Bose QuietComfort 45 Review

Bose, the audio designer brand that is recognized as a leader in good quality headphones. With the Bose QuietComfort 45 (QC45) headphones, they might not live up to everyone’s standards. Surprised to read that? Continue with the review to find out why.

Accessories

Included in the box is a hard travelling case to protect this expensive equipment, a 2.5 to 3.5mm auxiliary wire (since the port on the headphones is 2.5mm) measuring at just a little over 3 and a half feet.

A USB-A to USB-C cable is also present which is 12 Inches long. However, no charging adapter is included in the box as you’re expected to use your own or plug it into a computer.

There are some additional accessories sold separately such as an airplane auxiliary adapter, replacement ear cushions, as well as replacement items that originally come out of the box in case you lose anything.

Body Design

Most of the body is constructed of plastic. The most notable exceptions are the ear cushions and the headband containing glass-filled nylon to protect the shape of the headband if the headphones were dropped. Don’t expect the headphones to be water or sweat resistant as Bose doesn’t advertise any IP rating.

The headphones are okay to look at. Not the best looking but they don’t look awful either. That’s due to much of the exterior looking sleek but there are a ton of visible outlines of where the body is sealed and connected, easily visible microphones and large logos on each earcup. Many other competing premium headphones will have very small logos but since wearing Bose is somewhat a status symbol of the price you paid for your headphones, this was probably done intentionally (to show off).

The body doesn’t feel very tough for this price but isn’t too concerning either. I’ve placed it in my laptop bag with a bunch of other equipment and the headphones were just fine, this was also without the hard case.

The earcups can fold in to save a tiny bit more space in a bag but this also attributes to why the body doesn’t feel very tough despite the hefty price tag.

The headphones weigh a slightly hefty 240 grams. This is perfectly fine for most people, especially travellers. They feel heavier in the hand than they will on your head.

The QC45 comes in 4 colour options: black (the colour I used for my review), midnight blue, eclipse grey and white smoke.

This is an over-the-ear type headphones that are incredibly comfortable. When wearing them for lengthy sessions, even 5 hours non-stop I never felt any discomfort. In addition, my ears never got hot, irritated, or sweaty. Oddly enough, despite being over-the-ear type, when bending over or bending my head down, they slide forward probably a centimeter or two. This doesn’t sound like a big deal, but such minimal movement on your head is very noticeable and can be annoying, so I’m forced to adjust them.

The headband flex is a bit tighter on the side which makes the headphones slide forward at certain angles even stranger. Despite the slightly tight flex, it doesn’t feel uncomfortable when wearing it for lengthy periods.

Taking the QC45 off my ear and placing them around my neck isn’t comfortable at all. When trying to turn my head left, right, or down, my chin will constantly rub against the ear cups. I tried to get around this by rotating the earcups flat but then the earcups rub into my neck. The only workaround is to wear them on your head, above your ears but that can look a bit odd (not that many people would care and it’s something I personally do sometimes). Thankfully another workaround is to leave them on your ears, pause your media and enable “Aware” mode which allows you to hear everything around you, more on that later.

The interior of the headband has a decent amount of cushioning and adds to the level of comfort.

The earcup cushions are made of synthetic leather and provide excellent comfort. The padding is soft and thick which makes them a joy to wear.

The flexibility and rotation of the earcups are some of the best I’ve ever seen on headphones. Rotating them up, down, forward, and back achieves some large angles. In addition, the headband stretches to some decent lengths. The headband has a notched design when adjusting the length.

As written earlier, the earpad cushions are replaceable and Bose sells replacement cushions on their website.

Controls

The primary set of controls are on the right earcup. On the outside is the switch for power off/on and holding it on Bluetooth will enable paring mode. On the bottom is controls for volume up, the middle button which is referred to as the multi-function button serves multiple purposes. A single tap will play/pause content or answer/hung up a call, double press goes to next track and a triple tap goes to the previous track, and some additional commands for phone calls. The bottom button is to lower volume.

There are a couple of annoyances with the buttons. The first is that they’re all too close together as there isn’t any space between them. Quite often I double tap the lower volume button when I mean to press the multi-function button for the next track. Bose should have left some space between the buttons.

Another strange choice from Bose is having the user tap the multi-function button multiple times to go to the next or previous track which gets confusing. The multi-function button also has 7 different commands just for phone calls alone! But wait there’s more, holding it for 1 second turns on your phone’s voice assistant and listens for commands using the headphone’s microphones, which works decent even in noisy environments and is quick at providing responses. Bose doesn’t list which assistants will work but I can confirm it works with Google Assistant and Siri, I tested with Google Assistant). Why not make things easier for the user and allow long pressing the volume up button for next track and holding the lower volume button for previous track?

On the left earcup on the back, the only button is the Action button which allows switching between Quite Mode which turns on active noise cancelling (ANC) and Aware mode. I’ll cover both modes in further detail a bit below.

Unfortunately, passive play/pause is missing. That’s a common feature found in other headphones (even cheaper ones) such as the Jabra Elite 85h which will automatically pause your media when you take the headphones off or automatically play content when it detects that you’re wearing your headphones.

