Although Bose introduced a second-gen pair of the QC Ultra in September, the original flagships offer many of the same hallmarks for $120 less, at least at the moment. They feature a comfortable build and a foldable design that makes them ideal for long flights and road trips, along with a commendable 24 hours of battery life. More importantly, they offer best-in-class noise cancellation and a pleasing, balanced sound signature that preserves highs and lows even when you dial back the volume. That’s on top of a natural-sounding transparency mode designed to pipe outside noise in and an Immersive Audio feature, which, while still hit or miss, can offer new depth to select tracks.
If you do decide to go with the first-gen model over Bose’s latest pair of headphones, you’ll only be giving up a handful of somewhat iterate update. The QC Ultra Headphones (2nd Gen) — which also happen to be on sale for $50 off at Amazon, Best Buy, and B&H Photo — let you eke out slightly more battery life (30 hours vs. 24 hours), support lossless audio over USB-C, and feature an improved transparency mode. They also support Bluetooth 5.4 and a new Cinema Mode designed to bring dialogue to the forefront, though, for most people, we’d argue none of the features are worth shelling out an additional $120 for.