We kick the tires on hundreds of products around these parts, and the latest top-tier release was the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds (2nd Gen). We put out a post with several mic samples, and our readers rated the microphone of the earbuds on a scale of 1 to 5, five being the best, and one being the worst. So how did the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds (2nd Gen)‘s microphone fare?
How good is the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds (2nd Gen)’s mic? You told us
It’s clear that there’s some work to be done.
Since publish, 117 respondents rated the microphone samples of the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds (2nd Gen) both on the review and in our standalone post. While this is quite low for a flagship product, it’s also not surprising because most of our audience is in the US, where this product is currently unavailable. Consequently, not many people are searching for this performance point just yet — so we may update this piece in the future as we collect more data.
A simple majority of our readers rated the microphone as “okay,” with 52.1% of all votes cast. The rest of the pack was split between positive and negative impressions, but positives won with 32 against 24 negative votes. Consequently, the median opinion score here is 3, while the mean opinion score is 3.11. It’s clear that most people found the mic quality to be inoffensive, but also weren’t blown away by it. I’m not terribly surprised, given that audible issues like the first sounds recorded being a bit quiet, and some wind noise issues marred the experience. Still, it’s a bit perplexing to see a score so low. Perhaps this will change as time goes on.
Common feedback
Looking to the internet for feedback, we found the following:
Reddit user Tig33 notes: “Call quality is still disappointing in noisy environments. In quiet spaces, calls are decent, but there’s hardly any AI-driven background noise cancellation happening.”
Reddit user Piecelcy2867 notes: “It’s slow and like 3 people ask me why they ear me so terribly. I never had a comment like that with airpods pro 2 that I still keep.”
Reddit user readndrun opines: “Call quality compared to my last pair of headphones is on par with the competition as far as I’m concerned”
While cherry-picked impressions are hardly scientific, the low number of user reviews online contributes to the lack of exhaustive data. Once these earbuds launch in the US, we should have more users complaining and raving about these earbuds.