Topic: The thing about... the BOSE AEW2 bluetooth headset

Let me start by saying that I was looking into an elegant solution for all the many devices that need a proper sound-playback in my household. As I investigated I decided that my findings could benefit others that might be looking into something similar. So here goes, and yes, it's one of those long postings again. I'll shine some light on the BOSE Around Ear Wireless 2 headset, bluetooth powered and how it fares connecting to my many devices, including PS Vita, PS3, PS4.

The problem:
I have so many electronical devices, from my Mac, PC, to the iPhone, Vita, PS3, PS4, etc… For all of those I have a separate solution, that means my surroundings are cluttered with several bluetooth headsets (the tiny earpieces), in-ear cable-bound headsets and a pair of high quality on-ears by AKG and one by Sennheiser. Good sound is obviously important to me and my living situation does not even demand to have a headset for every device as I can literally play my music/games as loud as I want on my stationary setup in my office (2x Heco stereo speakers, Onkyo receiver, Bravia TV set). Still. I wanted a nice solution to make my business calls with, use for gaming and audio-chat as well. And on top of that: I hate cables.

The probable solution: the BOSE AEW2
The Bose around-ear headset comes with wireless bluetooth capabilities and should in theory connect to anything that can do bluetooth. Also it is Bose, and sure everyone has his own special preference when it comes to sound, but it's safe to say that those are really good sounding bluetooth cans. They are rather expensive and look a bit retro-futuristic, like something form an 80's Robocop movie, which is also down to personal taste, but they have other qualities, which I will discuss in detail now...

The materials and build quality:
While this headset looks heavy and sturdy on pictures, I can guarantee you it is featherlight. The construction seems to be solid, not as high class as you'd expect or like the Sennheiser Momentum series of headsets. It has kind of a business-touch to it and they have really soft cussions, protecting your ears from something around 60% of surrounding noise. They are very comfortable to wear, cover your ears nicely and even after wearing them for over 3 hours, heat or sweat was no problem. I wouldn't wear them through a sport workout though (but seriously, who does wear around-ears through that?). The plastic used is flexible yet sturdy, I wouldn't suggest them for use in an environment with kids though, they need proper care I'd guess. But with a pricetag of around 225 Euro you'll want to make sure those are in a secure place when not in use anyways. Overall I liked that this headset doesn't take up as much space as you'd think, is featherlight and doesn't add much bulk to your head like other solutions do. Also there is no bullshit. It's just the headset and an USB charging cable. Done. No base-station and no USB-dongle or whatever. It's all (including batteries) built into the headset itself, and for that feat, the form-factor and low weight is a true accomplishment. I'd easily rate the overall build quality and wear-comfort at a 9/10. Design is a thing of taste though.

Sound quality:
It's Bose, its expensive so it gotta be good right? Almost. I had the chance to work 2 years doing promotion for Bose and basicly test out everything they have (also the standard Bose AE which are basicly the same build), also many competing products when I was at conventions and thus Im able to draw conclusions. People often asked me whats so good about Bose, isn't it overhyped etc… Well. Bose is good, and of course it depends on what you expect or want to have. For example, for my crystal clear, natural sounding Stereo sound, I personally use speakers by HECO, true german quality with paper-membranes. I enjoy the natural, kinda warm sound of those, especially when listening to music with vocals or stringed instruments, they do - of course - also handle game sound quite well. I also have a set of Sennheiser somewhere, as I think that Sennheiser is pretty good in the „crystal clear sound" and the „highs" area. Again, all personal taste of course. Bose, in my book, are the masters of BIG OOMPH in a small device. If its in their mini-speaker equipped home cinema setups or in the fabulous (seriously) IE2 (in ear) headsets, Bose can make awesome sound in a small device. That's why I prefer Bose in things like SoundDocks, BluetoothSpeakers and small headsets and in-ears. Specifically the sound of the AEW2 is well rounded, you get nice highs and mids and the characteristic Bose-bass. It's hard to describe, but if you listen to something bass-heavy on a Bose device it sounds like…. like if the bass is going strong and it would usually go TOO strong and give you that noisy, clanky distorted kind of experience in a cheap headset, in a Bose-device its always rounded-off before it's running a too high level. Again, hard to describe, lets just go for: no matter how loud you play, with Bose the bass sounds always right. Sennheiser gets the high's a bit „righter" (in my experience) but overall the Bose AEW2 sounds terrific, especially considering its a bluetooth-headset. No noticable compression, although at the beginning of the playback sometimes a 1 second lag until you hear the music you just started on your iPhone. Also phonecalls (receiving and going out) shine with quality. Environmental-noise-filtering is also quite adequate, better than with any cheap console-only-chat-headset. So far so good! Love it.
I'd rate the sound quality also a 9/10 (only dedicated stereo-headsets might sound better a touch).

