The best headphone mic we've ever tested

Summary

The Vergecast: "The Best Headphone Mic We've Ever Tested"

June 17, 2026 | Host: David Pierce | Guest: John Higgins (Senior Reviewer, The Verge)

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Episode Overview

In this engaging episode, David Pierce and senior reviewer John Higgins take a deep dive into a mostly overlooked but crucial component of modern headphones: the microphone. The focus is a real-world test of headphone mics in a noisy environment, comparing the industry standard AirPods Pro 3 to lesser-known and newly-released competitors. Their goal: to uncover which headphones actually provide the best call quality for both you—and the people on the other end of your call.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Why Headphone Microphones Matter

• David Pierce opens by stressing the importance of headphone mics in the age of remote work, AI assistants, and near-constant calls.
  • “The difference between a good microphone and a bad microphone is the difference between having a good AI experience and a bad AI experience. This thing matters.” (00:54)
• Call quality impacts perception: there's scientific evidence that people who sound good are taken more seriously.

The Test Environment

• John Higgins participates from a noisy Los Angeles coffee shop, creating a challenging but typical scenario for headphone calls.
  • “I am sitting at a coffee shop on Ventura Boulevard...there is a bunch of traffic right there. We just missed a hawk having a bird fight right above me.” (05:26)
  • The goal is to simulate a realistic, “brutal” environment you'd take calls in, not an artificial lab.

Headphones Put to the Test

1. Apple Wired EarPods (Lightning version)

• Old-school, wired $20 earbuds.
• Pros: Surprisingly good voice quality, clear audio.
• Cons: Picks up every single sound in the background—no noise suppression.
  • “The funniest thing about this microphone...you sound great.... But it picks up every little tiny bit of background noise.” (07:28, David)
  • Recommendation: Good as a cheap backup microphone at home, not for public spaces.

2. Apple AirPods Pro 3

• Industry mainstream, often the default choice for calls.
• Pros: Reduces some background noise, solid overall clarity.
• Cons: Still lets in a fair bit of environmental sound, voice is less “rich” than EarPods.
  • “Your voice is less rich than the EarPods, but I'm getting less background noise, but I'm not getting no background noise.” (09:32, David)
  • Background noise (e.g. motorcycle) transformed but still heard: “On the earpods, I would have heard a motorcycle. Oh, yeah, this made it sound like a shopping cart.” (10:16, David)
  • John’s Insight: People overestimate AirPods’ mic quality because they never hear what others do.

3. EarFun Air Pro 4 Plus

• Lesser-known, budget-focused brand.
• Pros: Cuts almost all background noise for the listener.
• Cons: Significant voice compression, tinny sound (speakerphone-like).
  • “I'm immediately hearing next to no background noise...you sound terrible.” (11:47, David)
  • “This would be the most pleasant phone call to have of the three...there's not so much constant noise.” (15:04, David)
  • Cost: $99 list, often ~$80.
  • Feature Highlight: Supports AuraCast for multi-device connectivity and accessibility.

4. Soundcore Liberty 5 Pro

• Brand new headphones from Soundcore (by Anker).
• Pros: Exceptional mic quality; minimal background noise, clear and natural voice with slight compression.
  • “This is like multiple orders of magnitude better than anything we've tested so far. This is nuts, isn't it?” (19:38, David)
  • “I'm hearing no background noise. Like, flatly none… this is almost exactly the balance you would hope for.” (21:08-21:18, David)
  • John: “Yeah, they're the best quality I have ever heard on a pair of earbuds or headphones.” (19:46)
  • Tech: Uses a proprietary “Thus” chip (T-H-U-S), enabling advanced processing.
  • Price: $170; $230 version adds case with touchscreen, AI transcription.
  • Other Notables: Highly customizable sound via listening preference test; top-tier noise cancellation.

