Bose QuietComfort Earbuds review: amazing everyday earbuds

Bose has earned a reputation for making some of the best noise-canceling wireless earbuds and headphones you can buy. Unfortunately, it also has a reputation for being more expensive than the competition. Not so with its second-gen Bose QuietComfort Earbuds. Bose has priced them at just $179 — $100 cheaper than its first-gen QC Earbuds, and $120 cheaper than its current flagship, the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds.

I was concerned that Bose might have cut too many corners with such a dramatic price drop. But those fears were put to rest. Not only do they deliver superb sound and silence, but they also add hands-free voice commands that don’t rely on Siri, Google Assistant, or Alexa.

If anything, these earbuds are so good that I’m beginning to question why anyone would want to spend more on the QC Ultra Earbuds.

Bose’s earbuds might not be as compact and slender as Apple’s AirPods Pro, but they nail the balance between a comfortable and stable fit. The QC Earbuds are a bit bulkier than their pricier QC Ultra Earbuds siblings (and thus not as sleek), and yet the critical portion that sits in your ear uses a nearly identical design and shape. The silicone eartips create the needed seal for sound quality and noise cancellation, while the silicone stability bands provide a large contact area inside your ear’s concha.

Along with a short USB-C charging cable, Bose includes three sizes of both the eartips and stability bands in the box, which should help most folks get a comfortable combo. For me, the fit was perfect right out of the box with the default medium eartips and small bands. I was able to wear them for three hours continuously without any discomfort or pressure. Water protection is rated at IPX4. Avoid showering with them — immersing them in water is bad — but sweat and rain should be no problem if you wipe them down before storing them.

Aesthetically, bigger earbuds might not be everyone’s cup of tea. But that extra size comes with benefits: The touch control surfaces are impossible to miss and the buds are easy to grab when you open the charging case.

Speaking of the case, it’s on the bulky side, too. It’s smaller than the first-gen QC Earbuds, but that’s not saying much. The first-gen’s case was famously large. Thankfully, this time Bose has included wireless charging — a feature that Bose didn’t incorporate into its QC Earbuds II or QC Ultra Earbuds.

The new case also feels better built than the QC Ultra Earbuds. The lid is held closed by magnets that are strong (but not too strong), and the hinge doesn’t wiggle in either open or closed positions.

Getting the QC Earbuds connected was a cinch, and so was using Bluetooth Multipoint to add a second simultaneous connection.

So far, so good. But what about the stuff that really matters, like ANC and sound quality? I’m happy to report that the QC Earbuds are awesome on both fronts.

Sadly, I haven’t had a chance to fly with these buds. But if their performance in other noisy conditions is any indication, they should be excellent in-cabin companions. Traffic, background voices in coffee shops, and droning sounds like fans or air conditioners were all greatly reduced. I don’t have any way to measure it, but subjectively, it felt like they were just as effective in daily situations as the QC Ultra Earbuds, Apple’s AirPods Pro 2, and Sony’s WF-1000XM5. I’m guessing that professional equipment would show slightly poorer attenuation of specific frequencies, but unless you’re an ANC connoisseur, I doubt you’d notice.

Still, lots of wireless earbuds do a good job of ANC. Transparency mode is where the big differences show up. Apple’s AirPods Pro 2 remain the king of the hill when it comes to that magic feeling of not wearing any buds, but I’m stunned at how close the new QC Earbuds get.

Even when earbuds let ideal amounts of outside sound in, they often fail to let you hear your voice naturally. With the QC Earbuds, this isn’t a problem, making them excellent for both in-person and call-based conversations.

I have only one critique: You can’t switch back and forth between ANC and transparency modes without first toggling through a “normal” mode. This should be an easy thing for Bose to address. But for the time being, it will remain a minor inconvenience. I’ll balance that objection with a positive: switching between these modes is very fast, especially when you assign mode switching to the single-tap command (more on control customization in a moment).

As with ANC, the QC Earbuds’ sound quality comes incredibly close to the QC Ultra Earbuds, with one caveat. You get that classic Bose sound — deep, resonant bass response coupled with high-energy mids and highs. There’s lots of detail, a pleasingly wide soundstage, and no discernible distortion that I could hear. One thing I noticed is that the amplification (or perhaps the drivers’ response to the amplification) isn’t as even as I’d like. At 40% to 50% volume, they sound restrained. I was actually a little concerned by it. But pump them up to 60% and they spring to life, and at 65% to 70%, they’re in their acoustic sweet spot.

Bose lets you make small, but noticeable tweaks using four presets, or one customizable setting (via a simplified five-band equalizer). This is more control than Bose offers on the QC Ultra Earbuds (four presets/three-band equalizer), but I just wish we could save more than one custom setting.

The caveat comes into play if you use the earbuds with an aptX Adaptive- or Snapdragon Sound-capable Android phone. The QC Earbuds only support SBC, AAC, and LC3 Bluetooth codecs, while the Ultras layer on aptX Adaptive and aptX Lossless for hi-res audio and CD-quality sound.

However, since the iPhone doesn’t support those aptX codecs, it puts the two earbuds on a level playing field: iPhone owners shouldn’t feel the need to spend more on the Ultras from a sound quality perspective.

