With the BeoPlay H95, introduced three years ago, luxury audio brand Bang & Olufsen pushed the envelope of the high-end ANC (Active Noise Canceling) headphones market with a revered and well-reviewed product that wowed consumers and even some hard-to-please audiophiles. The Danish luxury brand is now back at it with the even more audiophile-friendly Beoplay H100.
B&O’s new high-end ANC headphones are the natural successor and take the sound experience a notch higher. They mount 40mm titanium drivers, which - according to the company - can reproduce frequencies from 10Hz to 40,000Hz. They’re, therefore, compatible with most hi-res music formats and can connect to a computer or a high-fidelity player through a USB-C connection or a USB-C to 3.5mm jack converter.
While hi-fidelity enthusiasts might want to prioritize a cable connection, the Beoplay H100 are first and foremost Bluetooth wireless headphones. Despite having to renounce the quality that would come from a cable connection, users can still listen to high-quality music on the go thanks to the highest possible resolution Bluetooth codecs.
A new EarSense adaptive audio processing algorithm also contributes to audio quality by equalizing the sound in real-time based on the wearer’s ear shape and fit. The Active Noise Canceling has also been upgraded, and according to B&O, it can now deliver a twice-as-good canceling effect compared to the - already pretty solid - H98 ANC system.
Design-wise, the H100 are as elegant and B&O-looking as you can get. The company’s designer used high-quality materials such as lamb-skin leather for the ear pouches, aluminum, and scratch-resistant glass. Buttons on the headphones are reduced to a minimum to keep the design sleek and simple. At the same time, a large earcup aluminum dial was introduced as the main interface element to control the volume.
“Beoplay H100 is the best pair of headphones we have ever created,” said Neo Kaplanis, Bang & Olufsen director of technology, in a company presser announcing the release. B&O Beoplay H100 are available from September 3, 2024, for £1299 or €1499. Users can get them in one of three colors: Infinite Black, Hourglass Sand, and Sunset Apricot.