5. Sennheiser Momentum 5

• Brand-new, high-end over-ear headphones; premium price point ($400).
• Pros: Decent voice fidelity, solid noise cancellation when not talking.
• Cons: Background noise “spikes” when speaking—processing artifacts can be distracting.
  • “The more you talk, the more background I hear, which is weird and not what I expected.” (27:20, David)
  • John: Over-ear physical design makes beamforming and bone conduction trickier; less consistent than earbuds.

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Comparative Results

| Headphone | Mic Quality | Noise Suppression | Comfort for Listener | Price | |-----------------------------|----------------------------------|----------------------|----------------------------|--------------| | Wired EarPods | Very natural voice, clear | None | Poor in noisy places | ~$20 | | AirPods Pro 3 | Good, somewhat compressed | Some | Okay, but still noisy | ~$200* | | EarFun Air Pro 4 Plus | Tinny, highly compressed | Excellent | Pleasant for long calls | ~$80 | | Soundcore Liberty 5 Pro | Outstanding clarity & balance | Excellent | Best of the group | $170-$230 | | Sennheiser Momentum 5 | Good, some artifacting | Inconsistent | Distracting in conversation| $400 |

*On sale at time of episode.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “You should know what it sounds like to the other person when you do this to them.” (06:44, David)
• “People overestimate AirPods’ mic quality because...they never hear what others do.” (Summarized, 10:42-11:24, John)
• “This is like multiple orders of magnitude better than anything we've tested so far.” (19:38, David, on Soundcore Liberty 5 Pro)
• “Every time I use them, I feel great.” (21:42, John, on Soundcore Liberty 5 Pro)
• “It’s a real bummer that…we’ve all just accepted that's the quality that you generally get when you're on a call or you're in a meeting.” (31:23, David)
• On progress: “Because Soundcore got it right, then there’s a chance other companies are going to take note... Companies love to beat other companies at things.” (31:59, John)

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Important Timestamps

• 00:02 – Episode intro: Why headphone mics matter
• 05:23 – Introduction of John Higgins, real-world test setup
• 07:03 – Wired EarPods test
• 08:35 – AirPods Pro 3 test
• 11:47 – EarFun Air Pro 4 Plus test
• 19:29 – Soundcore Liberty 5 Pro test (breakthrough quality)
• 25:10 – Sennheiser Momentum 5 test
• 28:52 – Wrap-up: Why headphone mics aren’t progressing faster, future hopes

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Conclusion & Takeaways

• Soundcore Liberty 5 Pro “absolutely” won the test, with microphone clarity and background noise suppression well ahead of anything else, and about half the price of AirPods Pro 3.
• Cheaper brands like EarFun can outdo Apple's mainstream options in noise suppression but usually sacrifice voice naturalness.
• Over-ear models (Sennheiser) struggle with mic consistency, mainly due to physics/design constraints.
• There’s a market opportunity for manufacturers to improve mics as voice-AI and remote work needs grow.
• Progress is slow (“variations on a middle ground”), but breakthroughs like the Soundcore Liberty 5 Pro could push other brands to prioritize microphone performance.

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Future Directions

David expresses interest in running future tests with flagship over-ear headphones from Bose and Sony—frequent choices for travelers—suggesting the show will keep tracking progress in real-world headphone microphone tech.

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If you care how you sound—or what others hear when you take calls in public—this episode makes a compelling case for giving lesser-known brands a chance. The Soundcore Liberty 5 Pro just raised the bar for everyone.

Transcript

[A]

