Baseus Bowie 30 Max Headphones review

Baseus isn’t a brand of earphones I’m overly familiar with, so I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect from the Baseus Bowie 30 Max Headphones right out of the box. Immediate impressions were good though. Simple, easy to remove packaging helps. So often manufacturers over-pack their product with flaps and tabs and hidden compartments for wires and dongles, but the Bowie 30 Max were packaged with minimalism in mind.

If you’re not sure why this matters, it’s because I was instantly attracted to the blocky but sleek design of the cups and the high build quality of the headband. Although already discounted quite heavily by most retailers (down from north of £100 to around £65 at time of writing), this is not a budget headset and it shows. The black finish is gorgeous, and the design, while certainly chunkier than some, is complemented by an understated logo print and smooth, comfortable cushions. You can also adjust them to wear comfortably around your neck when not in use, and they will fold at the cups to make storing them in a bag a little easier.

But besides the cool aesthetic design, the Bowie 30 Max has a few a stand-out features that really make a difference for the price, even if one or two of them don’t fully stick the landing. One that certainly does is the battery life. The box promises 65 hours of Bluetooth playback on the standard mode, dropping to around 30 once you activate the various bells and whistles. This is incredibly impressive, offering potentially days and days of use when you’re out and about without needing to charge them.

And what about those bells and whistles? Well the first is the ANC (Active Noise Cancellation). In itself, this is nothing new, and practically expected in a headset priced above a ton. You could even argue that it’s essential for gaming or working. The ANC on the Baseus Bowie 30 Max comes in a few flavours, though. The Spatial Audio tech offers two settings: Fixed and Head-Tracking. This essentially means that a built-in accelerometer and gyroscope track your movements to either offer a fixed audio experience (great for listening to music), or one that feels more immersive and effective by tracking your head movements, meaning what’s directly in front of you will be louder – a super option for gaming.

The main caveat here, though, is that sound quality does take a noticeable hit. The effect is there, and it does work, but the audio fidelity wobbles like mad when you actually do move your head. Weirdly, this doesn’t improve much with the Fixed Spatial Audio, either. It made some songs sound tinny – distant even. It wasn’t consistent, either, which made the whole experience a little bit off-putting.

Switching back to standard ANC was a better option. The manufacturer promises 96% sound reduction up to -45dB but I can’t confirm percentages. Suffice to say, it did the job, reducing the noise of my busy house and allowing me to concentrate on my work without too much sound bleed. Of course, there is a companion app and I’d advise downloading it. Being able to tweak the EQ settings is essential when the out-of-the-box audio quality is as uneven as this.

Just having the ANC on was actually the best option in the long run. 50mm drivers as standard and a frequency range of 20-40000Hz produce a sound quality that won’t disappoint if all you’re doing is listening to music and taking calls. All the controls are on the right-hand cup, so it doesn’t take long to situate yourself and get familiar with them. They also offer multipoint Bluetooth connectivity, but you’ll need to deactivate one connection to activate the other.

Overall, the Baseus Bowie 30 Max Headphones are a solid option if all you’re doing is playing music, but the fancy extras that bump up the price aren’t really worth using, which makes the discounted price that much more welcome. Although, for circa sixty quid you could look into competitive options like the JLab Lux ANC headphones, which do exactly what they promise to for the same price.