Pros
-
Price-point -
Great battery life
-
Understated but refined looks
-
Gesture control
Cons
-
Headband adjustment is a little flimsy -
Noise cancellation is just OK
-
Noise cancellation severely impacts music
Bottom Line
Table of Contents
Specs
- Driver size: 40mm
- Impedance: 35 ohms / 150 ohms (Noise cancellation on)
- Frequency response: 5 – 40kHz
- Sensitivity: 98 db/mW / 95 dv/mW (Noise cancellation on)
- Weight: 250g
- Battery life: 45 Hours (wired, noise cancellation ON) / 1000 Hours standby
Packaging
The packaging for the ANC700BT is pretty typical of what you’d expect for this kind of product and within this price-range.
The mostly-white exterior packaging does a good job at showing off some of the product’s design aspects and some of the features.
There aren’t a great deal of headphones in this price-bracket that offer both wireless connectivity and active noise cancellation, so Audio-Technica made sure to highlight these 2 aspects.
What’s in the box?
- Audio-Technica ANC700BT
- Headphone cable
- USB charging cable
- Soft storage / carrying pouch
Accessories
For the asking price we really can’t expect much to be included in terms of extras other than the essentials. And yet, the included faux leather storage / carrying pouch doesn’t feel particularly cheap either. If you’re familiar with the pouch that’s included with Audio-Technica’s M50X and M40X, then you’ll know what to expect. It’s only the headphone cable that comes across as feeling a bit skimpy. It seems well constructed, but it is a bit on the thin side.
Design
The construction of the ANC700BT is almost entirely out of plastic, with only the headband extension system being made of spring-steel. But, this is pretty common for most headphones, not just ones within this price-bracket. My main criticism of the headband adjustment system is that it’s not very secure. There are distinct steps that can be felt in the form of clicks when making an adjustment, but they don’t feel very solid, meaning that you could easily end up making unintended adjustment from time to time.
Overall the ANC700BT has quite a stealthy look, as the Audio-Technica logo on each earcup doesn’t really stand out against the all-black rubberized finish of the headphones. Subtlety is the name of the game here, and I’m personally a big fan of it.
As far as the headband and earpads are concerned, these do feel fairly soft when touching them, but on your head they don’t provide as much comfort as something like the QC35 ii from Bose or the WH-1000XM2 from Sony. Of course, everybody’s head is different, and so the level of comfort will differ from person to person, but I personally can’t see myself wearing the ANC700BT for longer than about 2 hours at most.
There are a couple of neat features built into the design of the ANC700BT, specifically within the left earcup. We’re seeing gesture control becoming more and more common with headphones these days, and this is something that’s present on the ANC700BT as well.
When the ANC700BT is turned on, the noise cancellation feature can be turned on or off by simply covering the left earcup with your hand for approximately 2 seconds. For the most part, this gesture works reasonably well, but every now and then it can take 2 or more attempts for the gesture to get recognised.
Then there are also gestures for play/pause, skip, and to adjust the volume. To play or pause a track simply requires a single tap with one finger on the Audio-Technica logo. However, it’s when we get to the gesture for skipping tracks and adjusting the volume that things are a little unintuitive.
You can only skip from one track to another, you can’t fast-forward or rewind within a track. That in itself isn’t actually a problem, and most (if not all) headphones that have playback controls operate this way. Instead the issue here lies with the gesture for skipping between tracks, which is to drag your finger up for the next song, or to drag your finger down for the previous song.
Now, instinctively, the need for dragging your finger suggests some level of control as though the range of that movement or gesture would be representative of the extent of the action you are trying to perform. In this case, that would be most appropriate for fast-forwarding and rewinding, or for volume control. Instead, to increase the volume you’d need to tap with on finger the upper portion of the earcup above the logo, and to reduce the volume requires a tap on the lower portion of the earcup below the logo.
So surely it would’ve made more sense in terms of what is the most intuitive way to interact with the device, if the gestures for skipping tracks and volume control were swapped. Perhaps this is something that Audio-Technica could change within a software update (assuming that a software update is even possible, of course). If it is possible, I strongly recommend that they look into this.
Sound
So of course the most important aspect of any headphone is how it sounds. Let’s start off with how the ANC700BT performs in wired mode.
There is a noticeable amount of bass bloat and this does spill a bit into the mids. There’s also a slight hollowness and somewhat of a dark sound signature present. What did surprise me, though, is with regards to the highs, as I was expecting more of a v-shaped signature. Instead, the upper registers are actually pretty well-controlled. Overall, it’s not a sound that I would characterise as being unlistenable.
…Or at least that is true with reference to how the ANC700BT sounds in wireless or noise cancellation mode…
It seems that, unfortunately, the ANC700BT’s main features are also it’s Achilles heel.
There is a noticeable degradation in the sound quality between wired and wireless mode, but the biggest problem is how the noise cancellation affects the music
Let me put it like this – the noise cancellation itself is relatively OK, not great, but OK. You can definitely tell that it does cut out some ambient noise. It seems to mainly fiddle with the lower frequencies, and not much is done within the mid and treble frequencies.
But, as mentioned, the problem lies with how that noise cancellation affects the music. Even in wired mode, turning on noise cancellation reduces the bass region immensely. What you’re left with is a sound that has had so much of the punch and life of the music just chucked out the window. As you might expect, this problem is even more prominent in wireless mode.
In essence, the ANC700BT sounds like a headphone that was designed to be a wired headphone, and the wireless and noise cancellation features were merely an afterthought.
Value
At the end of the day, determining the value of the ANC700BT is going to depend on what your needs are. It would’ve been great if I could recommend the ANC700BT as an affordable wireless and noise cancelling solution. But unfortunately, there just wouldn’t be any sense in doing so, as I don’t feel that the ANC700BT’s wireless and noise cancellation features should be considered as being spotlight features, even though they are advertised as being exactly that.
If you’re looking for a pair of headphones that sound relatively decent, and you’ll only occasionally use the wireless or noise cancellation features, then the ANC700BT may very well make sense to you. But, if wireless and noise cancellation are the main features you’re considering, then you’d be better off looking elsewhere. If you can manage to stretch your budget for something like the QC35 ii or WH-1000XM2, then that would be a significantly better purchase.