I actually have been using those Bose QC over the ear ones for a few years now (and I already had to replace the pads once), and they’re not great. IIRC I paid like $300, and they’re definitely not worth that much. I’m not that picky about sound quality, but the UX is terrible. Powering it on is a crap shoot. Sometimes you press the button, and 5 seconds later it plays a sound to indicate it turned on. Sometimes it takes 10 seconds, sometimes more. Sometimes it doesn’t even turn on, and you just sit there doing nothing waiting to see if it decided to turn on this time, or if you have to hold the button for ~30 seconds to get it unstuck. Sometimes that sound that plays when powering on even gets interrupted by the bluetooth connection notice. Sometimes, it gets stuck in a loop switching between sound isolation modes, just endlessly saying “Aware. Immersion. Quiet.” until you intervene.
It’s also hard to simply wear them around your neck when your ears get tired and you just want to use them as tiny speakers. This is for two reasons. First, the placement of the physical buttons on the side of the cups means that they will accidentally get pressed when the cups collide (which will happen when you wear them around your neck). Second, they will constantly pause whenever they get close to your chin, as they’ll think you took them off your head. That part is overly sensitive, and they were too cheap/lazy to add a simple sensor to detect the rotation of the cups to know when they’re not being used over-ear.
And finally, the battery life is not good enough to last an entire work day, so you’ll have to connect them to power… except, for some reason, connecting a usb cable to charge causes it to shutdown immediately. You can use them while charging, but you have to power them back on/reconnect them after connecting the cable, which means you have to play the annoying waiting/guessing game again with the power button!
I have other complaints, but whatever. When they’re working, they’re fine, but I’m probably done with Bose. These little issues on such an expensive product left a bad taste in my mouth. I don’t know how Sony’s over the ear headphones compare, but the in-ear ones I have are amazing simply because they work as intended 99% of the time without any of this kind of bullshit.
I use headphones, which cover the full ear so I don’t get any “tired ears” from those. Maybe you’re using a totally different model (no idea if BOSE have earphones and if they’re any good - I avoid any earphones exactly because of getting “tired ears” with them).
If you’re using headphones, maybe you have the QC 3 (which are widelly seen as shit)?!
I have had over the years the original QC, QC 2.5 and QC 3.5 and still use the QC and QC 3.5 with none of those problems (funnilly enough, the oldest, an original QC, uses a single removable AAA battery, and I use rechargeable ones and even that will last around 3 - 4 days, whilst the built-in LiPo in the QC 3.5 lasts even more than that when using bluetooth, and even more when using an audio wire).
I actually have been using those Bose QC over the ear ones for a few years now (and I already had to replace the pads once), and they’re not great. IIRC I paid like $300, and they’re definitely not worth that much. I’m not that picky about sound quality, but the UX is terrible. Powering it on is a crap shoot. Sometimes you press the button, and 5 seconds later it plays a sound to indicate it turned on. Sometimes it takes 10 seconds, sometimes more. Sometimes it doesn’t even turn on, and you just sit there doing nothing waiting to see if it decided to turn on this time, or if you have to hold the button for ~30 seconds to get it unstuck. Sometimes that sound that plays when powering on even gets interrupted by the bluetooth connection notice. Sometimes, it gets stuck in a loop switching between sound isolation modes, just endlessly saying “Aware. Immersion. Quiet.” until you intervene.
It’s also hard to simply wear them around your neck when your ears get tired and you just want to use them as tiny speakers. This is for two reasons. First, the placement of the physical buttons on the side of the cups means that they will accidentally get pressed when the cups collide (which will happen when you wear them around your neck). Second, they will constantly pause whenever they get close to your chin, as they’ll think you took them off your head. That part is overly sensitive, and they were too cheap/lazy to add a simple sensor to detect the rotation of the cups to know when they’re not being used over-ear.
And finally, the battery life is not good enough to last an entire work day, so you’ll have to connect them to power… except, for some reason, connecting a usb cable to charge causes it to shutdown immediately. You can use them while charging, but you have to power them back on/reconnect them after connecting the cable, which means you have to play the annoying waiting/guessing game again with the power button!
I have other complaints, but whatever. When they’re working, they’re fine, but I’m probably done with Bose. These little issues on such an expensive product left a bad taste in my mouth. I don’t know how Sony’s over the ear headphones compare, but the in-ear ones I have are amazing simply because they work as intended 99% of the time without any of this kind of bullshit.
This is totally different from my experience.
I use headphones, which cover the full ear so I don’t get any “tired ears” from those. Maybe you’re using a totally different model (no idea if BOSE have earphones and if they’re any good - I avoid any earphones exactly because of getting “tired ears” with them).
If you’re using headphones, maybe you have the QC 3 (which are widelly seen as shit)?!
I have had over the years the original QC, QC 2.5 and QC 3.5 and still use the QC and QC 3.5 with none of those problems (funnilly enough, the oldest, an original QC, uses a single removable AAA battery, and I use rechargeable ones and even that will last around 3 - 4 days, whilst the built-in LiPo in the QC 3.5 lasts even more than that when using bluetooth, and even more when using an audio wire).