Danish manufacturer Bang & Olufsen is most famous for designer audio speakers and devices. For some years the company has also been producing H series wireless headphones, with Bluetooth connectivity and active noise cancellation. Among the most recent additions to this range are the Beoplay Hx, which combine the North European company’s attention to design with high quality materials and cutting-edge technologies.
Beoplay Hx, design scandinavo
The Beoplays arrive in a well-kept hard box and a padded carrying case is included in the box. The design is simple and elegant, like the colors: we tested them in the version anthracite, but there are also White cream e terra of Siena. The exterior of the earpads is made of aluminum, with rigid plastic inserts, and the soft leather pads can be easily removed by rotating them, to better clean the speakers or to replace them.
Comfort is fully promoted, both on the ears and above all on the head, thanks to the padded fabric headband. Even wearing them for a long time, the Beoplay Hx do not bother the head (they weigh only 250 grams) and above all they do not overheat the ears. Also good is the mechanism for adjusting the length of the temples, which slide in and out of the bow with a perfect level of resistance.
How B&O Beoplay Hx headphones are made
With an elegant design and high-quality materials, the new wireless headphones from Bang & Olufsen cost a lot, but they sound flawless and are very light
How are Beoplay Hx
The coupling of the Hx with smartphones and tablets is flawless thanks to the Bluetooth 5.1: the connection is quick and immediate and in 3 weeks of trial we have never had to repeat the connection procedure, both on devices Apple both on devices Android. Thanks to the integrated Google Fast Pair, Made for iPhone and Microsoft Swift Pair functions.
The function keys on the edges of the earpads are easy to reach. With the Anc button on the left you can adjust the level of noise cancellation, while on the right is the on / off button and Bluetooth pairing (with a long press).
More cumbersome instead i touch controls integrated on the surface of the right pavilion: the single tap to start or stop music playback works quite well, while the gesture for adjusting the volume (a circle to draw with your finger on the knurled surface) is not always recognized correctly.
Excellent battery life, which manages to get up to 35 hours of music playback. However, if you wear headphones only to limit external noise, listening only to silence, the Beoplay HX can achieve even better autonomy. Charging takes place via the USB C port on the right earphone and takes about 3 hours to reach 100%.
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Sound, noise cancellation and microphones
The noise cancellation of these Beoplay Hx works great and manages to effectively attenuate speech sounds as well. However, the shape and size of the pavilions do not contribute much to the passive attenuation, as they do on competing models with larger bearings. With the music on, the effect of the ANC is even more pronounced, so much so that you don’t even hear the noise of a vacuum cleaner running. For those who are afraid of excessively isolating themselves, there is the Adaptive Noise Cancellation function, which adjusts noise cancellation based on the surrounding sounds, and also the “transparency mode”, which lets almost all the noises of the surrounding environment pass through.
These modes can be activated with the dedicated function key, or dall’app Bang & Olufsen per iPhone e Android; from here you can also manually choose various listening modes, ie preset equalizations based on musical genres and types of content. And also in the app you can activate the automatic shutdown and the function that pauses the music when the headphones are removed.
The sound, as one might expect from a product in this price range (and from the B&O brand) is excellent: we tested them with a playlist messa a punto da HeadphoneCheck, and we can say that they are headphones without a specific predilection for a genre or type of music. They behave very well with very different mixes, always without smudging, with warm lows, and mids and highs with excellent definition. There is also the possibility of using headphones in wired mode, thanks to the line-in jack port, but it must be said that with con mp3 and other lossy formats the difference is practically imperceptible compared to wireless mode.
Of note is an unexpected function: the noise cancellation function is also available when headphones are connected via cable. We also tried the Beoplay Hx for making phone calls and for a couple of videocalls: i 4 microphones guarantee a clean and clear sound, with a good quality that however our interlocutors have not been able to distinguish from the pure good one of the AirPods Pro or the Jabra Elite 85t earphones.
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Beoplay Hx, what we like
- Attention to details and the quality of the materials
- Comfort and low weight
- The duration of the battery
- The quality of the sound, suitable for all types of listening
- The Bang & Olufsen app, well done and intuitive
Beoplay Hx, what can be improved
- I touch controls on the right pavilion they are a bit slow and are not always recognized by the system
- Headphones they cannot be folded and the hard carrying case is quite bulky
Price and competitors
Beoplay Hxs cost 499 euros, a high price which reflects the quality of the product and also the Bang & Olufsen brand: it is positioned halfway between Apple’s AirPods Max (629 euros) and models such as the Sony Wh-1000Xm4 or the Sennheiser Momentum, which are located at 300-350 euros . Compared to these last two models, the Beoplay Hx have a more minimal and more elegant design.
On sound quality one could certainly argue for a long time, but it would be like nitpicking, given that the quality level reached by all the models mentioned is generally excellent. Whoever had an iPhone might perhaps prefer the AirPods Max, because they integrate better into the Apple ecosystem.
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