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Bose's second-generation QuietComfort Headphones trail two rivals by 11 hours of battery in Wired's review
Bose's second-generation QuietComfort Headphones run 24 hours with noise cancelling, 11 fewer than Nothing and Sonos rivals, Wired's review found. For travellers who take calls on the road, that gap and poor call audio now offset a lighter, quieter headset.
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What happened
- At 230 grams, the second-generation headphones are far lighter than nearly every other premium over-ear pair, according to Wired.
- Their noise cancelling comes close to, but falls short of, $400-plus models such as Bose's QuietComfort Ultra (2nd Gen), Sony's WH-1000XM6 and Apple's AirPods Max.
- Sony's WH-1000XM4C, the closest rival in Wired's battery comparison, lasts 27 hours with noise cancelling on.
- Bose dropped the 3.5mm port and ships a USB-C-to-3.5mm cable for wired high-res audio, with no lossless support over wireless.
- Wired names price alongside battery life as the missteps that make the headphones hard to recommend over competitors.
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Why it matters
- cost Travellers on trips longer than three eight-hour days have to find an outlet midweek, the routine Wired's reviewer fell into every week.
- decision Teams that order the airport-default Bose for every traveller now have to sort staff by trip length and call load before buying.
- constraint Staff who run meetings from the headset take the weak call audio onto every call, or carry a second device for them.
- constraint Lossless listening and any 3.5mm connection depend on a cable that has to stay in the bag; without it, the headphones are wireless-only.
Wired's reviewer wore the QuietComfort Headphones (2nd Gen) through an entire eight-hour workday and wrote that "they didn't feel overly clampy, warm, or heavy" [5]. The same reviewer wrote, "I had to charge these midweek, every week" [8]. At eight hours a day, a 24-hour battery with noise cancelling covers three working days [17]. The 35-hour Nothing Headphone (1) and Sonos Ace Ultra would cover a little over four [18].
The buying habit this review tests was formed at the gate. According to Wired, Bose has been the go-to noise-cancelling brand for many frequent fliers, and its reviewer has "spotted close to a dozen of them at every airport and on every flight" [1]. Teams tell themselves the traveller mainly needs a quiet flight. The new model delivers one, improving on the first generation in both comfort and noise cancelling [15]. In a cafeteria of about 60 people chatting and eating, the reviewer wrote, "I could barely hear anything outside my music" [6]. Even so, the same review says: "I just don't know if they're still the travel headphones to get" [14].
How big the battery gap is depends on the rival. Against Sony's WH-1000XM4C it is 3 hours [19]. Against Nothing and Sonos it is 11 hours, about 46 percent more runtime than the Bose [16][20]. Wired does note that the Bose charges quickly [8].
Some misses are small and still come up every day. "I am baffled that these headphones don't have wear detection," the reviewer wrote, adding that many headphones with the feature cost less [13]. For a business buyer, calls matter more. Wired rates voice quality on calls as "pretty bad" [3].
I think the QC 2 is the right pick for a traveller who mostly listens and whose trips fit inside three working days. The tradeoff is a midweek charge on anything longer, plus calls Wired rates poorly. Everyone else gets 11 more hours from the 35-hour rivals [16]. They probably give up some of the weight advantage Wired credits to the Bose [4].
The grid takes two numbers from a traveller's last trip. One is the hours of noise-cancelled wear before a dependable charge, split at 24. The other is whether the headset carries calls. On a short trip with no calls, Wired's praise for comfort and quieting applies most [2]. A long trip with no calls points to the 35-hour Nothing or Sonos [10]. Short trips with calls mean accepting Wired's call verdict or packing a second device for meetings [3]. Long trips with calls hit both the battery problem and the call-quality problem Wired found [3][8].
What to watch
- The street price of the QuietComfort Headphones (2nd Gen) against the 35-hour Nothing and Sonos models, since Wired counts price as a misstep.
- Any Bose firmware update that adds wear detection or changes call processing, the two software-shaped complaints in Wired's review.
- Whether other reviewers' call tests match Wired's verdict that voice quality is pretty bad.