Noise Cancelling

Noise cancelling is incredible and is a shining example of why Bose if one of the best names in the headphones ANC industry. Quite Mode (ANC mode) does fantastic work at cancelling out low humming noises like a running furnace, plane engine noise, etc. General sounds such as kids playing in the other room, TV running in the background, etc. are cancelled out. Although the ANC level can’t be adjusted, it’s always at full ANC mode. Other headphones such as the Bose 700 allow the user to adjust the ANC levels. Of course, high pitch noises like emergency services sirens driving down your street, your kids yelling at you right next to you (which is what my kids do often to me) will come through a lot more noticeably, but this is expected of course with today’s technology. Is it better than the Sony XH-XM10005? No, XM5 perform just slightly better with higher pitch noises but the QC45 aren’t far behind.

Aware Mode will turn on the microphones and output surrounding noises into the headphones so you can hear your surroundings more easily. In fact, the sound is so incredibly clear, especially from someone talking to you, that it’s hard to believe I’m wearing headphones. It does an amazing job of outputting sound from within a 10-foot range. Beyond 10 feet, sound isn’t as easily captured but that’s not a big deal.

However, there is no “regular mode”, meaning no noise cancelling or hear through. Just simply placing the QC45 on and using them as plain old headphones. Sometimes having such a feature can lead to longer lasting battery performance. I’m not sure why Bose excluded this feature as it can be done simply through a software update. Technically there is a way to listen to them in regular mode and that’s by using the wired auxiliary connection.

Battery

Bose documentation states a 22-hour battery performance per full charge. In my testing I averaged about 23.5 hours while using ANC mode and similar results when using Aware Mode.

While my battery testing came close to Bose’s claims, 22 hours isn’t impressive at this price tag. Competing premium headphones from other makes such as the Sony XM5 and the Jabra Elite 85h average 30+ hours. To make things worse, the lack of having the ability to turn off ANC and Aware mode to potentially save battery doesn’t help the situation. When travelling, the last thing you want to worry about is charging more devices especially if you travel with a phone, laptop, smartwatch, camera, and headphones.

When it comes to recharge time, Bose states it’ll take 2 hours and that’s pretty much what I averaged in my multiple drain and recharge tests. Again, 2 hours to recharge a 24-hour lasting battery isn’t great. Competing headphones will charge in less time (usually 90 minutes) but yield longer lasting battery.

There is still one more bummer, you can’t use the headphones while they’re charging. If they’re on and you plug them in, they’ll turn off.

The USB-C charging port is located on the bottom of the right earcup.

Microphone Quality

The microphone quality isn’t great. Even while using it in a quiet environment, it sounds muffled as if the microphone is behind bubble wrap or something similar. You can make out what is being said by the other person, but it is disappointing at this price point.

It does just an okay job at suppressing background noise. While mimicking a noisy restaurant environment, it didn’t do a stellar job as some noise still came through, but it was thankfully suppressed and not overbearing.

In my wind test it didn’t do so well at blocking out wind noise. For the most part you can make out what is being said but a lot more wind noise comes through than preferred.

Audio Quality

Apart from ANC performance, this where the QC45 shine. Out of the box with basic sound profile, not surprisingly I found some songs to sound a bit flat. However, when playing some rock songs, I noticed that some of the highs were incredible. If I increased the highs in an equalizer for those rock sounds, it got too sharp for me, and I had to set the highs back to a flatter setting. This isn’t an issue with the QC45, since that’s how the songs were recorded but it just goes to show how well it performs for highs.

Mids performed rather well, and I didn’t need to adjust anything here. Whether I was listening to music or an interview, vocals sounded clear and natural.

The bass default setting is a bit too flat for my tastes. Thankfully increasing it in the equaliser showed what it’s capable of. I was able to get some beautiful low sounds without the audio getting distorted. The lows don’t compare to the Sony XM5 since their app has an additional bass adjustment on top of the regular equaliser, however I found that highs on the QC45 perform slightly better.

Now these headphones do support SBC and AAC codecs but not higher codecs such as aptX. However, I wouldn’t have you get discouraged as sound quality is top notch.

Sound performance for video games is no exception to the great audio quality. This includes action video games. When playing first person shooters, the sound stage performance was decent. Explosions from a distant sounded just like that, in the distance. Not the best I’ve heard on headphones, but it did an adequate job.

Software

There is a Bose app available for Android and iOS which allows for some additional customization, but not a lot. We’ll cover some of the most notable items available.

From the main screen there is “Modes” which is an additional way to switch between Quiet (ANC) and Aware mode. There’s also an equaliser but not a full one, Bose’s only has 3 notches for Bass, Mid and Treble. This isn’t a big deal as it gets the job done. The great thing is that if you adjust the equaliser on the app, it’ll carry over performance for sound being played from another device like a computer. Source allows you to pick which active device you want to switch to as it’ll display all connected devices available in memory here.

“Settings” is mostly generic items like renaming the display name for Bluetooth connectivity. Something worth adjust here is “Modes” which will remember which mode you left the QC45 in after turning it off, it’ll boot up in the same mode (ANC or Aware mode). Another item is “Self Voice” which allows you to hear your own voice during calls to check if you’re too loud.

Conclusion

So, you’ll probably look below and think that the score is a little unfair and deserves a higher score. The problem however is that the price is too high for the lack of features mentioned throughout the review. Competing headphones at similar price tags or even about $40 more like the Sony XM5, you can get way more value for your money.

When the QC45 are on sale, for example in Canada they can go on sale for $90 cheaper, then they become a must buy. Especially if you’re at that budget and saving money, then they definitely deliver good quality.