never payed any attention to bluetooth range, it's the opposite experience here.
I have the QC35-II and never had problems, neither with battery life nor with bluetooth. In fact, given that it seems like no device ever gets bluetooth protocol right, it surprised me that the headphones do exactly what I want: connect to two devices at once (laptop and phone). So I can play music on the laptop and when someone calls, the headphones seamlessly switch to the phone, and when I hang up, they switch back to the music from the laptop. Also reconnecting works without anything to complain about. I am also switching back and forth between two locations, meaning two laptops and two phones, and the only thing that is mildly annoying is that when switching the desk, it takes a little longer to reconnect to the other set of devices again. But it does work.
What would be cool is three devices served at once (laptop, land line phone, mobile phone).
I am not using the Bose app at all.
But what is annoying is that they don't charge and work at the same time. Frankly, I was pissed when I found that out. WTF, there are integrated USB charger/voltage regulator circuits readily available that do that for you. Probably it's due to heat dissipation problems as always so they might have artifically disabled this to avoid at all cost headphones bursting into flames on people's heads.
The QC35 was the first product that made me realize Bluetooth had turned a corner. The way my calls could transition from QC to my car when I start it, back to the headphones, seamlessly, we a revelation. As was the time I walked to the bathroom without my phone, and my music kept playing, 30-40ft through tile walls.
I'm very, very happy with the BT performance of my AirPods as well.
I bought some Outdoor Chips 2.0 snow sports earpieces for my ski helmet a few years back, and they took me back to the bad old days of bluetooth; static and cutting out when you dare turn your head the wrong way or put your phone in the wrong pocket. They went back to REI, and were replaced by Sena Snowtalk which works the way that modern BT stuff (cars, Bose, Apple, etc) works.
I have the QC35-II as well. I've now disabled it on my phone, and hopefully it will only connect to the computer. I wish they would have put a physical button and let me cycle through the connected devices. But no, I don't know what they've thought, that the headphones will guess my intention? The reason I have it on my phone is that because of the poor bluetooth range I will keep the phone in my pocket and stream to the headphones when I walk through the house, but when I come back to the computer I need to hassle again to switch the connection.
> I have the QC35 and besides the noise cancelling they are crap.
This is the main reason why I have never bought a Bose product before (and probably never will). I've heard this assertion way too many times about Bose headphones, that besides noise cancelling they are average (if not worse) headphones overall and of course way too overpriced. I've switched to ear monitors and to be honest that turns out to be a good enough noise cancelling solution at least for me (provided that you get a good fit). I tend to just use wired headphones as you get rid of the potential issues that you mention: bluetooth and battery. Hope that good headphones companies keep manufacturing wired headphones in 10, 20 or 50 years time but I see that hard as laptops and phones are slowly deprecating the beloved jack connector.
Strange, I've used QC35 II so far with three different phones and one tablet, all Android, no problems whatsoever with Bluetooth. Turn on BT in the device, click the BT button on the headset to cycle the device. That's basically it.
EDIT: I turn off BT in all but one device!
I don't use the Bose app for anything. The only time was to update the firmware and re-enable the noise cancellation button, which somehow vanished.
As for range one can't expect much more with Bluetooth, especially indoors.
If you meant QC35 II and not QC35, could your issue be something in the Mac and/or iPhone and not the headphones?
On the other hand we have genuine Bose replacement cushions that start to flake out not two years after very light use. Not aftermarket, but their own ridiculously expensive units bought directly from them. I have no explanation for this except for it being due to planned obsolescence practices. So they can publish as many reports (that tested a whooping 10 returned units!), but it doesn't undo the ill will created by their products falling apart on schedule. Caveat emptor and all that.
I can confirm this. Looks like an ingredient of the plastic/fake leather part is deteriorating pretty much exactly at the 2 years mark. Mine was idling one year after some months of use and then started to fell apart, the prior QC15 was then heavily used when its ear pads started to crisp after 2 years.
Amazingly, this happens even if you don't touch them. I bought a pair and misplaced them in my house. Around 18 months later I found them, unwrapped them and found the pleather coming apart. Seems like the very definition of a manufacturing defect. I won't be buying Bose again!
I’ve had nothing but positive customer experiences from Bose (5 times, from 2-3 different shops). I’ve made a note to voice this feedback the last time they served me. Now I did =)
I no longer use the earphones, but I can vouch for them.
