Edifier W830NB

Verdict

A steady pair of budget over-ears with decent noise-cancelling and really long battery life. The sound is a clear, lean, and energetic one but there are more natural-sounding and slightly better balanced over-ears for not much more in price than these.

Introduction

Edifier has come out with more headphones than I can keep up with. Over-ear, true wireless, on-ear and open-ear; budget or premium – it’s unlikely Edifier doesn’t have a pair of headphones for you.

The W830NB are situated in the budget hemisphere of the market with specs well above its standing, including with LDAC Bluetooth streaming and battery life that, on paper, is far superior to more expensive headphones such as the AirPods Max or Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones.

Its real competition is the likes of the Sony WH-CH720N, Soundcore Space One and Earfun Wave Pro, which means it won’t be easy for it to ascend the top rung to become budget over-ear king.

Design

• Look a bit bland
• Comfy to wear
• Physical controls

In terms of its overall design, the W830NB are not far off the mid-range WH950NB but they aren’t as eye-catching with their colours (rather drab white, grey, and black colours), with the earcups susceptible to more scratches and scrapes that aren’t as easy to wipe away.

The build quality doesn’t feel as strong as the WH950NB, with more of a plastic presence to the earcups and headband. But it does keep them light at 267g, and comfortable to wear with soft earpads and a clamping force that doesn’t feel as if it’s too tight and squeezing your head together.

You can fold these headphones away for transport but there’s no carry case to place them in. Control is again on the right earcup with playback, volume, and Bluetooth pairing buttons – the Bluetooth button is actually a multi-function button with a single tap moving through noise-cancelling modes, a double tap through the sound modes, and a hold for Bluetooth pairing.

The controls are ok to use, with the playback button raised above the volume so it can be easily located. There’s no 3.5mm jack on these headphones with only a USB-C port included, but you can listen to audio with the USB cable in the headphones wired mode.

Features

• LDAC streaming
• Bluetooth multi-point
• 94 hour battery life

With a drop down in price, you would expect a drop in features, but surprisingly, the Edifier W830NB hold on to more than they lose.

Bluetooth 5.4 support covers SBC, AAC, and LDAC, with the latter presenting Hi-Res wireless audio for a comfortably affordable price. It’s worth noting that while LDAC expands the bandwidth for data and higher quality tracks, it’s the drivers that’ll have the most impact on the sound.

There’s also the possibility of a multi-point connection with two devices at once, though this needs to be enabled in the Edifier Connex app. Enabling it does mean you lose out on LDAC streaming.

Edifier claims the battery life is 94 hours with ANC off and 54 hours with it on. The testing criteria is different from what I tend to do as it states the headphones were tested with the SBC codec and at 80% volume. I shuffle volume down to around 50% and have it at the highest codec possible (in this case LDAC). Even so, the results were remarkable – a five hour battery drain only resulted in 1% battery loss.

A 15 minute charge provides ten more hours of playback, which again is a hugely impressive figure.

The noise-cancelling performance is more of a qualified experience. It’s fine but in light of the price point, you’re not getting the most robust performance. Used on a plane, the performance seems to go in and out. I think it’s fairly strong in managing the cabin noise, but these are headphones that need help from volume control. It can reduce noise by a good chunk, but there’s never the feeling that it gets rid of it to the point where there’s some quiet and calm. There’s always some noise peeking through.

Doing a pink noise test against the Sony WH-CH720N, it doesn’t fare as well, so for noise-cancelling there are better options available for less than £100 / $100.

The Transparency mode is fine even if it does sound a little noisy, which detracts from the detail and clarity of the mode. There is also a Wind Noise Reduction mode, but on the days I’ve used these headphones, I haven’t had much of a need to use it.

Annoyingly, there’s a new Edifier app and it’s called Edifier ConneX, which initially confused me as the Edifier Connect app is still available.

You don’t get as much customisation aside from controlling noise-cancellation levels (a medium option is provided alongside high), sound effects (classic, classical, heavy bass, rock and a complex four-band EQ) and sound modes. Aside from sound effects, you could toggle through these features on the onboard controls, which is actually quite useful.

There’s no Theatre mode anymore, which appears to have been replaced by Spatial Sound, Edifier being the latest to jump on the immersive audio craze in the headphones. However, that doesn’t work unless LDAC is disabled in the app.

Sound Quality

• Crisp tone
• Sharp, clear highs
• Not the biggest bass performance

With 40mm dynamic drivers at its disposal, the Edifier W830NB has been tuned to be a crisp and energetic pair of over-ears, which has its good points and not-so-good points.

In a listen to At the Drive-In’s One Armed Scissor on Qobuz, the W830NB puts in a crisp and detailed performance compared to the Sony WH-CH720N, which sounds warmer, but also offers much more natural tone than the Edifier. The soundstage is wider and packed full of detail, with punchier low frequencies and more bass too, matching the Edifier with its energy as well.

The obvious problem is that its crisp tuning makes music sound thinner – there’s not as much weight to its sound and not as much naturalism with to voices and instruments, while vocals lack that smoothness. Turning up the volume increases the thinness of the sound, which in turn causes it to sound harsh.

There is a clarity to its sound that I like, and they’re similar to the Earfun Wave Pro, though the Earfun strikes a better balance with more clarity and weight to its sound.

With Hard Life’s Skeletons, Sony’s alternative offers more bass without affecting the clarity of vocals – it’s a fun and lively listening experience and more engaging than the Edifier is. The bass on these headphones isn’t as big-sounding as they are on the Sony offering – it’s the midrange and high frequencies that this headphones seems more suited to handle.

And at the top end of the frequency range the Edifier is a sharp, clear, and well-defined performer – there’s more attack and clarity to its performance than the Sony seems willing or capable of; the WH-CH720N sounding less bright and sharp. It’s here where the Edifier’s tuning gets the most out of its sound, but overall, while its lean, clear, energetic tone can entertain, there are other headphones in this price range that offers a better balance.

The spatial sound isn’t much to sing home about. There’s a sense of depth and height to music but the soundstage sounds smaller and doesn’t have the effect of getting outside of your head space. It also sounds better with ANC. With noise-cancellation off the effect sounds less detail, strangely.

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