The most important thing, connectivity:
So my initial plan was to have ONE headset for all my needs and having had always good experience with Bose I thought I found the holy grail. Well, almost. Let me start to share my experience right away. Bose + Mac has always been a love affair and so it is here, no wonder, connecting the headset to a Mac mini, Macbook and iPhone was a matter of seconds and my system sounds and iTunes library was instantly streamed to my headset in brilliant quality. Also phonecalls were no problem at all, you can even work your iTunes and incoming phonecalls with the buttons on the headset without ever touching your computer or phone. I was seriously impressed with the ease of use. So its a full HIT here. Things still look awesomely bright when I connected the headset with my Playstation Vita. It was a matter of seconds and system sounds, game audio and game chat all worked wonderfully with the headset. Im spoiled by good sound already as I usually use my Bose IE2 on my Vita but with this headset, I could still hear new nuances and touches in the game audio that weren't audible to me before. Awesome. Of course, using the headset on my PC (equipped with a USB-bluetooth adapter as it doesn't have native onboard bluetooth-support) in connection with Steam it also worked flawlessly, within a minute or so. Again, a winner. Now it starts to become a little bit of a mixed experience. As many of you are aware the PS3 does not fully support bluetooth headsets for other things than game-CHAT only and the PS4 only supports a very tiny list of bluetoth devices as of yet (system version 1.6). Exactly that was what happened. Connecting the Bose AEW2 to the PS3 went without much problems, only that its functionality was severely cutback. It's only able to work with PS3 as a pure CHAT headset. There was no way for me to get it to play the game/system audio through the headset. And as a pure chat headset its a) too expensive and b) ill advised to use it, as it blocks out significant amount of environmental sounds, in this case, game audio. Fine, I though and went on to test it with the PS4. Where it connects instantly only to prompt me the dreaded messages that there is no PS4-profile for this device to be found. So no luck here. I'd rate the connectivity a 7/10, unfortunately except PC and Vita it doesn't work too well with the Rest of my gaming devices (it does have a 3,5 mm audio-jack adapter cable though, but for me destroys the purpose of getting a wireless headset in the first place).

Conclusion:
Im on the fence now. I ordered the thing from amazon, so I can send it back in a weeks time if I want and I don't know if I should keep it. I hate having a dedicated headset device for almost everything I have in my household. I love the idea of the Bose headset to connect to almost anything. Sure I could live with the PS3 being not fully supported, as at one point further down the line most of my multiplayergaming will have moved on to the PS4 and as I said, all my gaming and Mac-iTunes experience can easily be done on my Heco speaker set, I'd just really appreciate the combination of game-audio and chat-audio on my gaming devices with the ability this headset has to simultanously connect to 2 devices I could even take my business calls while Im gaming. But as of now the Ps4 is out of the question and I seriously don't know if there every will be full bluetooth device support like there is on the Vita. But I really don't want to get that PS Gold headset, as I think its ugly and without having heard it Im pretty sure there is no chance it beats the Bose in sound quality. So right now Im testing it further and keeping it for a week but I guess I will send it back. Annoying people around me with my music and game sounds is no issue so I will probably just keep using a dedicated chat-one-ear-headset on my PS4 in conjunction with my Heco setup and wait and see what the future brings. If the PS4 ever fully supports the Bose AEW2 I can fully recommend it with a score of 9/10 as your allround, one for everything headset.

I hope my experiences helped some of you out there, lets hope for the next system update and a full support of this truly wonderful all-purpose headset.

-Scollurio-