I bought 2x QC30's (in-ear), first and second generation.
First I had to replace because it stopped charging after 10 months. I used them single every day, and I loved them. They were my first pair of active noise cancelling anything, and they completely changed my anxiety levels at work.
I remember thinking to myself 2 days after sending them back to Bose to be looked at, that I was so much more stressed without them.
I was sent a refurbished pair with new earplugs in the box 5 days later. This is almost unheard of in Australia.
That pair has been going strong for the past year, they get used when I travel long-haul - I carry them as backup.
My second pair I bought because my workplace let me expense up to $250 on headphones, they had some damage which Bose was kind enough to offer replacement for free, but now that COVID hit I've been unable to send them in for replacement. Luckily I have my backup!
Nah they hold out on innovation until it's too late. They've had the NC crown for so long they fell complacent and Sony took their crown easily. Sony's XM3 is so, so far ahead. Just compare the feature sets and you'll see that Sony fits more for less (albeit the mic is had and USB c input is missing).
A year after the Sonys came out they made the NCH 700, which beat the sonys in microphone performance.
I could even chew or wash my hands or sit in a noisy cafe without the other people in the call hearing it.
The audio quality might be better with the Sonys, but at least they answered to the Sonys in a timely way. I had no bad experience with those yet and used them for almost a year already. No idea about customer support.
I know this thread is about the QC model, but I wanted to throw this in here. IMHO bose is not behind at all.
The 700 model is in my opinion a QC35 II wrapped up in a pretty package with more microphones put in and a artificially high price tag to be exclusive. I recommend you pull up the the product pages for both and compare side by side.
Sony put their efforts into producing custom chips that could upscale low res audio, they created the LDAC codec, put in chips that can detect your environment and adjust ANC accordingly, they have airplane pressure neutralization. Mind you this is all a year before the 700s came out and can be found for half the price of the 700s. They've also come out with numerous other ANC headphones since then at lower price points.
Bose may look prettier to some, but Sony is probably 4 years ahead of the game in terms of features, cost at scale, and product offerings in the space.
I could not hear any difference at all on my last flight, comparing 1.0atm ground calibration vs 0.9atm in-flight calibration. The effect must be rather small.
This is the same company that was spying on what their customers are listening to. Their headphones (I think it was the NC ones) require an app for configuration and that was uploading track names to their servers.
I have owned 3 pairs Boss QC noise-cancellation headphones (QC15, QC25 and QC35). While they are generally considered to be a reputable brand, and their software/firmware might be the best, their hardware design is NOT.
I noticed that their QC15/25 has a major flaws on the battery compartment design cause its wiring prone to wire fatigue and as a result it will inevitably end up with a broken side. This is very well known in the community.[1][2][3]
And after warranty expires(usually 1-2 years), Boss charges you $100 for a refurbished replacement (required that you sent your broken headphone back to Boss before you get your replacement) instead of just fixing yours (which should be much cheaper). Highway robbery!
I had two sets of QC20i break on me in the exact same way (the glue on one of the earbuds failed and the earbud just split open). First was in warranty and they replaced it no questions asked. Second was just out of warranty and they wanted £150 for a replacement set.
I'm not paying £150 for something that's failed twice in the exact same way, so I bought some Shure monitors instead. The passive reduction on these is as good as, maybe better than, the active cancellation of the Boses, and sound quality is way better.
I too swear by my Shures. I've tried quite a few NC headphones/earphones over the years but they've all had issues with distortion, wind noises, etc to some degree, whereas my Shures can passively cut out just as much noise as the best of them while never introducing weird artifacts that break immersion and take me out of the music.
I just wish they'd release a fully wireless version with the same comfort and fit (not the replacement cable+dongle thing they currently have).
They are pretty amazing. I got a pair from the Amazon re:mars conference. I would have never spent that amount of money on headphones, must have for travels. So good
They released a product on Kickstarter that had various connection issues and batteries. They tried to fix it, but when it appeared mechanical instead of software, they posted a honest response, offered and encouraged everyone a full refund.
Pixel density will be better, for example, in game textures and movies?
I am really interested in buying a new monitor from quite a while, but I really don't get that part, can somebody help me with that?
Thanks in advance HN folks!