Review: Microsoft Surface Headphones

I always feel a bond with people who tell me they owned a Zune back in the day. Microsoft’s also-ran MP3 player never became a hit, but it was a fabulous little music machine and its influence can still be felt in the company's hardware and software a decade later. Its Surface devices have put a focus on high-quality design since they debuted in 2012, and now Microsoft is using the brand to re-enter the audio market with the Surface Headphones.

The Surface Headphones look and feel nothing like a Zune, but Microsoft’s attention to detail is still intact. The company didn’t just plop out a set of headphones for a quick buck; it spent several years meticulously designing them. Juha Kuosmanen, Microsoft's senior director of Experiences & Devices Program Management, says the company’s initial goal was to make a good pair of headphones for Skype. It broadened its horizon during development and now thinks its cans are at least comparable to some of the best wireless headphones you can buy, complete with a voice assistant (Microsoft’s Cortana, of course) and active noise cancellation.

After spending about a week with them, I'd say he's right. I still recommend picking up a pair of Bose QC35 II or Sony WH1000XM3s if you’re spending $350—but these are pretty competitive, and that’s impressive for Microsoft’s first major stab at premium audio. Many of you will also forget the number-laden techie names of those first two sets. "Surface Headphones" sounds a little more conversational.

From headband to cushion, these are undeniably Surface hardware. They share the same gray color scheme as the Surface Book, Surface Laptop, and Surface Studio. The band and cups are are covered in a premium soft-touch plastic. Plastic usually indicates a step backward in durability and build quality, but they still feel sturdy and should be able to handle a few drops. There’s also metal where it’s needed. The twistable hangars connecting the cups to the band are aluminum, and there’s also metal inside the headband.

No two craniums are alike, so it's nice that the 3.5-inch earcups have some range to them, and a firm grip. The memory foam padding has enough cushion for glasses and it’s leather-like material has some traction to it. So, they’re comfortable enough to wear at your desk.

The Surface Headphones struggle a bit more when you're out and about. They’ll stay on your head for a walk outside or a light workout, but like most over-ears they will get hot. If you want to lay them around your neck, the hangars do twist flat, but the cushions awkwardly aim upward and don’t entirely release their gentle chokehold on your neck. They’ll also auto pause if you take them off, though sometimes this feature doesn’t seem to respond.

Bose and Sony have these same issues with travel fit. My favorite pair of on-the-go headphones remain the BackBeat Pro 2. They twist to rest easy on the shoulders, and auto pause if you lift even a single earcup. Sadly, their noise cancellation is no match for these—we’ll get to that soon.

If you’re buying for travel, you should also know that though the hangars let the cups twist flat, you cannot completely fold up the Surface Headphones into a ball like most competitors. This wasn’t a huge deal for me, but it could be a dealbreaker depending how you store them.

If I could give Microsoft one title, it might be the “master of dials.” The Surface Dial was fun to twist around, and on the Surface Headphones Microsoft has upped the ante. Both earcups include a dial on their outer edge that’s pleasant and intuitive to turn. The right dial controls volume and the left adjusts the level of active noise cancellation. Most headphones have a button or clicker to turn noise cancelling on or off. Microsoft lets you subtly adjust between 13 different levels, ranging from a Bose-like max to a level so low it actually boosts ambient sound enough to hear someone talking to you. I wish more headphones had dials. They’re quite intuitive.

Microsoft's noise cancelling tech succeeds at silencing most of the chit-chat and table banging you might hear in an office or café, and it can drown out street noise pretty well. At max, it's not quite as quiet as Bose or Sony, depending on the circumstance, but the difference is negligible in places like a coffee shop. I mostly kept noise cancellation maxed out, occasionally dialing it back to its ambient boost to hear something.

The ambient sound boost serves its purpose, but could be a bit more powerful. Even with it turned on, it was difficult to converse unless I took off at least one earcup. Oddly, I liked it so much, I tried using ambient boost on a walk home and found that it continually seemed to turn itself off slowly every few seconds, then back on. I expect this is one of a few bugs Microsoft will try to iron out in the future. Luckily, the Surface Headphones are able to download firmware updates to these directly from the Cortana app.

Installing Cortana on your phone is also necessary to talk directly to a voice assistant. You can say “Hey Cortana” at any time to learn the weather, get updates on your schedule, or call/text someone. It does a lot of the same tasks as Alexa and Google Assistant—they’re just far more popular, though Cortana comes baked into every Windows 10 PC. If you forego the Cortana app and have a relatively new Android phone, you can long press the touch button on the side of either earcup and use it with another assistant. Just know that only Cortana works hands-free. Responses from any assistant are often cut off at the beginning, but are legible and work well enough.

Perhaps I’ve buried the lede here. The Surface Headphones do sound fantastic with noise cancellation on or off, and that's an impressive accomplishment. The 40mm drivers in each earcup pump out balanced sound with enough bass to get you dancing when the right track hits. I had a particularly fun time listening to the heavy beats and 80s vibe of Muse’s latest album, Simulation Theory, but they’ve been able to handle every genre of music I’ve thrown at ‘em.

Their sound is competitive, too. Bose has a flatter, crisper sound in its QC35 II and Sony’s WH1000XM3 sound more alive and engrossing, but the Surface Headphones are more than sufficient at producing clear, engaging audio with some thump to it.

Phone calls are serviceable, though for a headset conceived around Skyping and calling, I hoped for more. It put many competing headphones to shame thanks to an array of eight microphones designed to help pick up and isolate your voice, but everyone I spoke with still complained that I sounded like I was “on speaker,” which was disappointing.

Finally, there’s battery life. It’s about 15 hours (50 hours if you use the included 3.5mm cord), which is lower than many top wireless headphones—though most of them don’t have always-available assistants ready to answer at any time. Most of them also don’t tell you precisely how many hours you have left before scrambling to a power outlet. These do. Every time you put them on, a Cortana-like voice tells you precisely how long you’ve got, which helped me at least feel adequately warned when they eventually died. Charging was also fast thanks to USB-C.

Microsoft is asking top-dollar for its first pair of Surface Headphones. There are a lot of excellent headphones for that price (or less), but they blend into the competition more than they stand out. They are consistently “pretty good” at a lot of things. Thanks to the volume and noise cancellation dials, they’re also more pleasant to control than many headphones. But are they Bose killers? Not really.

If you’re looking to go wireless, live in the US or UK, and like what Microsoft is doing with its Surface computers, you may be exactly the kind of person who could make the most of the Surface Headphones. Everyone else, keep an eye on these. They may not be your top choice right now, but they're definitely a good one.