Hello and welcome to the vergecast, the flagship podcast of active noise cancellation. I'm your friend David Pearce, and today on the show, we're talking about headphones. Specifically, we're talking about headphone microphones, which I have long believed are just a severely underrated bit of technology. We do a lot of headphone testing here at the Verge. We all wear headphones all day. We all care a lot about sound quality. And if you read a lot of headphone reviews, you can get super deep into noise cancellation features and you can get super deep into the. The interface, you can get super deep into sound quality. And then there's always just one line that's like, ah, microphone does calls. I want to know more. And so every once in a while on this show, we get somebody to bring us a bunch of different devices and we test their microphones. I care about this just as a person, but also because I think this technology matters, right? Like, we all make calls increasingly on these devices, increasingly out in the world. And knowing how you sound to other people is important, both because you want to be a good person who doesn't make everyone's lives miserable, and also, also because there is lots of evidence, scientific evidence, that shows if you sound good, people take you more seriously. It's just a real thing. At the same time, if you think about the way that we are all learning how to interact with AI systems, a lot of that is by voice, A lot of that is through headphones. The difference between a good microphone and a bad microphone is the difference between having a good AI experience and a bad AI experience. This thing matters. It also just makes for really fun and often terrible podcast audio. So John Higgins, the Verge's senior reviewer, is going to come on. He's got a bunch of stuff. He is, I assume, somewhere very noisy, and we're going to do some tests. But first, here's everything else happening on the Verge today. This is 90 seconds on the Verge for Wednesday, June 17, 2026. Big Smart Home Day. The new Matter 1.6 Smart Home Spec launched today, and stop me if you've heard of this before, but it is supposedly going to make it easier to control your smart home. Specifically, Matter 1.6 includes this new feature called joint fabric, which makes it easier to set up a smart device like a light or a sensor or whatever, and immediately, immediately have it be controlled by Alexa, Apple, Home, Gemini and all of your other stuff all at once. Supposedly, it all just works. There's also a new NFC setup feature that lets you tap a device to your phone to set it up rather than scanning a QR code. As with all things matter, these are good ideas and I really hope they work. And as with all things matter, I am not remotely holding my breath. Meanwhile, the Google Home Speaker, Google's first smart speaker in six years, is finally up for pre order and finally has a ship date next Thursday, June 25. The speaker was announced last fall and for $99 it promises to be the best way to get Gemini Smart Home Control into your house. It also looks really good in red and apparently sounds really good. There is a remarkable, interesting smart speaker thing happening right now. Alexa, Apple, Home, Siri AI and Gemini are all promising these big AI upgrades to how you control your home. It's all been kind of iffy so far, but we'll see how much these new things really change the game. And finally, reviews for Toy Story 5 are starting to come out. A movie in the bad guy is basically an iPad.

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[D]

They get it.

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You can read more about all of [e-mail] that is 90 seconds for Wednesday, June 17th.

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Visit betterhelp.com VoxPods all right, now let's test some headphones. We like to do this every once in a while because I think we review a lot of headphones and we talk about headphones a lot and we talk mostly about sound quality. And that's fine and good. That's very important. But as we live in a world where we spend more time talking to our devices, whether we're talking to assistants or we're talking to various dictation apps, the microphone actually matters a lot. Especially if you believe in AI and we're all gonna record our lives and do everything, the microphone in your headphones becomes very important. So every once in a while we come on this show and we test some microphones. Joining me now to help do it, the Verge of Senior reviewer, John Higgins. Hi, John.

[C]

Hey, David.

[A]

Where are you right now?

[C]

I am in the beautiful San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles, California. I am sitting at a coffee shop on Ventura Boulevard, facing west down Ventura Boulevard. For the Tom Petty fans, it is right around lunchtime. So there is a bunch of traffic right there. We just missed a hawk having a bird fight right above me.

[D]

So, you know, there's a lot of stuff going on.

[A]

I like this. This is about as brutal an environment as you could like on a day to day basis find yourself.

[D]

Right.

[A]

Like we've done some of these that are sort of deliberately out of scope of a normal time. You would take a phone call or spend time talking to your phone, but this is like there are probably people near you on phone calls or talking to their computers or doing zooms or whatever right now. So this, I think, I feel like this is a fair test in a way that I really like.

[C]

Exactly. I actually was worried when I sat down and really listened to everything that was going on around me and I thought, this is just going to be chaotic. But there was a woman at a table right next to me that was on a phone call with some AirPods and I'm like, well, yes, it might be chaotic, but it's very truthful. This is what people do.

