Bose QC15 vs ProEars Predator Gold Edition

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Introduction

Sorry, I’ll give you a minute to collect yourself.  Yes, that title really said “Bose QC15 vs ProEars Predator Gold Edition”.  If you read my last review, you know nobody just sends me crap to review, and you’re probably wondering whatever possessed me to buy the Bose QC15.  While they retail for the hefty price of $300 USD, I’ll have you know I didn’t pay for them in a traditional way.  There are many ways to acquire these ubiquitous headphones though promotions and points systems of many sorts.  The Bose Quiet Comfort line is sort of a landmark set of “headphones”, and is probably singularly responsible for the original Beats Studios including the features that it did.

What I’m sure you’re really wondering about are the ProEars, and why you haven’t heard of them before.  Well, these are not specifically headphones, these are electronic hearing protectors.  The chip inside the cups on each side cuts sounds above 85db while still letting you hear everything else going on around you.  This is pretty handy to have on a busy shooting range so you don’t shoot your instructor because you couldn’t hear him call ceasefire over the sound of gunfire.  It’s also handy to have while hunting so you can hear what’s around you while you filter out random bursts of gunfire without having to take the protectors off and on.  These are a particularly expensive set of these types of protectors, retailing for $330.  Once again, I didn’t pay full price, thanks to an Amazon listing.  So why are they being compared to the Bose QC15?  Simply because they have a feature that passes audio from an external source through an attachable cable into the small speaker that usually replays the surrounding audio into your ears;  a system totally opposite of the Bose, which passes the reverse of the outside audio into your ears with the music.  I thought it would be interesting to consider both of them as actual headphones for a change and see which fancy electronic battery-powered audio gadget does the best headphone impression.

 

Construction

 

The Bose QC15 isn’t all that poorly built.  At least it’s not as bad as is often claimed by the ham-fisted people who have snapped their pair in two.  The build is as it’s been since the original model – cheap yet tough molded plastic.  It’s not $300 worthy construction, however.  These are really designed to be lightweight, not strong or durable.  The earcups swivel, but only in one direction making it hard to get them straight.  The earpads are very soft, some of the best plether pads I’ve had on my head, but the cups are just too small for my ears.  I constantly found myself readjusting them.  They come in a clamshell hard case you can take with you when you travel.  Personal plane experience has taught me it’s a fine way to protect them from the kind of nasty abuse your stuff takes on planes these days, but once you get to your seat they’re very large and cumbersome to unzip next to a really fat dude.  Maybe the most obnoxious thing about their design is they don’t even work as headphones without a battery, and they have a switch you have to remember to turn off on the side or the battery drains out overnight.

By contrast, the ProEars are built like tanks and can take any sort of drop, toss, throw, or smash into concrete (whoops!), and probably still work and look fine.  It’s no wonder; they HAVE to take this kind of abuse, as they’re DESIGNED for outdoor use as hearing protectors.  The cups are big enough to fit around my ears and provide an excellent seal with monstrous clamping force.  Each cup takes two N batteries.  Yes, I said N.  It’s an old camera battery, but it’s the same power as a AA and 3” shorter, so it fits into the tiny, old school circuit board with the 8-bit chip that controls the speaker that filters out loud sounds with a high pass filter and compressor.  The ONLY place I know where to find these batteries is online and at Radio Shack, and it’s the main drawback to the whole ProEars brand.  The cables that hastily convert this speech designed system into a sort of makeshift audio device attach at the top of the cups and unless routed the right way, get in the way of the forks.

 

Sound Quality

 

I bet I know what you were thinking.  I was going to say that the Bose QC15 didn’t even sound as good as a pair of hearing protectors.  Nope.  The Bose QC15 sound quite good, actually.  If one thing has improved since the first version of this gadget that I listened to about 10 years ago, it’s the overall sound quality of the device.  The highs are actually present and the bass is not AS booming as it used to be.  In a totally quiet room with low ambient noise or constant low level noise, that is.  If people are talking, or a sudden noise occurs, not only do you usually hear this noise, but the music distorts noticeably.  85% noise cancelation means just that, and I found that on planes unlike the ad on the back of the magazine claims, not only what you don’t hear will not only be somewhat heard, but what you don’t hear will also distort what you do.  Without music playing through them to provide the positive wave, they isolate noise even more poorly.  Honestly, my earplugs were better at “noise cancellation”.  One day this patent will run out and somebody will finally get this technology up the other 15%.  Then they’ll have something.

The ProEars, for their part, are great hearing protectors, good at feeding speech, like audio books into your ears while you mow the lawn, but awful at actual music.  There is a jumper on the circuit board that can cause the input to bypass the low pass filter, but this makes the audio quality even worse.  If you do get these, just leave the jumper alone, it won’t sound great, but at least your ears won't be assaulted with the loose high frequency squeaks from drivers only meant to reproduce sounds from 1-3Khz accurately.

 

Conclusion

 

I think the obvious thought on my part is, why do these devices exist?  For the Bose, in ear headphones isolate better and cost much less.  For the ProEars, in-ear hearing protectors and custom fit protectors fit the same bill.  However, I love sticking things in my ears about as much as you do, so this is probably why these products came to be.  I think I got tired of swapping batteries into my game boy around age 12, so the Bose QC15s just aren’t for me.  The ProEars are still great hearing protectors, but I don’t think I’ll use them as headphones unless I’m totally forced to.  I think in the end, I’ll stick to headphones that don’t take batteries and leave the powering to the amps.