For Android owners, it’s a different story. Allow me to briefly quote my QC Ultra Earbuds review:

“With aptX Adaptive (and a reliable Bluetooth connection), you can get far greater fidelity. It’s not theoretical. When listening to the QC Ultra on a Xiaomi 12 Pro and a Motorola ThinkPhone, the soundstage took on noticeably better precision, depth, and detail versus listening on an iPhone 14 (AAC only). It’s the same bump in quality that I’ve heard when using other equally capable wireless earbuds or headphones.”

The QC Earbuds also lack Bose’s Immersive Audio (its version of spatial audio with head tracking). I think Bose’s take on the technology is the best you can get at the moment. The company has hinted that it could add Immersive Audio to the QC Earbuds, which would be great. But take that with a massive dose of skepticism. Bose made similar promises about future features (e.g., Bluetooth Multipoint and aptX Adaptive for the QC Earbuds II) and failed to deliver.

I remain convinced that physical buttons on earbuds are preferable to touch controls (fewer inadvertent commands, easier to use with gloves). And yet Bose has done a great job with the QC Earbuds. For starters, there are four available gestures per earbud: single, double, and triple taps, plus tap-and-hold. Each can be configured with your choice of command — a small, but very handy feature the QC Ultras lack. The only thing I miss is the QC Ultra’s excellent swipe gestures for volume control.

By default, ANC is controlled by a tap-and-hold gesture. But as I noted above, assigning it to a single tap makes mode switches way faster. Everything you’d normally expect to be able to control (calls, volume, track skipping, etc.) is available, plus one command you don’t see very often: camera shutter control.

Bose calls it Remote Selfie, but it’s not just for selfies. As long as your camera app is open (even if your phone is otherwise locked), you can use this command to trigger the shutter.

With four gestures per earbud, that’s a total of eight possible commands. Want to control more than eight actions? You can use the wear sensors for instant pause/play when you remove an earbud. And let’s also “talk” about those hands-free voice commands I mentioned in the introduction.

Once you enable them in the companion app, you can say, “Hey headphones …” followed by phrases like …

• “… play”
• “… pause”
• “… next”
• “… volume up”
• “… Aware on.”

Basically anything you can trigger with a tap control on the earbuds can be triggered with a voice command. It works well out of the box, but Bose recommends you take the additional step of training it to recognize your voice (it takes less than a minute).

The one thing you need to be aware of is that pausing after you say, “Hey headphones,” is mandatory. Only after you hear a tone that confirms the earbuds have heard you can you then proceed with the command itself. I learned this the hard way after several failed attempts.

I’m not a big hands-free voice command user, but I absolutely see the value here for those who are.

When I first learned that Bose had created a new standalone app for the QC Earbuds (appropriately named Bose QCE) I was a bit annoyed. Why not just use the existing Bose Music app that already controls most of the company’s existing wireless headphones, earbuds, soundbars, and more?

And yet, it’s hard to argue against the decision once you use the new app. Its interface is clean, and well organized, and it makes almost every setting available with just a single tap.

Better yet, the various cards act as both an explanation of a feature as well as the quickest way to adjust it. As such, some can be a bit duplicative (Noise Control, Fast Mute, Assistant, and Remote Selfie are essentially the same thing as the Touch Controls card), but I think a lot of folks will appreciate the approach.

I’m also a big fan of the Battery Prediction section. I’ve never seen remaining battery life expressed as both listening time and talk time. This is how every company should display these numbers.

Being able to see and manage paired devices is the one thing that the QCE app doesn’t do as well as the Bose Music app. You can enable or disable Multipoint, but that’s about it.

Call quality on the new QC Earbuds might just be the best Bose has ever managed on a set of wireless earbuds. This is to say, it’s still not perfect, but it nonetheless improves on the QC Ultra. There are still times when an especially noisy environment can distort your voice to the point where it’s unintelligible, but we’re talking about extreme examples, like having an 18-wheeler thunder by. However, unlike with the Ultra, your callers won’t be distracted by those sounds — they don’t get picked up at all.

In quiet settings, the QC Earbuds also have a slight advantage in clarity.

Battery life is yet another area where the QC Earbuds break the traditional Bose mold. With up to nine hours of playback stamina with ANC enabled (8.5 according to the official specs) and a total of 31.5 hours when you include the case, these are easily the longest-running earbuds the company has ever made.

However, those numbers assume a 50% volume level. As you may recall from earlier, I don’t think 50% cuts it from a sound quality point of view, so you can expect slightly less time if you play them louder.

If and when Bose adds Immersive Audio, these numbers will likely take a hit when using the feature — it reduces the QC Ultra’s stamina by a third.

The one thing missing here is a quick-charge option, but then again, Bose has yet to offer quick charging on any of its QuietComfort wireless earbuds.

If you’ve gotten this far, you’ve probably guessed that I’m a big fan of the new Bose QuietComfort Earbuds. There’s just one teensy little thing that might give you pause: a lack of support for Auracast. You may not be familiar with this relatively new Bluetooth audio-sharing platform, but it’s about to play a big role in our wireless audio lives. In terms of future-proofing, it’s the one thing I wish Bose had included.

Still, if we set that one omission aside, the new QC Earbuds are a fantastic set of daily-wear earbuds. Better yet, they’re available at a price that’s not only more accessible than that of any previous Bose earbuds, but that also challenges the prices set by Bose’s traditional competitors. If I were Sony, Sennheiser, or maybe even Apple, I’d be sleeping a little less soundly right now.