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Hands-on review: Technics EAH-A800 Noise Cancelling Wireless Headphones
Mon, 16th May 2022
FYI, this story is more than a year old

Designed in Osaka, Japan, these headphones just exude quality. They aren't heavy, but they feel well built and solid.

They're made of a matt metal and available in either silver or black. We had our hands on the black model.

The part that goes over your head is black leather with soft padding. Each side can extend about 3 centimetres to accommodate every head size.

The actual over the ear parts of the headphones are soft, comfortable and perfectly sized. They also swivel in two directions to fit best on your head.

Volume controls and an on / off button can be found on the right-hand side.

The headphones are also wireless-based, with support for Hi Res audio over Bluetooth, giving you the best possible audio quality.

Cleverly you can have the headphones connected to two devices at the same time. For example a laptop and smartphone. In the event you were playing music on your laptop and your phone rings, your laptop music is muted, while you take the phone call and then it resumes again automatically.

You can also plug them in to listen to analog audio with the enclosed 3.5mm audio cable and an adapter for aeroplane usage.

The headphones have a USB-C port for charging. You can use that with the included USB-C to USB-A cable or use your own USB-C to USB-C cable.

All of this comes together in a beautiful leather carry case.

A Technics Audio Connect App is available on the Apple App Store or Google Play store. In the app, you can fine-tune noise cancelling with an ambient sound control. You can also adjust the EQC for different types of music and find your lost headphones.

Battery life is superb, with 50 hours of playback from one charge. Also, a quick charge feature gets you 10 hours of charge in just 15 minutes.

Four microphones are built into the device, with beamforming and noise suppression technologies.

In conjunction with the microphones, you can use Alexa commands with the touch of a button.

I don't consider myself an expert in speakers or sound, but my songs have never sounded better. This is probably helped by me adjusting the EQC in the smartphone App.

The noise-cancelling worked extremely well, blocking out all background noise. In fact, it did such a good job I was unaware a colleague was talking to me until they tapped on my shoulder. Behind the scenes, Technics has included a dual hybrid noise cancelling system that suppresses both deep and wideband noises.

You really can't fault these beautiful and powerful headphones. The sound quality is top-notch, the App is useful, they're extremely comfortable, and the battery life is more than two days.