[A]

This is right. Yeah. For better or for worse. So this is also one of the reasons I like to do this episode from time to time, is to make people realize the hoarders they are putting onto other people when they take calls in environments like this. Like, you should know what it sounds like to the other person when you do this to them.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

What headphones are you on right now?

[C]

These are the wired EarPods. They are the lightning version, which I have through a lightning to USB C adapter. But yeah, the Wired. You can see there's the microphone here, which is on the street side. I never use these.

[A]

Yeah. So these are like the $20 headphones that are floating around somewhere in most people's houses.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

The funniest thing about this microphone to me is you sound great. Like, it's actually as a. Just as a microphone. Very good. And I recommend these to people all the time as sort of backup podcast microphones because it's a good mic and you sound good, but it picks up every little tiny bit of background noise. Every tiny bit. And so this is like, this is one that you're totally fine to use, like walking around your house, but I really do not recommend using out in the world.

[C]

Yeah, well, they. They don't have a noise suppression really happening with them. They're just like, here's what you get.

[E]

Good luck.

[A]

Yeah, it is a microphone and nothing else.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

So you've brought a bunch of stuff to test, and I think the one I wanna start with, I want you to guide us a little bit, but I wanna start with the AirPods Pro 3, because that I think in terms of, like, as a useful control, I think that's a good one.

[B]

That is.

[A]

It's a very mainstream. Lots of people have them, and we're about to see kind of what's better and what's worse. But I wanna see the sort of basic, most mainstream options. So let's, let's switch to that and see how we do that. Sound good?

[C]

Okay, Sounds good. Let's do it.

[A]

Let's go.

[C]

I am now on the AirPods Pro 3.

[A]

Okay, this is fascinating. So you're clearly in a very noisy place because the AirPods Pro 3 actually do a pretty good job of like, sort of normal DIN noise suppression. Like, if you go on an airplane, the AirPods Pro do a pretty good job of canceling that out. But I'm hearing a lot of background noise still.

[C]

It's interesting too, because a lot of people talk about the call clarity of the AirPods Pro 3 or AirPods Pro in general. I mean, since they were released, it's been sort of a talking point. And I've always been like, they're fine.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

But they're not the thing to focus on. They're not the. The end all, be all of call quality. They're just, okay, you can hear me. Can hear other stuff too.

[A]

I'm sort of thrown by this one, because what I expected and what we get from a lot of these earbuds and what I suspect we'll hear some of here is they compress the crap out of your voice in service of getting rid of all the background noise. And so it's like you don't sound as good, but I don't hear the background as much. This is kind of splitting the middle in both cases. Like, your voice is less rich than the EarPods, but I'm getting less background noise, but I'm not getting no background noise. Like, I just heard a sound that sounded like somebody wheeled a shopping cart right past your head.

[C]

That was a person that just pulled up on their Ducati motorcycle and stopped seeing, like, they just parked on the sidewalk.

[A]

Okay, perfect example. On the earpods. On the earpods, I would have heard a motorcycle. Oh, yeah, this made it sound like a shopping cart. So, like, that's actually. That is a perfect example, but it doesn't. It's not unpleasant to listen to, but it is. I am very aware that there is a lot of background noise here. And it's not. It's very like beam formed on your voice, which I can sort of hear. But I'm not as impressed with this as I expected to be, actually.

[C]

That is, I feel a common response when I talk to people and tell them and like, when I do comparisons, because that's one of the things I do with reviews is I have whatever earbuds I'm reviewing, and then I bring along a couple others and I will talk to somebody that I trust their opinion on audio quality, and I'll switch between them. I'll do a call. I'll be like, okay, let me call you back. And I'll switch over to something else and I'll call them, but I won't tell them what I'm on. And quite often when I tell them, oh, yeah, those ones that you didn't like, Those were the AirPods. What? But I use those all the time.

[D]

Like.

[C]

Yes, you do.

