The best headphone mic we've ever tested
6/17/202633 min
Your headphones' microphone matters. A lot. And yet we never know how we sound to others, or whether we're clear to our AI assistants! So from time to time, we like to grab a bunch of headphones and put their microphones through some tough real-world tests. This time, with the help of The Verge's John Higgins, we discover the best-sounding mic we've ever tested. And no, it's not on a pair of AirPods. Not even close. Further reading: Anker’s new earbuds have the best call quality I’ve ever heard AirPods Pro 3 review: tripling down on a good thing Sennheiser’s new Momentum 5 headphones have upgraded ANC and a replaceable battery The tech world is sleeping on the most exciting Bluetooth feature in years Subscribe to The Verge for unlimited access to theverge.com, subscriber-exclusive newsletters, and our ad-free podcast feed.We love hearing from you! Email your questions and thoughts to vergecast@theverge.com or call us at 866-VERGE11. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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First 90 secondsDavid Pierce· Host0:00
[upbeat music] Hello, and welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of active noise cancellation. I'm your friend David Pierce, and today on the show, we're talking about headphones. Specifically, we're talking about headphone microphones, which I have long believed are just a severely underrated bit of technology. We do a lot of headphone testing here at The Verge. We all wear headphones all day. We all care a lot about sound quality, and if you read a lot of headphone reviews, you can get super deep into noise cancellation features, and you can get super deep into the interface. You can get super deep into sound quality, and then there's always just one line that's like, eh, microphone, does calls. I wanna know more [laughs]. And so every once in a while on this show, we get somebody to bring us a bunch of different devices, and we test their microphones. M- I, I care about this just as a person, but also because I think this technology matters, right? Like, we all make calls increasingly on these devices, increasingly out in the world, and knowing how you sound to other people is important, both because you wanna be a good person who doesn't make everyone's lives miserable, and also because there is lots of evidence, scientific evidence, that shows if you sound good, people take you more seriously. It's just a real thing. At the same time, if you think about the way that we are all learning how to interact with AI systems, a lot of that is by voice. A lot of that is through headphones. The difference between a good microphone and a bad microphone is the difference between having a good AI experience and a bad AI experience. This thing matters. It also just makes