The Bose Quiet Control 30 is quite a marvel of engineering, sturdy as a Spartan warrior and pricey as a Dubai penthouse apartment to boot, with enough prominent features to keep us drooling helplessly all day long.
Bose who? Bose has always been rather synonymous with everything and anything premium, and as always they have made quite an effort to live up to our rather heavily detailed expectations with the release of their Bose QC 30. To start with, it’s probably not like what you are used to, but open your mind and consider that’s not necessarily a bad, bad thing. Change is good, right? It comes in a rather horsehoey, boomerang shape, which when draped around the neck like a slave/dog collar raised hackles and eyebrows aplenty when worn out of home and hearth. The design though effectively means the earbuds can be made much lighter and comfortable as your ears will gladly and loudly testify. As well as increasing available battery capacity, and dramatically too we might add. And no it doesn’t feel heavy or constricting to drape on like a pet python, just think of it as wearing a rather largish choker that just happens to pipe in sweet music straight to your head.
Slip in the finned buds into your eagerly waiting ears and prepare get blown far far away. The fit is super comfortable, secure as Fort Knox, and perfectly good for endless hours of continuous use before your ears start screaming horsely for relief. Sound quality is impressive, but not very much so with a bias towards the bass end invariably evident. It does come with user-adjustable noise-canceling, which are controlled via a set of buttons on the inline remote or via the Bose Connect app for both Android and iOS. When enabled, the feature works really awesomely better than what we had been previously used to, so we consider this as its main stand-out feature. But beware of using it on busy thoroughfares where you are supposed to keep continuously aware of your surroundings and rushing cars and people, else you might find yourself nursing a broken leg, or much worse.
As to be expected, mission control buttons are on the inline remote rather than the odd-shaped neck band. With each button also being distinctive and hence intuitive to use, and functions like volume control, track playing, pausing and skipping and call answering all present and accounted for. As well as the ambient mic button for ambient noise adjustment as needed. The Bose QC looks absolutely premium and lovely enough to win a beauty pageant or two, with a protective carry case for lugging it around thoughtfully provided.
It additionally comes strictly wireless, with no wired playability option available, which rather limits usability and customization, but not very much so. Battery life is a rated 10 hours, which however varies depending on volume levels and whether or not the ambient noise canceling feature is enabled. Price is a rather rich $300, which you might be loath to fork over. But, take a deep breath, consider its premium noise canceling feature, overall design, novel look and attention to detail and take it to the checkout desk. You can always say that Santa gave it to you anyways.