Bose makes awesome headphones.  I know I know, “no highs no lows must be Bose” but I think they sound great and I’m a bit of an audiophile.  I’ve found the noise cancelling function to be essential on long flights and train rides around the world.  A little over a year ago I posted a love letter (of sorts) about my Bose QC15 noise cancelling headphones, which I loved dearly.  Heck, I even made a video about how to replace the ear cups [affiliate link which may pay me a small commission] to make them feel new again.

a close up of a blue speaker

Well, recently I had to replace them.  It’s not that they stopped working, far from it in fact.  So why, only a year after writing such an ode to their wonderfulness, did I feel forced to retire them?

a black cell phone with a white case and a black screen

So…I bought an iPhone 7.  Jet Black, with 256GB of onboard storage.  And I’ll be honest, it’s pretty great.  But I hate it.  Why?  I’ll get to that in a minute, but first let’s talk about something pretty amazing.

The Amazing Bose QC35 Noise Cancelling Headphones

The Bose QC35s [affiliate link which may pay me a small commission] are the newest edition of Bose’s over-the-ear QuietComfort headphones family and they’re pretty incredible.

The headphones come in a case which is much smaller than the case for the QC15, it’s about the size of an adult human hand.  This was essential for me, as the one thing I did not like about the QC15s was the size of the case.

a black case with a logo on it

How did they make the case smaller?  Easy, the headphones now fold in order to take up less space.

a pair of black headphones in a case

Instead of laying flat and wasting case space you can see the headphone band folds where the ear cup meets the band.  Bravo to Bose for thinking of a way to reduce the space needed to store the headphones safely.  The black plastic Bose thing you see on the bottom left is the airplane headphone jack adapter (since many of those require two plugs).

On the side of the headphones you’ll find the power switch, which turns on the noise cancelling function and connects the headphones to a bluetooth device.  Pairing your device to the headphones is easy and takes but a few seconds, after which it almost instantaneously connects when the power goes on.  At the bottom of of the closest headphone you’ll see a micro USB plug.  That’s right: the QC35s are rechargeable, no more carrying around AAA batteries!

a pair of black headphones

The headphones also have an onboard microphone, so if a phone call interrupts your music you can answer the call and speak normally.  The microphone also works surprisingly well for things like Snapchat and Instagram stories, you’ll really be surprised by the quality of the onboard microphone!

a close up of a headphones

The headphones also come with onboard audio controls.  Located on the left headphone, the outer two switches control volume (down and up) and the center switch can pause your music with one click, go to the next song with two clicks, or start over the current song with three clicks.

So to put it simply, I love my new Bose QC35 noise cancelling headphones [affiliate link which may pay me a small commission].

Wait, so what was the deal with hating the iPhone 7?

WHY DID THEY GET RID OF THE HEADPHONE JACK?!  My phone’s battery was low last weekend as I boarded a plane to come back to Dallas and I needed to charge it on the flight, so I plugged it in.  But, since the new iPhone uses the same port for the headphones AND the charger, I could listen to music or charge the phone, but not both.  Why Apple didn’t release an adapter which allowed you to charge the phone and listen to headphones with the 3.5mm jack I’ll never know (actually I do know, they want to force you to get bluetooth headphones or their new easy to lose AirPods).

Yes, I know, buying a $350 set of headphones simply because I was too impatient to wait for someone to release a phone-charge-and-3.5mm-headphone-adapter dongle is kind of ridiculous, but I love my music and wanted to be able to listen to it while charging my phone!

So dang it Apple, you got me, congratulations I guess.  Yes, I hate that part of the iPhone 7, but every other part of it is pretty amazing.  In fact, whereas I’d normally use my a7rII and 90mm macro lens to take pictures like these, I was kind of lazy and decided to just use my iPhone 7.  That’s right, the QC35 images were taken with an iPhone 7 and edited in Adobe Lightroom Mobile!

 

What do you think of the QC35 headphones?  Leave your thoughts in the comments below!

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