Review: Bose QuietComfort Earbuds II

We may as well cut right to the chase here. Bose—the company that originally had the bright idea for noise-canceling headphones, let’s not forget—has casually delivered the best noise-canceling earbuds you can currently buy. In fact, it seems entirely reasonable to suggest every other true wireless earbud on sale today should now be referred to as, at best, “noise reducing.” As of right now—meaning before we hear what Apple has up its sleeve with the new AirPods Pros—true noise cancellation is the preserve of the QuietComfort Earbuds II alone.

Of course, there’s a difference between being “the best noise-canceling earbuds” and “the best earbuds.” The QuietComfort Earbuds II may have left the competition in their wake where noise cancellation is concerned, but elsewhere they don’t get it all their own way. This is a mature product category, after all (as a swift glance at our best-of list confirms), and being “pretty good” in some ways is seldom good enough.

Compared to the model they replace, the QCE II are smaller and lighter. That has to be put in context, mind you—the previous QuietComfort Earbuds were among the biggest, heaviest, and least gainly around, so Bose has hardly broken any new ground by serving up an earbud that weighs in at 6.2 grams and measures 17 by 31 by 22 mm. But at least the more self-conscious among us can confidently keep Bose on our “true wireless in-ear” shortlist now.

Photograph: Bose

Bose has paid very close attention to fit and comfort with the QCE II. By combining a brief stem (as popularized by Apple and subsequently copied by the industry at large) with a twist-to-lock in-ear section and offering multiple options where fit is concerned, the QCE II are no trouble to wear at all, even over extended periods. A choice of three differently sized silicone ear tips, along with three complementary sizes of the “stability band,” which fits around the earbud and features a fin for some in-ear grip), results in an earbud that should stay snug, secure, and comfortable in pretty much any ear.

Inside the in-ear portion of each earbud is a 9.3-mm, full-range dynamic driver taking care of business. It receives its audio information via Bluetooth 5.3. This is currently as good as it gets where wireless connectivity is concerned, but codec compatibility with only SBC and AAC is most certainly not. Every authentic rival to these Bose features some variation on aptX or LDAC or both, and given how friendly Bose is becoming with Qualcomm, it doesn’t seem to be asking too much to see a little Snapdragon Sound compatibility or something. Bose says over-air firmware upgrades will update the QCE II in time, but for now they lag behind where codec compatibility is concerned.

Photograph: Bose

The earbuds can hold six hours of power, and their newly compact (59- by 66- by 27-mm) case is good for another three full charges. An all-in running time of 24 hours isn’t too bad, but it’s not anything special, and the same could be said for the flat-to-full charging time of three hours. A 20-minute pit stop is good for a couple of hours of playback, but there’s no wireless charging facility here. A USB-C socket on the bottom of the case is how you access the juice.

In each properly built, nicely finished earbud (Triple Black is the only color option at launch, although Soapstone—which looks mightily like white—will follow) there are four mics. These take care of noise cancellation and telephony, of course, but they’re also available for voice control. There’s no built-in voice assistant here, but if your source player has one (as it surely must), it’s easy to summon using the capacitive touch surface on either earbud.

“Summon voice assistant” is one of two shortcuts you can assign to your touch controls using the Bose Music app. The other is “cycle through noise-cancellation options.” Otherwise, each earbud can handle “play/pause,” “volume up/down,” “skip forward/backward,” and “answer/end/reject call”—and they’re consistent and reliable in use.

The control app also features some EQ adjustment (a three-band equalizer and four presets) and some noise-cancellation options. Two presets (“quiet,” which means active noise cancellation is fully on, and “aware,” which gives external sounds a little boost) can be augmented by two custom settings. There are ten stages of ANC intensity from which to choose. It’s Bose app business as usual: clean, stable, and nowhere near as wide-ranging as alternatives from the likes of Sony. 

But yes, the active noise canceling. Select “quiet” and the QuietComfort Earbuds II do an almost supernaturally comprehensive job of ridding you of any and all outside distractions without affecting their sonic performance in the slightest. There’s no hint of counter-signal, no disruption of the noise floor, no suggestion of in-ear pressure—just the elimination of all but the loudest and closest external sounds. Even by the lofty standards Bose sets, it’s remarkable.

Photograph: Bose

According to Bose, this bravura performance is thanks to its CustomTune technology. When the earbuds are taken from their charging case and placed in the user’s ear, a brief tone burst assesses the specific properties of the ear canal. In under half a second, the QCE II take the information and set themselves up, for both audio and ANC, to best complement the wearer’s specific characteristics. And then, by way of an encore, CustomTune remains vigilant if you’re in “aware” mode, and will immediately kick in the noise canceling if a sudden loud noise should intrude. 

Despite the lack of headline codec compatibility, the QCE II are a unified, detailed, and spacious listen, and musical in a way that ought to be a given but quite often isn’t. Through the course of our testing, the Bose played everything from Warren Zevon’s Gorilla, You’re a Desperado to …and the World Laughs with You by Flying Lotus via the Cleveland Orchestra’s rampage through Orff’s O Fortuna—and at no point do they sound anything less than engaged and entertaining.

As is often the case with Bose headphones, low frequencies are generous, but here they have proper attack-and-decay control to go with their prodigious extension and considerable weight. This level of authority makes for decent rhythmic expression, and recordings have a proper sense of momentum as well as solid underpinnings. Detail levels concerning texture are high, and there’s punch and finesse in equal measure.

At the opposite end of the frequency range, treble sounds attack politely. Bose has erred on the side of caution here, but only a little. There’s sufficient bite and shine to the top end, just about, and certainly no suggestion of hardness even at volume. Some listeners may hanker after a little more high-end aggression, but then again, some listeners have never heard of tinnitus. 

In between, the Bose do uncomplicated good work with singers of all types and all levels of competence. The level of insight available through the midrange means no detail of timbre or technique is too minor or fleeting to escape the attentions of the QCE II. And as a result, vocalists are described with all their character and attitude intact.

The Bose consolidate the entire frequency range solidly, with a smooth, bump-free journey from top to bottom. Overall tonality is probably just fractionally on the warm side of neutral when EQ settings are left well alone. Naturally, it’s possible to skew the presentation to your taste within the app, although to be honest, you’ll be hard-pressed to make a genuine improvement. Different is about the best you can hope for.

It’s easy to imagine “good taste” being high on the sonic wish list when Bose was tuning the QCE II. That might go some way to explaining the slightly inhibited dynamic response to big Orff-style shifts in volume and intensity. There’s distance between quiet and loud here, of course, but it’s not quite as marked as it is through some other similarly priced alternatives. Where the low level dynamic variations in instruments or voices are concerned, though, the Bose are on much surer ground.

The Bose QuietComfort Earbuds II are smaller and lighter than the model they replace, which puts them on par with their obvious rivals. They are fully competitive, if not class-leading, where sound quality, battery life, and user interfaces are concerned. And when it comes to actually canceling noise, it looks like only Apple’s next-generation AirPods Pros have a shot at dethroning them. Which means we’ll be updating that best-of list right away.