[A]

Okay. Yeah. I am confident everyone has either made or received a call from a pair of AirPods Pro 3s. This is really interesting. Okay, so let's actually play this game your way. I want you to switch to one of the other ones you have with you, but I don't want you to tell me which one. And we're going to see how it feels. So let's pause here and switch and get to the next one. Here we go.

[D]

Sounds good.

[A]

Okay, you've switched. I'm immediately hearing next to no background noise, but let me hear what you sound like.

[D]

So these are brand new earbuds that I switch. Well, not brand new, but these are newer earbuds that I've switched to. I'm going to keep talking because the traffic has actually died down a little bit. So I want there to be a little bit more representative. Yeah, there's some jeeps that are going by, but yeah, these are, these came out last October, I want to say.

[A]

Okay, so this is what I expected the AirPods Pro to sound like, which is I'm getting basically no background noise. Um, it's, it's, it's almost all gone except for like the occasional little flare of background, but I'm hardly hearing anything. You sound terrible.

[D]

Okay, that was my next question is what the compression would have been like on these as well.

[A]

It's very compressed. You're like, I can, I can hear you clearly enough. Um, but it sounds like you are in a tin can. Yeah, I'm, I'm having trouble figuring out how I feel about this actually, because this is actually more like if I was, if you and I were going to spend two hours on the phone right now, I would rather have this than the AirPods. Just because there's not so much constant noise.

[D]

Right. You don't need to do as much mental work in order to understand what's happening.

[A]

Exactly. But then like somebody just honked and I heard it. Like that's, there's just like little moments that I'm hearing, but that's about it.

[D]

Well, let me see if this will affect your feelings on that. Okay. These are less than half the price of the AirPods Pro 3.

[A]

What are these?

[D]

Even when the AirPods Pro 3 are on sale for around 200 bucks, these are half the price or less.

[A]

What are these headphones?

[D]

These are. Am I going to get this name right? Because there's so many words to it. These are the EarFun Air Pro 4 Plus, that is.

[A]

Okay, so this is, if I'm not mistaken, Earfun is one of those kind of random Amazon brands that pops up out of nowhere every once in a while. The, like, straight out of a Chinese factory somewhere kind of brands.

[D]

I wouldn't put them quite in that same category. Having met and conversed with the owners and members of the company, it's not quite the level of pop up Chinese company that just pulls a whole bunch of OEM stuff and throws stuff together.

[A]

Right.

[D]

They actually do research and they develop things and. But they are very much a inexpensive brand. Their hallmark is stuff under 100 bucks.

[A]

Yeah. Earfun, if I remember correctly, is at the top of a lot of lists of best cheap headphones like if you want a really cheap pair of headphones. This is a brand I've heard more and more recently is like, this is just the right place to start if you want whatever $7,500 headphones. How much are these specifically?

[D]

These are list price 99.99, but are almost always on sale for about 80 bucks.

[A]

Okay, so this is. We're looking at like a third of AirPods Pro prices from their full price.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

Wow. And I'm sure they don't sound as good audio wise and whatever.

[D]

And like they sound fine. Yeah.

[A]

That's how I would describe this too.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Like this is completely normal fine phone call. You sound kind of like you're on speaker a little far away from your phone. But this so far, of the three that we've tried, this is like you don't sound the best. But this would be the most pleasant phone call to have of the three that we've tried so far. I think.

[D]

Yeah, yeah. They make good stuff. I'm a fan of most things that they come out with. Yeah.

[A]

Earfun, who knew?

[D]

And they use AuraCast, which I really love too.

[A]

What is AuraCast?

[D]

For people who don't know, Oracast is a Bluetooth standard that allows you to connect to other oracast broadcast. So what you. As opposed to like multi point connection on Bluetooth where you can connect two devices. Oracast is an unlimited amount.

[A]

Oh, cool. Okay.

