Bose 700 ANC Bluetooth Over-Ear Wireless Headphones (Refurbished)

I've owned these for half a day so far and have decided to keep them around. I'm an audiophile who spends money on kickstarter earbuds, custom-made preamps, and (in general) quality hardware which reduces my audio experience as little as possible. Trying these cans in-store at BestBuy allowed me to appreciate the hardware quality of the exterior... quality matte plastic moulding, amazing comfortable faux-leather surfaces on your skin, and a synthesized voice and audible feedback to assist with your navigation of the three hardware buttons and touch controls make these headphones easy to wear during work sessions, public transit commutes, or in a crowded home with loud kids. As a brand new product, the tension on the cans over your ears and on your head can become uncomfortable within an hour of use. Subjectively, I don't consider my head to be particularly large or larger-than-average and will need to play around with adjusting the cups to sit lower or higher on the band which also release/tighten the tension respectively to see if this becomes a long term problem with use. Taking short breaks with the headphones off (10-15 minutes) helps and gives a good excuse/reminder to take a break from work to relax the body/eyes/ears. The sound quality is reasonable for the headphones. When using the headphones with noise cancellation off, ambient noise seems to lack a very strong low end frequency response (sub ~250Hz, not measured) and might reduce your meatspace experience in some cases where mixed ambient and input audio are desired. That said, direct input still seems to perform quite well with solid frequency response all around which lets the very highs and very lows to be pretty well-balanced. A test using the headset for phone conversation over bluetooth yielded very nice results. The setup involved the cans paired with my laptop streaming music and my Project Fi Pixel 3 phone on standby. Using the Google voice assistant to start the call resulted in some clumsy voice detection/understanding problems ("I'm sorry, I didn't get that, who would you like to call? I don't know that name, who would you like to call? Ok, will that be mobile or home? Ok, will that be mobile or home? Dialing..." _sigh_) which I don't believe are the fault of the cans at all. The test included loud ambient music in the room with the person wearing the headphones and found the other user to experience practically none of the ambient noise through the call with a very clear bead on the callee's voice despite close proximity to the music source playing at a moderate volume (such that the ambient music was leaking through the room walls and making it hard to isolate whether the headphones were leaking the ambient noise into the call...which it seemed _not_ to do with this casual test setup). Noticeable was the (300-700ms) delay from the user on the headphones which seemed to not be present from the non-headphone user. It was hardly a concern and either due to the latency in the network transmitting the audio (which, again, was a local wifi call between handsets.... though I am unsure if the handsets route audio locally or not) or possibly in the audio processing from the headset. This latency was par for most mobile calls and should be completely unnoticeable in a remote environment when you're not there to hear to source before the transmitted audio through the headset. A few gripes about the design and ergonomics of the device: - the button placement: very easy to accidentally active these buttons which adjusting the placement of these cans if not aware/careful. - the direction of earcup rotation: when placing the cans around the neck/shoulders, the earcups rotate up (into the air) rather than down (onto your chest). Questionable choice here as it makes the headphones somewhat uncomfortable to hold there, but perhaps Bose never expects you to remove the phones... unsure if that's a reasonable expectation or not. - the synthetic leather matte black surface inside the top of the headset and on the earcups attract oil and will certainly show for those of us with that sort of skin. This may require some extra TLC and upkeep to keep as pristine as one might like. The white set might fair better in this regard. Overall summary: A pricey purchase that I would have trouble justifying as a personal expense (these were expensed by my employer and intended for daily voice conference usage and isolation during work hours in busy coffee shops) and really comes down to the longevity of the product over time. If these headphones end up lasting me longer than 5 years, I would be VERY satisfied with the purchase. At a price point closer to $250-300, this would be a much easier personal purchase to make. As a user which "babies" their hardware, I am eager to see whether this will stand the test of time. Direct input (from a bluetooth source that is not ambient noise) has a very solid frequency response which does not noticeably detract from the music experience. Longterm use may be uncomfortable depending on your head size. The noise cancellation works wonderfully and almost too well, leaving me at a "5" setting more often than a "10" as complete cancellation feels too isolating and uncomfortable to feeling the lack of "air" around me. BLE connection to multiple devices (two) at once allows for seemless transitions between either input. This is also a first time purchase of a Bose product. Looking forward to seeing how the device matures and support is handled over time. Firmware updates are provided automatically to the headset through their app. Battery life "appears" long but I have yet to complete a full discharge cycle to be sure. I was pleasantly surprised to find the phones report +5 hours of use remaining at 20% battery charge and +20 hours at full charge (the audio assistant delivers the charge level as "hours of use" remaining, not battery level...which is still viewable in the Bose Music app. Nice touch, Bose).