Today Bose took the wraps of a new set of headphones, the Noise Cancelling Headphones 700.
These appear to be a follow up set of headphones to the popular QuietComfort 35, although these are not just the sum of a rebrand, but according to the company the ushering in of a new and “revolutionary” listening experience.
To be clear, the listening experience improvements are not necessarily for the wearer’s benefit, but more so for the virtual assistant’s benefit as it is the assistant’s listening experience that is said to have been dramatically improved.
While headphones coming equipped with a virtual assistant is nothing new, Bose points to how those solutions have yet to master the assistant’s ability to hear. In fact, Bose takes this point well beyond headphones, stating “no mobile device has solved that problem” until now.
Essentially, Bose argues its new headphones are able to isolate the user’s voice from all of the surroundings and the result of this is the ability for the assistant to not only hear the user clearly but comply with voice commands accurately.
For example, Bose suggests with these headphones, the user will no longer have to worry about being misheard, the assisted dialing the wrong number, or having to close or open an app manually because the assistant misinterpreted a command.
This is partly achieved by the inclusion of a new eight-microphone system. Six of those mics are used for noise cancellation while the other two combine with two of the existing mics to facilitate the voice pickup. A beamform-array, combined with a rejection-array is also in effect here and acts as one of the additional measures to ensure it is only the user’s voice that’s picked up.
In the simplest of terms, with these new headphones Bose is looking to ensure the listening experience is equally as good for the headphones hearing the user as it is for the user hearing the audio.
The headphones work with any virtual assistant, with the Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa both included as built-in features.
Improved voice assistant support aside, these are Bose headphones and many who turn to this brand will already be aware of the heightened sound quality that’s generally on offer. The new Noise Cancelling Headphones 700 are said to be no different with the headphones offering a more natural and “faithful” reproduction of sound compared to other headsets.
The sound is also expected to be richer than previous solutions thanks to these headphone utilizing the company’s Bose AR solution resulting in a more immersive listening experience overall.
In addition, these are also adjustable noise cancelling headphones so users are expected to be able to activate the full NC to filter out all sound, or lower the level of NC so some noise is still able to pass through.
The company also points to an improved comfort level due to a new design that better distributes weight, as well as the ability for these to be used for longer periods with a battery that’s rated to to offer up to twenty hours on a single charge.
The new Noise Cancelling Headphones 700 are set to become available in the U.S. on June 30 and will be priced at $399 in the U.S. However, they are already available to pre-order through the company’s website.
These were only one of the new products announced today from Bose as the company also unveiled two new sets of truly wireless earbuds, the new Earbuds 500 and the new Noise Cancelling Earbuds 700.
Although unlike the new Noise Cancelling Headphones 700, no firm details on pricing or availability for the Earbuds 500 and Noise Cancelling Earbuds 700 were provided, other than the company stating the former is due to arrive before the end of the year while the latter will land in 2020.
Pre-order Noise Cancelling Headphones 700 (Bose)