[D]

And it's found a lot on hearing aids. So it's a great way. It's a great accessible feature that I really am just waiting for it to really take off and just be found everywhere. There are TVs that you can have that have overcast. The LG OLEDs have overcast and you can connect to them. So it's a really great technology and yeah, I'm just ready for it to take off and be everywhere. Airports, lecture halls, anywhere where you need hearing assistance.

[A]

Yeah, that's super cool. All right, let's switch. And I assume everything you want to try here is more expensive than these. These are bound to be the cheapest ones.

[D]

These are the cheapest.

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Whoa.

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Huh?

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Hang on, let me see that.

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[A]

What do we have now?

[D]

These are the Soundcore Liberty 5 Pro. It just came out a few weeks ago.

[A]

This is like multiple orders of magnitude better than anything we've tested so far. This is nuts, isn't it? You like just recently reviewed these, right?

[D]

Yeah, they're the best quality I have ever heard on a pair of earbuds or headphones.

[A]

I am blown away by how good this is. What, what is Soundcore? That's not a brand I'm super familiar with.

[D]

It's the audio brand of Anker. Oh.

[A]

I spent a bunch of time with Anker headphones kind of at the very beginning of. Of their headphone journey. And they made a lot of, like, pretty good, pretty inexpensive, like on the level of the ear fund stuff we were just talking about a few minutes ago.

[D]

Absolutely.

[A]

These are significantly more expensive than that. Right.

[D]

They are more expensive than what they normally have done, which is $100 around or less. But they're not AirPods. They are 170.

[A]

Okay. So like dead center.

[D]

They have a more expensive version, which is 230, but the earbuds in both are exactly the same. The only difference that you're getting by stepping up is a case that has a larger touchscreen on it. And it also has AI transcription and summary technology. If you, like, record a lecture or something like that, it'll. It'll transcribe it and then give you a summary.

[A]

Okay, got it. I. I mean, yeah. I cannot believe how good these sound. I'm hearing no background noise. Like, flatly none.

[D]

There's a lot of traffic happening right now. Yeah.

[A]

Nothing. And you are. You're still a little compressed, but not nearly as compressed as, as even like the. The earphones we were looking at. This is almost exactly the balance you would hope for because. Right. I'm willing to give up a tiny bit of your voice fidelity to not hear background noise. And it feels like I'm only giving up a tiny bit of fidelity to get no background noise. I am blown away by how good this sounds.

[D]

Yeah, these are amazing. Every time I use them, I feel great.

[A]

Is your sense that there's any new or unusual technology in here, like, what did Anchor do to make this work? This.

[D]

Well, they created their own chip that they're calling the Thus chip. I hate the name T H U S. Oh, yeah.

[A]

I don't like that at all.

[D]

So it's, you know, similar to like Apple's H2 chip. Right. Apple makes their own chip. They put it only in Apple products and Beats products eventually. And, you know, Sony has their chip that they put into their processing to do the processing. So this is Anchor just sort of making a. Making a bid to compete against them. And my understanding is that chip will be used across the Anchor lineup. So we're talking about Soundcore and we're talking about smart Home things and robot vacuums. And so they're going to try and sort of connect their entire ecosystem with this dust chip. See the terrible name.

[A]

It really is a terrible name.

[D]

It's just hard to say.

[A]

There's a fascinating anchor story in there that is like Anchorage really came up by taking that sort of direct out of a Chinese factory stuff and up leveling it a little bit. Little better design, little better quality. Just kind of improving everything and building a brand around it. But now to start to do things like its own chip is really. That's a leap ahead in.

[D]

Yeah, it's a big leap.

[A]

What this company thinks it can be. And I mean, just based on this, it's onto something like this. Are these good headphones otherwise?

[D]

I think they're great.

[A]

Okay.

[D]

The sound out of the box isn't the best, but they have this sort of hearing preference test that you do. They. They play a sound, a music clip twice, and then they say, which one do you like better? And then they do two more clips, which one you like better? And they do that seven times. And it fine tunes the audio to be something that you enjoy listening to. And I really like the way that it tuned it. It fixed an issue that they had with the mid range frequencies, like voices and snare and stuff. Made it more present and snappy and kind of tamed the bass, which is. I enjoy bass, but this was a little excessive for me.

