Shure AONIC 50 Headphones Review
Shure are fusing their knowledge of higher end audio space within the convenience of wireless technology through their Shure AONIC 50 noise cancelling headphones. Shure confidently only offer one wireless headphone option, so is it a perfect harmony of features for ￡269?
Design
It would seem rude not to briefly touch on the truly unique one of a kind circular box design, within which you’ll find the similarly shaped headphone case that ultimately contains the Shure AONIC 50’s themselves. A somewhat classical headphone design, with the top-hat shaped cups and plumply cushioned headband. However, the fundamentals are all taken care of, with a stylishly curvy mechanism to adjust height and swivel the cups that are all solidly made. We love that you can fold them flat, it makes storing the headphones within a backpack pocket that bit easier.
The fit is huggable and snug, and we have zero complaints within the comfort department as they are well suited for small to large head sizes. Hours and hours of wear whilst mowing the lawn or enthusiastically moving around with them on, has only made us more fond of the AONIC 50 headphones. They charge via USB-C, and you can opt for a wired listening experience thanks to the integrated aux-jack.
Controls & Noise Cancellation
Noise cancellation is adjustable via a switch on the right and it’s a slight fumble to locate. When not enabled, the headphones block a marginal amount of audio via their closed cup design, but enabling the feature vanishes your real world audible environment to feed a strict serving of the audio from your paired device. You can enable and disable noise cancellation via the switch, or opt for 'environment mode' to have your surrounding audio emphasised into your ears, useful for conversations or when crossing the road. However, after playing with all three modes, having this disabled offers the ultimate in terms of audio quality.
On the same side of the headphones, you also have a play & pause button, as well as volume buttons. This array is easier to locate and control due to their lower placement, but they aren’t all that tactile in feedback, and for us a touch panel would be preferable on ear cups like these.
Battery Life
The Shure AONIC 50 headphones are Bluetooth 5.0 enabled and easily paired with the iPhone 12 Pro Max that shares the same version of Bluetooth. Bluetooth 5 is also more energy efficient at broadcasting. We could achieve the stated 20hrs of battery life, which is impressive for headphones of this calibre. When volume levels are in the upper 75% of the volume range, battery life takes a hit. So if you’re someone that enjoys destroying your ears, you’ll expect 2-3hrs less battery life in total.
Audio Performance
We’re often met with audio products that emphasise the bass to a degree that isn’t literal, but on the whole the Shure AONIC 50 headphones are honest about bass. For example, the song ‘Dean Martin’ by Tess Henley has a mild bass line running through it, and some headphones we’ve heard crank this up to levels that are just pure fiction, whereas the Shure headphones don’t distract, but deliver a broad soundstage of continuous vocals with this song. Stereo clapping in the foreground, choral elements in the background and strident vocals that hover from left to right. There’s an immersive degree of tolerance to be heard between the frequencies, pin sharp highs and broad mid-range, as if they were studio monitors; which Shure certainly know a thing or two about.
Moving over to the song ‘Bad Guy’ by Billie Eilish, the rough bass emphasis from beginning to end has all the intended heft. Most impressive though, is the clarity of vocals, they are absolutely outstanding in their vividness of detail. It’s the sort of clearness you’d expect to get from a 2:1 speaker setup and it feels as if they’ve been shrunk down into miniature drivers on your ears. The Shure AONIC 50 headphones are excellently tuned!
Where this realistic sound quality has gained the most fondness is with acoustic and live numbers, and, of course, the spoken word with podcasts sounds particularly good. A well recorded podcast feels like the people talking are in the same room as you. Pressing play on ‘Money Game’ by Ren or ‘New Axe’ by Jack Johnson, feeds a kind of lingering depth within the vocal echoes and a sheer crispness of vocals within the uncomplicated instrumentals; so you forget that they are wireless. Because, even in 2021, wired is the only way to play lossless audio, meaning there’s no compression, and this is still the case even with the latest version of Bluetooth. Nevertheless, many wouldn’t notice any difference when listening through the Shure AONIC 50 headphones, as, from all our playback, we’d consider only a smidgen of improvement when listening via a wire.
Verdict
The combination of exceptional easy going generalised comfort and detailed focused clean audio playback, does make Shure AONIC 50 Headphones a pair we’ll always be reaching out for and one audiophiles will greatly enjoy.