Technics has debuted a wireless noise-cancelling headphone that’s designed to go up against the big players, with its $449/£399/€449 price point putting the EAH-A1000 over-ears right up against other key headphones such as Sony’s WH-1000XM6 and Bowers & Wilkins PX7 S3.
And it doesn’t just match them on price – from my early listening they match on sound quality as well. I’ll be bringing you a full Technics EAH-A1000 review soon, but Technics has released some recent firmware updates for the transparency mode and noise-cancelling and I’m testing that out currently.
The headphones are available in black and what Panasonic-owned Technics calls ‘greige’. I’d never heard of it, but the color has a bit of a heritage. It is basically grey/platinum though, matching the similar color from other vendors such as Sony and Sonos. Technics has put a lot of work into the design of these headphones, with a so-called ‘flow arm’ design. They are very comfortable but are quite chunky as you can see, which might not appeal to all would-be purchasers.
Key to the new headphones’ sound quality is its latest-gen 40mm Magnetic Fluid driver which actually does contain a small amount of especially developed fluid, previously used by the brand in its EAH-TZ700 and EAH-AZ100 in-ear headphones. One of the key ideas was to remove distortion but bring as large a soundstage as possible.
The headphones do support Hi-Res LDAC as well as lossless playback via USB-C while they also have head-tracked Dolby Atmos spatial audio, too. And they can support up to three devices paired at the same time with near-seamless switching.
They have some excellent physical controls rather than relying on ear-cup touch controls like several key rivals. Battery life is around 40 hours when listening wirelessly at high quality with noise-cancelling (ANC) on, but you if you’ve got ANC off they can stretch to an incredible 80-90 hours.
At a recent launch event in Tokyo I learned more about Technics approach to these headphones. “Simply creating a larger version of our existing driver was not enough. We wanted to create an over-ear listening experience that only technology could deliver.
“So we brought together the technologies and expertise we have developed across personal audio and hi-fi. We brought together everything we have learned from decades of sound engineering and our experience in personal audio. We challenged ourselves to create an overall platform that delivers not only remarkable sound, but the complete listening experience worthy of the Technics name.”
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