[A]

Fair. Yeah. I find a lot of headphones now really, really, really just want to beat you to death with bass. Yeah, it's like TVs in brightness. They're just like, what if we just go super duper hard on this one thing? You're going to love it.

[D]

The noise canceling on these is also great too. Just to say they are some of the top noise canceling like as good as the AirPods Pro 3.

[A]

So this immediately goes on the list of like best headphones you can buy. And especially for that much less than the AirPods. That's pretty competitive.

[D]

Yeah, yeah, it's my top recommendation, I would say.

[A]

Fair enough. Score one for Soundcore.

[C]

Geez.

[A]

All right, I think you got one more right. You want to, you want to switch to this one? I feel like I feel bad not saving this one till last now because I don't think there's any chance. But hey, let's see what we can do. All right, we got one more. Let's switch. All right, we're on our last one. You look a little like you're wearing like air traffic control earmuffs what do we have this time?

[D]

These are the Sennheiser Momentum 5s. Just came out like a week ago from when we're, when we're doing this. So I'm very curious to get your impression on how they sound.

[A]

So this is an interesting one. The, the voice fidelity is pretty solid, but I would even put this as like slightly above AirPods Pro 3 level. Like you, you sound good. Not great, but like, but good. Um, but I'm definitely getting more spikes in the background noise than a couple of the other ones we've tried. Like it's doing a pretty good job. Like in, in the. It's sort of like where the ear fun one was where like most of the normal noise seems to be gone. But then I'm like hearing spikes of people talking and stuff behind you as you're going.

[D]

Yeah, there's some. Been some people that have sort of walked by as they were chatting. So.

[A]

And then when you talk the background noise picks up, which the soundcore one was doing a really good job of not doing.

[D]

Interesting.

[A]

So there's. I'm getting more background noise when you're talking than when you're not. So you, you like, you can sort of hear it. Processing. It's one of those sets of headphones that like I can listen to the processing as we're talking, which is super

[D]

distracting in my opinion.

[A]

It is kind of distracting. I agree. Especially when it's like it's come. It's coming and going as we have a conversation. I am neither impressed nor disappointed by these. I would say.

[D]

Well, they are 400 bucks. Yeah.

[A]

In general, it seems like the over ear headphones tend to have great mics. Like is that just a physics thing? Because the other ones can actually point their microphones towards your mouth and use beamforming that way.

[D]

Yeah, I think the earbuds are usually better at beamforming. They also usually have some form of bone conduction that they're using in order to localize where your voice is coming from. And with padding that doesn't really work nearly as well. Yeah. So they really rely on, on beamforming that screen and you know, some do it better than others. Sony, generally their, their headphones do a good job, but they don't. They don't match the earbuds generally. Yeah.

[A]

But yeah, it's very funny when you're not talking. It does really good noise cancellation. But it feels like the more you talk, the more background I hear, which is weird and not what I expected.

[D]

Yeah, yeah, I can see that because

[C]

it's trying to figure out when I'm

[D]

talking, it makes it more difficult for it to figure out what to pay attention to.

[A]

Right.

[D]

And so, you know, my frequency range is going to match or be close to a lot of the noise that's happening around me. So it just has trouble deciding what to let in.

[A]

What's your take on the Momentum 5s. Otherwise, there are a lot of people at the Verge who feel like Sennheiser deserves more shine and credit in the high end headphone space.

[D]

Interesting. I was not aware of that. I think that they are good. Generally. I tend to not be a huge fan of their sound tuning. They. They sometimes are a little bit more what we call audio file tuning, which can sometimes push the high end a little too much because most audio files are older and have also hearing. So it's not something that I generally gravitate towards. They don't sound bad by any means. It's just not for my taste in general. Yeah.

