Beoplay H5 Review: B&O's Bluetooth Earbuds Sound Great, but They're Pricey

[dealmaker]

I like the look of these - but they simply won't work for most gym users....as soon as your ear gets a little sweaty you will be struggling with bass response.....and then they will fall out of your ear every five minutes......even if you hook the cable over your ear (which becomes uncomfortable) . I have tried numerous brands......all struggled with this issue. Bose ones (with the little extra ear thing that wedges against your ear) got closest but still worked loose - the Jaybirds (with the similar ear "thing") were OK, not as good as the Bose as the ear "thing" itself worked loose, but failed after 8 weeks, due to sweat ingress....and had terrible sealing issues for bass response.

I HATE to say it, as I generally view their products as junk, but the Beats "Powerbeats" in ears with the over the ear hook - are the most realiable "activity" headphones I have yet used. They have a good seal and never work loose due to the ear hook.....battery life is good. I have literally tried everything to make them fail - they have been soaked in sweat but, as yet, have shrugged off everything I have thrown at them.....maybe Apple's involvement has improved quality?

 

[Chair-Sama]

Not at all. I've been using Bluetooth A2DP headsets since 2011. I own a pair of JayBird's that have lasted me ~5 years I use at the gym, no wires getting in the way of lifting. It's no different than vehicle Bluetooth Audio streaming, sounds great in my Audi. I have a pair of Bang & Olufsen H8's for travel - excellent sound quality, handsfree gesture controls on the right ear piece, 12+ hours on a 30 min charge, and additional batteries can be used to swap out between charges. A decent pair of Bluetooth headsets shouldn't cost more than $50-60 now.

I honestly don't understand the endless complaints about the possibility of losing a dated 3.5mm jack on a mobile phone. If you're using Apple's earbuds that's your first mistake.

bingo.
you literally nailed that one right on the head.
love the people complaining about sound quality, and then go and used stock standard apple headphones.
now i understand a audiophile with a set that cost them a couple hundred dollars,

 

[RamGuy]

I really like the look and design of these earphones, but I don't like in ears. I own the h6 headphones now and I don't think it gets much better, only thing that slightly bugs me is the wire, but having tried the h7 and h8 which are both wireless, I decided they weigh too much due to the battery weight. I won't trade comfort for wireless.

I may consider these again when v2 is released in a year or two...

BeoPlay H6 and H7 shares pretty much the same audio signature and sound quality. The BeoPlay H8 on the other hand sounds really different, it features a much more coloured and dark/warm sound. A little bit too coloured for my liking to be honest. I enjoy more reference and clear, some might call it "analytical" sound and the H8's are far from it, but the H6's and H7's are one of the best headphones on the market without going for some real audiophile solutions that would require it's own dedicated amplifier to be driven.


I work at a audio retailer so I have demoed pretty much every relevant bluetooth headphones currently on the market and nothing beats the BeoPlay H7.

Bang & Olufsen got pretty much everything right with that model. They look fantastic, they sport great premium materials that does not only look great but they feel great and they seem to last forever. I've had mine for our a year, and I've used them pretty much every day and they still look new. The only thing that feels worn are the ear muffs as they've become quite loose in their shape.


What makes the BeoPlay H7 so great compared to the competition is the fact that they got no downside to them, none at all. They support both regular A2DP / SBC, APT-X and AAC. So no matter your devices, you'll get the best audio bitrate possible. For Apple devices that would be AAC, for high-end Android devices that would be APT-X and for all others that would be regular A2DP SBC.

Most of the competition does not support all three. Even the brand new Bose Quite Comfort 35 does not support either AAC or APT-X, which is beyond me. Rumors has it that the hardware does support AAC so they might get it through a firmware upgrade in the future, but what gives? They are the newest on the market, and they don't support anything other than regular A2DP SBC...


Sennheiser also got some really nice wireless headphones with their Momentum Wireless series. But they don't support AAC for Apple devices so you end up with very limited bandwidth. Not to mention that they are not that portable at all, very clunky design and they are quite heavy as well. And the Bluetooth range and stability is all over the place. Especially for Apple devices not support APT-X.



