Volume Up: Taotronics SoundSurge 90 A Great Set Of Budget Cans At An Amazing Price

The taotronics sound surge 90s position themselves as a budget alternative to common active noise cancelling headphones, priced at an attractive $90 aud they are only a fraction of the price of the Sony and Bose counterparts making them appear as a good alternative for the budget conscious consumer, however one doesn’t just make an identical set of headphones for a fraction of the competitors cost, there are some cut corners as with any piece of budget tech, namely the ear cups are too small, im 17, by no means am I full grown and the ear cups whilst they do fit, quite comfortably actually, its up to debate whether they will get a good fit on larger ears, this could be me used to my razor krakens’ circular ear cups where as these feature a more oval’d shape, another design oversight is the media controls, they call it a multi function button, but I call it pretty much useless, the single click pauses, press and hold turns the headset off, fair enough, however double clicking calls your last contact in your phone, if I wanted to call someone I would open my phone and call them, I found this out when I tried to skip a song and heard my phone trying to call someone, needless to say I was not intending to call my boss at 2:30 in the fucking morning, fix your shit taotronics these are headphones, not those stupid little bluetooth thing from 2009, nobody makes calls anymore let alone with ANC headphones, the ANC on these do the job, however literally every YouTube video I’ve watched on ANC omits this 1 very important fact about ANC as a whole, some people are just not built for it, I’m pretty sure I am one of those, unless im on a bus or in a noisy environment the ANC brings pain, equivalent to that of a airplane taking off, except popping your ears won’t help at all, some people get used to it, and some people will never, thankfully if the area around is noisy the pain and pressure feeling subsides so they can at least serve their intended purpose, I recommend trying a pair of ANC headphones before buying any, as ANC is pretty much the only reason these cost as much as they do, the omission of transparency mode and support within the taotronics app is perplexing but not off-brand for Chinese products, the battery life is solid too, they advertise 30 hours of listening time, I’ve gotten them down to the point where they alert me about the batter level after about a week of owning them, however that was off the 40% charge they came with so you could easily get a good few weeks out of these if you only use them for a couple hours a day. In short these headphones are a good buy if you want to try ANC headphones but don’t have the amount to drop on a pair of Sonys or Boses or could be a good gift for someone you know.