Monoprice BT-600ANC

Verdict

A pair of over-ear headphones that offer strong noise-cancellation and long battery life, but in terms of sound quality, the Monoprice BT-600ANC are bettered by similarly priced pairs.

Introduction

Monoprice is not lacking for choice with its Bluetooth headphone range but this site’s previous reviews of its headphones haven’t been too positive. Can the BT-600ANC make more of a positive impression on us?

The BT-600ANC are the company’s most expensive wireless pair at $99. Might that also indicate they’re the best? Let’s find out.

Design

• Plain looks
• Touch controls
• Collapsible design

Monoprice’s headphones have never been ones to get people gawping, and the BT-600ANC is no different with its low-key design. Its black finish mixed with grey doesn’t stand out from the crowd, but the emphasis is on function than crowd-pleasing looks.

Of more satisfaction are the headphones’ levels of comfort, with the Monoprice BT-600ANC delivering a solid fit. The padding provided is soft, there’s enough space for my ears in the earcup without feeling cramped, and the seal feels tight without causing much pressure.

Build quality is acceptable. Someone else noticed they felt a little creaky but I’ve not found that to be the case during my time with the headphones. The design is collapsible for transport in the compact carry case.

The headphones use a mixture of physical buttons and touch controls and work well enough in tandem. The buttons are clicky and feel a little cheap but at least there’s a tactile response from pressing them, while the touch controls on the right earcup have been surprisingly responsive. Touch controls in general don’t always work, but swipes and taps on the BT-600ANC nearly always get the intended response.

Features

• 40-hour battery life
• Bluetooth 5
• aptX-HD support

The Monoprice BT-600ANC aren’t blessed with many features, but they do come with hybrid ANC, an Ambient sound mode, and higher-quality Bluetooth streaming codecs.

The noise cancellation is good when used on transport. I found that it reduces ambient noises well and squashes voices so they sound smaller and less distracting. On the London Tube, they acquitted themselves better than the Monoprice Dual Driver headphones did with less noise getting through. In fact, the seal and ANC performance are stronger than the Sony WH-CH720N and Soundcore Space One when dealing with lots of noise.

Music is notably loud at default volumes, so with the ANC in play, it never feels as if audio is taking a backseat. Whenever it gets loud, I can still hear my music, which is what you want.

The Ambient sound mode isn’t the clearest, but does offer increased awareness of what’s around me by filtering through decent levels of clarity.

There’s Bluetooth 5 connectivity with SBC, AAC, and aptX HD support. The performance is mostly fine, though not as strong as the headphones’ ANC. Walking through busy areas the BT-600ANC seems prone to stutters and brief drops.

Call quality is an area where the headphones aren’t as good as the Dual Driver model. More sound gets let in, which made it harder for the person on the other end to hear what I was saying at a food market. There’s no real sense of noises being suppressed and it can also pick up wind noise, which doesn’t help the clarity of what’s said.

Monoprice claims 40 hours of battery life (ANC off) and 25 with ANC on. A three-hour battery drain saw them stay at 100%, so it would appear that 40 hours with ANC is well within reach given that after three hours not even one percent of battery life dropped.

Sound Quality

• Firm bass
• Sharp highs
• Not the clearest or most detailed performance

The Dual Driver model sounded warm and rich to the point of fuzziness but the BT-600ANC steers it towards the other end of the spectrum with a sound that’s clearer and detailed.

And there’s plenty of competition from rival brands, especially in the sub-£100 category. So I put the Monoprice up against one of the best cheap noise-cancelling headphones, the Sony WH-CH720N.

There’s a crispness about the Monoprice’s performance that gives a track such as David Bowie’s Modern Love plenty of energy, ploughing forward with a pulsating momentum, which I personally feel is the best way to experience the track.

But measuring them against the Sony, there’s a lack of finesse and fidelity to the Monoprice. There can be a coarseness to how the midrange sounds, the soundstage isn’t the biggest, which gives the impression of a soundstage that feels bunched up – instruments that rub against each other and vocals that feel a little hazily defined and distant.

These headphones could do a with more width to help get a sense of what’s actually playing – instead, it feels like you’re hearing some instruments but not all of them.

With Massive Attack’s Angel, the Monoprice delivers a punchy, big-sounding bass performance. I thought the Sony were some of the punchier headphones at this price, but the Monoprice punch is a little firmer and the delivery lands with more thump, though I’d say the Sony sounds the clearer of the two.

The reproduction of the piano in GoGo Penguin’s Erased from Sunlight and highs are sharp and steely on the BT-600ANC – there’s more of a focus on the high frequencies than there is with the Sony, but it’s with this track that it becomes obvious the Monoprice is lacking in terms of overall detail and definition.

There’s more of a naturalistic tone to the Sony’s performance, whereas the Monoprice (at least with noise-cancelling on) has a more processed tone. Gnarls Barkley’s voice in Crazy isn’t the clearest or most defined – the midrange just doesn’t sound quite as free-flowing as on the Sony. It’s that lack of all-round sharpness, clarity, and definition that ultimately makes the Monoprice BT-600ANC a good headphone to listen to, but not the best at this price.

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