BeoPlay H7 get's everything right. The Bluetooth range and stability are among the best on the market. They support all three codecs. They look and feel great. They are quite portable as you can collapse them together. They even feature removable batteries and upgradeable firmware.

The only thing they are lacking, which is a new feature that wasn't available when they got made is the new multipoint Bluetooth which makes it a braze having Bluetooth headphones connected to more devices at the same time (maximum of three). After testing this on the Bose QC35 it felt somewhat outdated being forced to repair my BeoPlay H7's every time I switched from my iPhone, to my iPad to my Mac.



Something some of you might miss is active noise cancellation. I don't miss it, they are around-ear so they feature passive noise reduction by design. And active noise cancellation does affect audio quality in a negative way. So I will take no active noise cancellation instead of always on active noise cancellation like on the Bose QC35 and Sennheiser Momentum Wireless.
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bingo.
you literally nailed that one right on the head.
love the people complaining about sound quality, and then go and used stock standard apple headphones.
now i understand a audiophile with a set that cost them a couple hundred dollars,

Why all the hate on the standard Apple earbuds? People seem to hate on these for no apparent reason, other than hating for the sake of hating and it being "cool" (?).

The Apple Earbuds are actually rather good for the price. And they feature a rather impressive microphone considering the price. And they feature a design that is not going into your ear canal, which is something many users appreciate.

I personally never use them as I do prefer IEM's for their noise isolation, and I'm more of an audiophile as I've spoiled my self with great IEM's like Westone UM3X, Westone 4R and Shure SE846 and normally use headphones like Sennheiser HD800 and B&O BeoPlay H7.


But still, after listening to lots of earbuds for under $50, the Apple Earbuds remains among the best of the bunch.

 

[macuser82uk]

I have had B&O headphones "Wired version" the quality in the headphone is superb but the thing is they just don't last at all and to be honest they are not worth their price tags for what they are asking for them.

A couple of weeks a go I bought some Anker bluetooth headphones and they have been better then the B&O ones I have had in the past and they were a fraction of the cost to and they provide up to 8 hours battery life for £20 which was a complete bargain if these every break in the feature I would just replace them straight away with no problems

 

[32828870]

I have had B&O headphones "Wired version" the quality in the headphone is superb but the thing is they just don't last at all and to be honest they are not worth their price tags for what they are asking for them.

A couple of weeks a go I bought some Anker bluetooth headphones and they have been better then the B&O ones I have had in the past and they were a fraction of the cost to and they provide up to 8 hours battery life for £20 which was a complete bargain if these every break in the feature I would just replace them straight away with no problems

I'm sorry you've had bad experiences with Bang & Olufsen products. Which model headsets did/do you have? While I haven't experienced difficulties, I know they stand behind their products and I highly recommend contacting them. I still own a corded phone from 1999 (yeah lol) that I use in my office landline. In 2005-6 the display began losing vibrancy and they replaced it with a new model as they still sold it.

Additionally (not sure if I mentioned it in this thread or another as there are two Bluetooth headset threads I'm currently bouncing between), firmware updates have been pushed out on a regular basis for many of their products using a Mac application downloaded from B&O. I've used it to update my H8's even though they're working perfectly. Let me find the thread on it as it was helpful for a lot of people who were the few experiencing troubles with their H8's and it helped. Also, Bang & Olufsen replaced 2015 H8's with new models using the same internals as top rated Sennheiser Momentum II bluetooth headsets. Some have had their H8's exchanged for these models.

Also important is the hardware "sending" A2DP to the headsets. I've been working with Apple engineers since 2013 on OS X Bluetooth 4.0 A2DP issues that are still open and acknowledged. In 2012-13, Apple switched from independent WiFi and Bluetooth cards to a single Broadcom WiFI ac + BTLE 4.x card. I'm sure you've heard of the many issues some experience/d with WiFi on their MacBook Pro's and iMac's. When Apple made this switch, OS X began having terrible issues with wifi and bluetooth. For example, on my nMac Pro6,1 (current gen), if I'm using BT A2DP to my dual BeoPlay S3's, when using my magic keyboard/trackpad 2 or copying files over SMB/AFP, sound would kick out like crazy. Yet using Windows 10 via Bootcamp on the same systems, smooth as silk. Apple Engineers finally acknowledged it's a KEXT/Driver issue and have been working on finally fixing it in 10.12. On the latest 10.12 Sierra Developer build, not one problem. It seems 10.12 will finally deliver on addressing an OS X issue from 3-4 OS releases ago. For a $6k+ Mac, I'm still bewildered by this awful lack of QoS for years.

