B&O H9i review: Luxurious listening comes at a hefty price

If you enjoy a luxury flare to your gadgets, these stylish, comfortable and powerful headphones are worth checking out — but they don’t come cheap.

Bang & Olufsen is well known for mixing boutique design with high-end audio engineering. The Danish company’s more consumer friendly (read: more affordable) offshoot, B&O, tries to cash in on that reputation by enticing audiophiles to splash out on gadgets like its latest Beoplay H9i wireless headphones.

They’re stylish, comfortable and produce a powerful sound. But when it comes to “luxury technology” it pays to proceed with caution.

The headphones are designed by award-winning Danish designer Jakob Wagner. If you hear something like that and automatically think such a statement translates into “these are going to be expensive” then you’re exactly right.

The high-end headphones retail for $799, making it a tall order for them to compete with similar devices on the market.

Nonetheless they do an admirable job and while significantly more expensive than comparable headphones, they will appeal to a certain design-conscious consumer who likes a luxury flare to their gadgets.

The over ear design is super comfortable and means you can happily wear them for long periods.

SOUND

As you might expect the H9i headphones — which launched early this year and are the successor to the company’s H9 headphones — excel when it comes to sound quality.

They produce a crisp and clear audio experience that caresses your eardrums rather than pounding them, even at high volumes. They produce a layered sound which will surely satisfy the most finicky of listeners.

Each earpiece has a 40mm electro-dynamic driver speaker system that pushes out a powerful sound. They could go a tiny smidge louder but they sound fantastic — as they very well should.

Noise cancelling technology is getting pretty good across the board these days and B&O’s Advanced Active Noise Cancellation is no exception.

The company has improved its noise cancellation, in particular, blocking out the frequency range where human voices sit. So if the noise you want to cancel out the most is your noisy kids, this upgrade will be pleasing. There is also a Transparency Mode if you want to hear ambient sounds.

TOUCH CONTROLS

The exterior surface of the right earpiece has touch controls which let you pause, skip, answer calls and adjust volume with tap and swiping gestures on an aluminium track pad. I was excited about this capability but ultimately it’s a bit disappointing.

The sensitivity of the track pad isn’t great and it feels a bit clunky at times. It’s tough to get exactly what you want each time you swipe.

For example, you slide from the bottom to the top of the trackpad to turn on Transparency Mode, you slide down to turn off noise cancelling, tap to pause and run your finger in a circular motion to turn volume up or down.

When you tap, there is a slight delay which makes you wonder for a second if it has registered your touch and it is really hit and miss when you try and adjust volume, made more difficult by the fact you can’t see what you’re doing.

Having said that, it is worth downloading the B&O app and going through the mini tutorial to learn the different gestures.

Sony’s WH-1000XM3 wireless headphones (which you can find for between $430 and $499) have the same trackpad gestures but the functionality is much better.

The right earpiece has touch controls which let you, pause, skip and adjust volume with different gestures but the system needs improvements.

FEATURES

Thanks to a Proximity Sensor, the headphones automatically pause when you take them off which is quite a unique feature. It takes a second but the music or podcast will stop playing and then commence again once you put them back on.

It’s a nice touch and it is really helpful when you want to rip them off quickly to have a chat without having to worry about pausing anything.

Unlike some of its competitors, there is no voice assistant tech which might turn off some people as there is no potential compatibility with smart assistants such as OK Google, for example.

As a result when someone calls, the headphones don’t tell you who is calling, it just rings. You also don’t get a battery update when you put them on so you’ll have to check the app to see the status of the battery.

The headphones ship with a 1.2m audio cord with a 3.5mm jack, a 1.25m USB-A to USB-C cable, a flight adaptor and a rather nice carrying pouch.

MATERIALS AND DESIGN

It’s easy to recognise the material quality of the headphones which are made from anodised aluminium, cowhide leather and soft lamb skin. I get the impression they will last a long time, perhaps giving them an advantage over rivals. As I have previously noted, the stitching on the ear pads on popular Bose headphones has the annoying habit of deteriorating after a year or two, requiring a replacement as the foam bursts out from under the leather casing on the cushions.

B&O also offers such replacements but also makes it much easier. The ear pads — which are the part of the headphones most likely to wear down — pop off with a quick twist which is a really nice design feature as it makes it easier to protect them and eventually replace them if need be.

Being able to easily take off the ear pads is a thoughtful design feature.

The headphones promise 18 hours of wireless noise cancelling audio per charge, or you can get 24 hours per charge when using the wired option.

It’s also good to see B&O provide a replaceable battery (770mAh) with these headphones, removing the built-in obsolescence that other Bluetooth headphones invariably have. So while you are paying a lot, you should expect them to have a long life.

Unlike similar devices, there is no collapsible design. Instead the ear pads can swivel 90 degrees in one direction to allow them to sit flat on a surface.

COMFORT

They are seriously comfortable, probably the most comfortable headphones I’ve used. The memory foam on the over-the-ear cushions are thick without making the headphones look too bulky on your head.

They look and feel great, but the fit isn’t perfect. The sturdy metal frame topped with leather that rests on your head doesn’t clamp very tightly, which can cause them to move around a bit if you wobble your head about.

My partner borrowed them to wear at the gym and complained they were a bit too big for her head, especially if she moved around.

ARE THEY WORTH IT?

If there’s one thing I’m happy to spend a bit of money on, it’s a pair of good quality wireless headphones.

As premium smartphones (like the iPhone XS Max which can cost north of $2000) continue to rise is price, you hear the argument that if you break it down by time spent on device, it’s not outrageous to pay so much money for them. There is an appealing truth to this argument, and given that I use my headphones every day at work, commuting or at home, it’s easy to justify forking out a bit of money if you’re paying for quality and durability. You get both here, but it might not be enough.

They’re quite beautiful and sound great. But unless you really cherish the stylish aesthetic, it’s hard to justify paying $799 for a pair of these when you can get comparable wireless headphones from Bose or Sony for hundreds of dollars less.

When it comes to sound quality and look they get a big tick, but there is a couple of areas where the headphones fall short. For the price tag they need to be pretty much perfect and they’re just not.