Shure is an American company which produces audio products of all sorts including headphones, earphones, studio headphones, speakers, mics etc. They are now coming to the consumer space in recent years. We review the Aonic 50, a consumer-focused Active Noise Cancellation (ANC) enabled headphones, which are sold in many stores and that’s why they have warehouses to stores all these products and deliver them to the different stores, so having organization in these warehouses is important and easy to achieve with markings from https://www.whiteliningcontractors.co.uk/warehouses/walkway.
Design & build quality
Aonic 50 is a bit heavy (334 grams) in comparison. The middle portion of the headphone is sturdy with some leather-like material wrapped around the metal frame. This headphone has a good grip over your head. The design is neat and there are no wires visible. The headphone has an adequate amount of tension which helps keep the headphone in place comfortably. Even people wearing glasses can wear these headphones for long without experiencing much discomfort.
Comfort & controls
The cushions on the earcups are soft and comfortable on the ears. On the right ear cup, you have the USB-C port, power switch, a LED indicator, volume up and down buttons with buttons for music/call control between them, and ANC/Environment mode buttons. On the left ear cup, you have a 3.5 mm port (for wired listening). Even after keeping these headphones on your ears for extended periods of time, it feels comfortable, even if you wear spectacles/glasses. The wire you get with the headphones is good quality and is around 1.2 meters in length.
You can enable ANC by sliding the switch all the way down. The middle position switches off ANC and if you slide to the top, it activates the environmental mode, where you listen to what’s happening around you. There are different levels to be set for environmental mode and 2 levels for ANC which can be set in Shure’s “ShurePlus Play” app which you can download from either the Google Play Store or the Apple app store.
You can also tinker with the equalizer in this app to change the sound, but it only applies to audio played via the app, which means local files only and this won’t apply to any of the streaming services. There is also multi-point connectivity which allows you to connect to 2 devices simultaneously. This feature works as expected and allows you to listen to music from one device and take calls from the other.
Sound quality
Shure is known for studio-quality sound, and it shows here. Aonic 50 is one of the best sounding headphones out there. The 50 mm drivers make their presence felt. The sound reproduction is very accurate, so if you prefer bass more than anything else, you may look elsewhere. The audio quality seems a little bit better when listening through the wire instead of Bluetooth. Audio quality is a bit better with ANC enabled, especially bass. ANC is above average and clearly not the highlight for these headphones (Sony and Bose offer better noise cancellation).
Aonic 50 has support for most of the Bluetooth codecs, including SBS, AAC, AptX, AptX HD, AptX LL (Low Latency) and even LDAC, along with Bluetooth version 5.0. This means that if your device has LDAC support, you have the best possible audio quality using wireless/Bluetooth. It is also worth mentioning that, due to such wide support of codecs, there is no audio lag when watching videos from Android devices. Another good feature of these headphones is that you can play audio via a USB-C cable connected to either phone or a computer. It can also charge while doing that, and this setting can be changed in Shure’s app.
Battery
Aonic 50 has an 800 mAh capacity battery, which easily lasts a couple of days, which is good. The officially rated run time for the headphones is 20 hours with ANC on and 35 hours with ANC off. Either way, a full charge will ensure that the headphone can carry through for at least a couple of days. With an average daily usage time of 4-5 hours, we were able to get through the week with a single charge. There is also quick charging wherein you can charge for 15 minutes from 0 and get a runtime of 4 hours.
Price & Verdict
Aonic 50 retails at ₹36,500, but you can find this for around ₹26,000 on some of the online shopping websites. These headphones are a steal if you can get them for less than ₹25,000. At this price point, it offers a lot, including great sound, and phenomenal Bluetooth codec support and there is not a lot you can find to complain about, maybe except that it is not very portable since it does not fold, and the carry case is also bit large and hard to cram into your backpack.
Pros
- Good battery life
- Great audio reproduction
- Multiple Bluetooth codec support, USB-C audio
- Option for wired audio, 3.5 mm port
- Multi-point Bluetooth connectivity
- Good ANC for the price
- Removable/replaceable earpads
Cons
- Less portable
- Large carry case