Let me find a link to the thread with more detail about this matter. I'll update this in a few.

(Oh, I agree on your points. You don't need to spend a fortune to have good quality Bluetooth headsets. I travel a lot for work and use my H8's as they have great sound dampening for flights/travel and I use the gestures on the right headset a lot instead of reaching for my iPhone)
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Link to main thread below, post #646 and on. Before then it gets a little "heated" between some people, but all in good fun and (of course) misread online tone.

Fully Functional iPhone 7 Lightning EarPods Shown Off in New Video

 

[macuser82uk]

I had the "A8 Headphones" i had several pairs and they all broke in a matter of months of using them the sound quality was very good i thought especially when listening to artists like Jack Johnson.They wires went in the headphones and only one ear was working and i took it back to the shop and they said it would cost me to replace so i just thrown them in the bin and thought the price which they are charged for their headphones are not worth the money at all from a long way and i thought i would buy another brand

I have bought several other Bang & Olufsen products in the past and they have also broken to i did have the Beo Sound 3 which worked for about 6 months then the radio stopped working in the device so i returned the product to Bang & Olufsen and they said it would have to go away for are repair so i had to wait about 3 weeks for the product to come back.

At the 3 weeks of the product coming back it was working fine with no further problems at all so i was happy with the workmanship which they had done for me so i was back to normal in the summer months have my Beo Sound3 outside with me listening to some music about 9 months later this re-occurred so i had to through he same process again a and got it back in fine working order again this did happen again i did own some Bang Olufsen pc speakers and they were the best speakers i have ever own and the sound that came out of them were really good a really pleasure to listening to my iTunes while surfing the web but since haven this experience of haven this problem with the Beo Sound 3 i got very much cold feet of using their product and i thought it time to get rid of them

If was been honest with you i just got fed up of having my Bang & Olufsen equipment from being away for 3 weeks periods and thought it has to end because i am not getting the use out of the product at all because it was always in repair and i just wanted something to just work without any products.

I decided to get "Googling" about selling Bang & Olufsen equipment and find a company in the uk that would buy all my equipment off me and gave them a call within a couple of weeks they came out to me and had a look at my products a and cashed me out for the products and i thought it was a weight lifted of my shoulders from not haven problems.

 

[honglong1976]

I bought a pair of B&O H5 at the weekend from CEX. I traded in my Bose QC25 and took the plunge. They pair very easily (is pairing really that difficult anyway?) Then when you want to use them with that device, turn then on, 1 sec later they are connected and in iOS show the battery level as well. To turn them off, they join together magnetically and turn off.

There is an app which can be downloaded and if a firmware is available, will download and update. Battery life is 6 hours!

Also, another bonus is APT-X works on my macbook pro 2009 (mac os sierra). Which is quite nice and they sound very good. Bass is controlled, midrange open and clear. Superb really! And much much better than earpods/airpods!

Highly recommended!

 

[MrCliff]

I tried these on in store and was very disappointed with the quality.

The cord design appears to channel all vibrations from movement (e.g. the cord bouncing or rubbing against your neck or collar) along the cord and straight into your ears like a stethoscope. The effect is significant distracting noise layered with whatever you are trying to listen to.

I've had cheaper 'wired' earphones do something similar but did not expect such a design flaw at this price point (and in a 'sports' product).

I think they look great and was really hoping to love them, but I really cannot recommend these to anyone at all.

(I ended up buying a set of wireless Bose soundsport - not as beautiful looking but sound great without the stethoscope effect on the H5, they also feel more secure to wear)

 

[tyrekika]

i purchased these h5 and deeply regret buying them low volume heavy and constantly fall out of my ears