OPINION: In a move that I wasn’t expecting, Bose has revealed the QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds (2nd Gen) – to spell out its long and winding name – and it arrived a lot earlier than I thought it would.
Usually, there’s a two-year cycle between headphone releases but Bose’s flagship earbuds have received a sequel in about 18 months. It does make me wonder how big of an upgrade it actually is, but more on those thoughts later.
What I’m more concerned about is the call quality performance.
We need to talk about call quality
It shouldn’t be old news that true wireless earbuds, on the whole, aren’t great in terms of call quality. In a lot of cases they’re no more than average.
With every type of true wireless, from affordable to premium, call quality struggles compared to full-sized, best over-ear headphones.
Perhaps it’s the size of microphones in a true wireless bud. Maybe it’s the voice pick-up, the noise-cancellation or all of the above; but it’s a struggle to get decent call quality. And it’s really important to have good call quality from a device that so many people use to interact with others daily. I want to be heard loud and clear, not quiet and muffled.
Bose simply hasn’t been great when it comes to call quality.
The QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds had this weird trait of cancelling sounds when you weren’t talking, and then letting in all the sounds around you as soon as you opened your mouth. It was so loud that someone I was talking to asked if I was in a warzone.
I’ve been testing the less expensive QuietComfort Earbuds (2nd Gen) recently, and that also has less than stellar call quality. The person on the other end found it hard to hear on my side any time there was noise nearby. And in a city such as London, it’s a guarantee that noise won’t be far away.
AI machine learning can bridge the gap
The Technics AZ100 are the best premium earbuds I’ve tested as far as call quality goes. They’re mostly quiet, people can hear what I’m saying and calls aren’t constantly disrupted. The person I was talking to thought I was calling them using a pair of over-ears, which is high praise for wireless earbuds.
The Technics uses AI or machine learning to figure out the noise around you and strip it away without affecting your voice. It’s not as if these techniques haven’t been used in true wireless before – it’s been there for years, but no one was really using the term AI until it penetrated through the zeitgeist.
Bose added machine learning to the QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds in an update back in 2024. I’ve read other reviews that seem convinced it’s a step up, but I can’t say it had much of an effect.
Based on the announcement, things seem to be moving forward with a ‘new’ AI-powered noise suppression system that builds on the technology Bose developed for hearing aids.
Whether it’ll work I’ll have to wait and hear, but this has been a weak area for Bose and I’m glad to see they’re addressing the issue.
Are the QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds 2 a big enough upgrade?
Launching 18 months after the previous model has given me a little bit of a pause about whether these headphones will offer a big upgrade on what came before.
The QC Ultra Earbuds launched fairly quickly after the QuietComfort Earbuds II (it’s a bit a hard to keep up with Bose’s naming convention these days); and while the noise-cancellation is class-leading – just edging the Technics out as far as its transparency mode goes – I’m not too confident to say that the actual ANC performance has changed much in that time.
Sure, Bose has added new and convenient features such as the ActiveSense in the Aware mode but I wonder – much like with over-ear headphones – whether we’ve hit the noise-cancelling ceiling with earbuds too.
At what point will you be able to tell much of a difference? What Bose is bringing to the new earbuds is an updated AI algorithm that improves the ActiveSense feature, but it’s interesting to note the announcement didn’t make any claims to say the noise-cancellation performance has been improved by such and such a degree.
What Bose seems to be offering is a refinement rather than a new experience, and maybe that’s just where we are with headphones in general.
The battery life is still the same at six hours. Wireless charging from the off is a nicety, but it was never a feature I was clamouring for. There’s no change in the Bluetooth spec (no mention of Auracast), and seemingly few if any changes to the app.
We’ll find out soon enough how good the QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds 2nd Gen will be, but I’m rather liking how close the true wireless field is becoming. It might lead to some out of the box thinking for the next generation of buds that leads to genuine innovation.
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