[A]

Okay, that's fair. All right, I think we're done here. Switch back to the soundcores, which, spoiler alert, won this test. And let's finish up here. So switch back to those and then let's talk this out. I have to say, it's like my heart just relaxes when you switch back to these headphones. It's so much better. Okay, so last question and then I'll let you go here. It feels to me like we've been doing these tests a long time and microphones aren't getting sort of hugely better. I think, like, part of the reason I'm so surprised by these soundcores is they're the first meaningfully better set of headphones in terms of mic quality, kind of that I can remember since we've been doing this test. Everything else is kind of variations on a middle ground. What is your sense of whether this is just some very hard physics problem to solve or it's just low on the list of things that microphone or that headphone manufacturers care about. Like why aren't these getting better at kind of a rapid pace that you would hope for?

[D]

I think it's a little bit of both. I think they are. It's incredibly difficult to cancel out noise that is unpredictable. It takes a whole lot of processing power. Also, the person that has purchased the earbuds is not hearing that. Yeah. They're not the ones that are experiencing it every day.

[A]

I really think that's part of it.

[D]

So they're going to concentrate more on sound quality on anc on comfort, on other features that you might want to use. You know, like there's. We're seeing the live translation popping up all over the place now. It's those sort of things, heart rate sensors and workout headphones, things that are. The person that has purchased the headphones uses on a daily or near daily basis and experiences on a daily or near daily basis. Whereas they might make loads of calls a day or be in a whole bunch of zoom meetings all day, but they're not hearing what everyone else is hearing. And we all just have kind of accepted that's the quality that you generally get when you're on a call or you're in a meeting.

[A]

Yeah, it's a real bummer that. That's right. But that does feel right. My hope again is that this increased focus on capturing audio, both for AI purposes and for assistance and stuff like that might turn that. That it's like I might not notice that I sound like crap to you, but I am certainly going to notice that Siri can't hear me on a set of headphones. And so I'm hopeful that that might start to turn up the heat for companies to make microphones better. But I've, I've been hopeful for that for a while. So maybe, maybe I'm just not going to ever get my way here. But hey, at least, at least Soundcore got it right.

[D]

Right? And I think because Soundcore got it right, then there's a chance that other companies are going to take note, be like, okay, they're getting, you know, people are saying that the call quality on those Soundcores are amazing. We need to beat them. Companies love to beat other companies at things.

[A]

It's very true. It's very true. All right, well, that is a hopeful note to end on. I sincerely hope you're right and I'm going to go literally buy a pair of these sound cores right now. I could not be more excited to buy a pair of headphones I absolutely do not need.

[D]

They're really good.

[A]

All right, John, good to see you. Thanks, buddy.

[D]

Thanks, David.

[A]

All right, that's it for the show. Thank you to John for being here. Sorry about all the terrible audio and thank you as always for watching and listening. I want to do this again relatively soon, this time with like all of the high end over ear noise cancellation headphones like the Boses and the Sonys of the world. Those are the ones I think a lot of people have that they were on planes and they walk through airports yammering on phone calls. I want to know how those sound too. So we're going to have to get a bunch of those in and test them out. If there's a pair of headphones you want us to add to this test or anything else you want us to talk about, we absolutely love hearing from you. You can call the hotline 866-verge11. You can send us an email vergecasthe verge.com youm can find me on Threads and Blue sky and anywhere else. Hit us up. We love hearing all of your feedback about anything and everything. Also, as a reminder, the best thing you can do to support all of this stuff that we're up to is subscribe to the Verge theverge.com subscribe it gets you all of our podcasts with no ads, including this one. It gets you all of our subscriber exclusive newsletters. It gets you all of our coverage of headphone reviews and everything else. Theverge.com subscribe we appreciate it. The Vergecast is Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. This episode was produced by Eric Gomez, Brandon Kieffer, Travis Larchuk and Aaron Locasio. We will see you tomorrow. Rock and Roll.

[B]

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