For years, the $400 Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones 700 stood out as the golden standard for noise cancellation, with most of the competition coming in at a lower price. While we initially sneered at the $550 pricing of Apple’s AirPods Max, they ultimately earned our respect (and a four-star rating) by outperforming the Bose headphones in certain regards. With that in mind, we expected V-Moda’s $500 M-200 ANC headphones to similarly offer some form of improvement to make them worth the $100 premium over the Bose model. Unfortunately, the noise cancellation they offer, while good, isn’t as strong as it should be for the price. While this is by no means a bad pair of headphones, with an accurate and adjustable sound signature, they would seem expensive even at $300.
A Customizable Design
V-Moda’s signature hexagonal circumaural (over-ear) earcups grace the M-200 ANC. You can customize the outer panels, from simply swapping out the color to installing a 3D-printed gold design, with prices that vary substantially depending how elaborate the panels are. The earpads and the underside of the headband are both quite comfortable, even over long listening sessions.
The right earcup houses a dedicated power/pairing button, an ANC (active noise cancellation) on/off button, and a three-button array, with two outer plus/minus controls for volume, and a central multifunction button for playback, call management, and voice assistants.
A stylish hard-shell carrying case is included, along with a carabiner, an airplane jack adapter, and a long, cloth-lined headphone audio cable.
V-Moda’s companion app for Android and iOS lets you adjust the audio balance, with multiple presets (Rock, Podcast, Hip-Hop, and so on) that can be tweaked with a five-band EQ. There’s also a slider to adjust the level of the noise cancellation’s intensity. The app is definitely worth downloading, if for no other reason than to regularly check for firmware updates.
Internally, the earcups house 40mm graphene drivers delivering a frequency range of 5Hz to 40kHz. The headphones are compatible with Bluetooth 5.0, and support AAC, AptX, and SBC codecs.
V-Moda estimates battery life to be roughly 20 hours with ANC activated, but your results will vary with your volume levels and ANC usage.
V-Moda M-200 ANC Performance
The M-200 ANC’s noise cancellation does a laudable job against loud, deep low frequencies, to dial back most of the rumble of an airplane or a train dramatically. It can occasionally produce a sort of distortion when it struggles with a particular sound or frequency in the lows, but it’s generally highly effective in the bass realm.
Mids and highs are a different story. A recording of a busy, loud restaurant played back at high volume through near-field monitors gets dialed back a bit in the mids, but less so in the highs. Some audible high-frequency hiss is added to the signal, which is relatively subtle and not at all unpleasant (think tape hiss or white noise at a very faint level). It’s common in ANC circuitry that isn’t operating at a high level, and certainly shouldn’t be present in a pair of $500 headphones. The ANC also seems to change dramatically with only minor head movements.
Compared with the Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones 700 in these exact same testing scenarios, the M-200 ANC tamped down slightly less of the powerful low frequencies and far less of the restaurant crowd noise we subjected the headphones to.
The ANC can also affect the sound signature when playing audio at higher volumes, tending to distort especially on tracks with deep bass. The distortion disappears when the ANC is off, and only seems to happen at high volume levels. Regardless, it’s not ideal, and certainly not acceptable in this price range.
We thought at first that the headphones had no ambient listening mode, since you can’t turn it on with the buttons or within the app. It turns out that you can activate the “voice-in sensor” if you cover the lower touch-sensitive panel of the left earcup with your finger. This triggers the ambient listening mode, and lowers the music volume significantly. This only works about 75% of the time, however; the panel doesn’t always immediately register on touch. You also have to keep your finger there the entire time you wish to hear your surroundings, which isn’t ideal for longer conversations. A button to toggle the mode would have been better.
For listening to music, the sound signature here is about accuracy, and doesn’t push the lows forward in the mix the way much of the competition does, so it isn’t for listeners looking for booming bass. On tracks with intense sub-bass content, like The Knife’s “Silent Shout,” the headphones deliver robust, accurate bass depth that seems to flirt with distortion at top volumes. At more modest volumes, this isn’t an issue. If much of your music library features intense sub-bass, it’s worth considering that the drivers might struggle at higher volumes, especially with the ANC on.
See How We Test Noise-Cancelling HeadphonesSee How We Test Noise-Cancelling Headphones
Bill Callahan’s “Drover,” a track with far less deep bass in the mix, gives us a better sense of the M-200 ANC’s general sound signature. The kick drum is robust but not overly boosted, and Callahan’s vocals are rich but not booming. The high-mids and highs are present, but the track doesn’t sound exceptionally bright or overly sculpted as it often is on modern headphones. This is an accurate, mids-focused sound signature that may strike some listeners as dull, and others as refreshing.
On Jay-Z and Kanye West’s “No Church in the Wild,” the kick drum loop receives ideal high-mid presence, allowing it to retain its punchy attack while the vinyl crackle and hiss in the background take a very slight step forward in the mix. The sub-bass synth hits that punctuate the beat are delivered with restraint, giving a sense of their depth but not the overwhelming thunder some bass-forward headphones can produce. The vocals are delivered cleanly and clearly, without any added sibilance.
In the opening scene from John Adams’ The Gospel According to the Other Mary, the lower-register instrumentation is delivered with ideal richness and depth—it has a solid anchoring role in the mix, and never overshadows the higher-register brass, strings, or vocals. The balance here is perhaps a bit more high-mids-leaning than some listeners will prefer, but that’s why EQ is available.
The mic offers average intelligibility. Using the Voice Memos app on an iPhone, we could understand every word recorded, but with a muffled quality and a somewhat faint signal. There’s also a bit of Bluetooth distortion present, but less than we typically hear with wireless headphones. It should be sufficient for calls when there’s a solid mobile signal, but it doesn’t impress.
Good, But Overpriced
V-Moda’s M-200 ANC headphones are good, but they simply aren’t worth the $500 asking price. They deliver a solid audio experience for those seeking clarity in the mids and accuracy throughout the frequency range, but deep bass can develop some issues at high volumes when the ANC is enabled. More importantly, while the ANC itself is generally quite good, it isn’t on the level of the Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones 700 or the Apple AirPods Max, both of which are priced similarly. If you want solid noise cancellation for much less money (even if it doesn’t come close to Bose or Apple), meanwhile, the Sennheiser HD 450BT headphones offer good performance all around and can be found for less than $200.
