Bose's active noise cancellation tech has gone from strength to strength over the past few years, most recently culminating in its wire free and wildly popular Quiet Comfort 35s. The company is promising even bigger and better things from the upcoming Noise Cancelling Headphones 700s, which its says incorporate new voice pickup technology and Bose AR, something described as augmented reality for your ears.
Announced today, the Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones 700s build on the same noise-cancelling technology of the company's previous flagship headphones, the QC35s. They'll also allow the user greater control over the degree of noise cancellation, with the high and low settings of the QC 35s extended to a total of 11 different inputs.
At full throttle, Bose's noise-cancelling technology really is excellent. But there may be times when the user wants more background noise to filter through, say if they are on a busy street and want a better sense of the traffic around them, or need to listen in on a conversation.
Bose has also revamped the microphone system, stating that it has been engineered from the ground up to take the voice pickup capabilities to a new level. The headphones feature eight microphones in all, with four dedicated to noise cancellation for better audio, and the other four dedicated to making your voice as clear as it can be in noisy environments. This could prove useful when you're on a phone call, leaving a voicemail or giving instructions to your voice assistant, with the Noise Cancelling Headphones 700s compatible with all of Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant.
The Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones 700s will also feature Bose's AR, which was introduced on its Frames smart sunglasses last year. The thinking with this technology, though it's in its early stages, is that the device detects a user's location through GPS (in this case presumably through the paired smartphone), and layers audio over the top that might be useful to them. Think tourists wandering around a foreign city, for example.
Like the QC35s, the new headphones will fold flat with a single twist of the earpiece for easy transport in an included carry case. Battery time is listed as 20 hours, which is what Bose correctly quoted for the predecessors, so we have no reason to doubt them here.
Alongside today's announcement, Bose also revealed it will be launching two new sets of earbuds, the Bose Earbuds 500 to be released this year and the Bose Noise Cancelling Earbuds 700 to arrive sometime next year. More details will be shared closer to their launch, while the Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones 700s, in Black and Silver, are up for preorder now for a price of US$399. They will be available from June 30.
Source: Bose