1More Triple Driver In-Ear Headphones REVIEW

The curiously named 1More is a San Diego-based audio manufacturer, and from the use of Swarovski crystals in some of its designs to sound signatures "expertly tuned" by Grammy-winning sound engineers, let's just say the company seems to have a flair for dramatic marketing. But another aspect of the 1More mission is more intriguing—the company rails against rampant industry "price hiking" and "design shortcuts," with a goal to provide excellent quality at affordable prices. The 1More Triple-Driver In-Ear Headphones—which are actually in-canal earphones—are a reasonably priced $99.99 and ship with a bevy of accessories. There are nine pairs of eartips alone, in varying styles, materials, and sizes. With such a focus on accessories and materials, it wouldn't be a surprise if the earphones were lacking in the audio department. Instead, the sound quality is good enough to earn our Editors' Choice.

Design
As mentioned, 1More puts a real focus on materials. The Triple Driver'searpieces are made from aluminum alloy and the cable is Kevlar, while the look of the earphones is black with brushed gold details. Inside each earpiece, two balanced armatures and a single dynamic driver deliver the audio. It's safe to say that most earphones in this price range do not offer three drivers per channel, so this alone is impressive.

The right earpiece houses an in-line mic and a three-button remote compartment that controls playback, call management, track navigation, and volume. The volume works in conjunction with your mobile device's master volume level.

The array of eartips is truly impressive. As mentioned, you get a whopping nine total pairs. Six of the pairs are silicone tips ranging from 10mm to 14.5mm in size, and the other three are foam tips (which typically offer a more secure fit, more passive ambient noise reduction, and often can create a greater sense of bass response because of the superior seal) ranging in size from 11mm to 14.5mm.

The Triple Driver In-Ear also ships with a magnetic clasping carrying case with a black leather grain finish, as well as a gold-colored shirt clip and a gold-colored airline jack adapter. From a design and accessory standpoint, 1More definitely nails it.

Performance
On tracks with intense sub-bass content, like The Knife's "Silent Shout," the Triple Driver In-Ear delivers a powerful low frequency response. At top, unwise listening levels, the bass does not distort, and at moderate levels, it still sounds deep and robust. However, the Triple Driver In-Ear doesn't invent lows where they don't exist, nor does it even really boost them all that much—if the track has deep lows, you'll get a solid helping, and if it doesn't, you won't hear anything extra.

The focus seems to be more on high-end clarity—the high-mids and highs are crystal clear. Bill Callahan's "Drover," a track with less deep bass in the mix, gives us a more accurate idea of the sound signature. The drums on this track can sound ridiculously unnatural on heavily bass-boosted pairs, but here they sound wonderful. There's a perfect low-end presence, giving the drums the body they possess naturally and nothing more. Just as ideal are the high-mids and highs that lend some treble edge and crispness to Callahan's rich baritone vocals and the attack of the guitar strumming. This is a balanced, clear sound that will appeal to purists seeking high frequency clarity without giving up the bass response.

On Jay-Z and Kanye West's "No Church in the Wild," the kick drum loop receives an ideal level of high-mid presence, highlighting the loop's attack while the lows give the drum's sustain plenty of thump. The sub-bass synth hits that punctuate the beat have plenty of body and depth here, but they aren't exaggerated to the point that they overtake the mix. The vinyl crackle that's usually relegated to the background is more apparent than usual—a sign that, if any range is more boosted than another, it's the highest frequencies.

Orchestral tracks, like the opening scene in John Adams' The Gospel According to the Other Mary, sound phenomenal. You get the richness of the lower register instrumentation and the bright treble edge of the higher register strings, brass, and vocals perfectly complementing each other. The balance here is nearly perfect, with the bass response playing a supporting role without shrinking into the distance—you get a wonderful sense of the space the recording was made in, and ideal clarity throughout the entire frequency range.

Conclusions
I may not be sold on 1More's gimmicky marketing, but there's no denying the Triple Driver In-Ear Headphones sound fantastic, come with a nice haul of accessories, and true to the company's mission statement, they ring in for significantly less than I would have guessed if I tested them not knowing their price. At $100 they're a steal, and easily earn our Editors' Choice. They compare favorably with past favorites, some of which cost significantly more, and all of which are also worth reading up on if you're in the market for a well-balanced in-ear pair. Check out the Bowers & Wilkins C5 Series 2, the Klipsch Reference X6i, the Focal Sphear, and the Optoma NuForce HEM2 for reference. But go into those reviews knowing that the 1More Triple Driver is a winner—and one of the more affordable winners we've tested in quite a while.

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Samsung Galaxy Note 7 review

Our ongoing Samsung Galaxy Note 7 review now includes price and release date information, and it takes a deep look at what's been dubbed the "world's best phone display." We'll continue to test it out up until the release date.

The Samsung Galaxy Note 7 is a phone that's designed for a very specific user base: those who want a larger screen but are craving a stylus too. That's not to say others might not get some benefit from it, but it's mostly centred around the functionality of the S Pen.

The S Pen is, indeed, back again, and comes with more features and tricks to justify its existence. I'm still not sold on the point of it, but there are those out there who crave its unique feature set, it seems around 50,000 signed a petition to bring the Note 5 to Europe, for example.

(By the way, if you're confused about the naming, the Note 6 moniker was skipped over so Samsung could bring its S and Note ranges onto the same numbering system, rather than making its yearly heavyweight phablet look last-generation before it's even announced).

• Here's everything else you could want to know about the new Samsung Galaxy Note 7
• Or want to see everything in one easy place? Check out our Samsung Galaxy Note 7 hands-on video review!

There are some other cool elements here though: the screen is once again the most advanced on the market, gaming is faster than ever, and there's additional security offered through new biometric sensors.

Still, I can't shake the sense that the Note 7 is a phone that doesn't stray far enough from the excellent Galaxy S7 Edge – but then again, I wouldn't sign a petition to bring it to Europe when that territory already had the decentSamsung Galaxy S6 Edge+.

Release date and price

The Samsung Galaxy Note 7 launch event left us with multiple release dates for the phone, all dependant on where you live in the world. The US and Australia get it first on August 19.

However, the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 UK release date is near the top of next month: September 2. UK pre-orders for the phone begin on August 16, when it'll only be available in Black Onyx and Coral Blue

In the US, it'll cost between $33 and $36.67 a month on a device payment plan with AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint. That's basically the price of the phone spread out over 24 months. At full price, it can be anywhere from $849.99 (T-Mobile and Sprint) to $880 (AT&T). Sprint is the only one offering two-year contracts in exchange for $349.99 upfront.

Samsung is charging UK customers a simpler, but still pricey £749. In Australia, it's expensive, too, at AU$1,349. But if you preorder the Galaxy Note 7 certain stores, you'll receive a bonus: either a Samsung Gear Fit 2 or a Samsung 256GB microSD card, your choice. Shop around,

Key features

The Note 7 does feel like an incremental improvement over the S7 Edge, taking in some updates to the S Pen and making the new phablet feel more business-like and, well, grown up.

One thing I love on the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge was the always-on display, which showed a static image of a clock, calendar or image so you don't need to keep switching on the phone to simply see routine updates. And with the S Pen you can now write directly onto the almost-blank screen – it's like you've always got a piece of paper and a pen to hand.

Your scribbles can then be pinned to the front screen as a reminder, or saved to your notes for looking back at later – not having to open the Notes app every time you want to jot something down seems to be a real win here.

There are some new always-on display images to check out, such as space images – and the good news is that these have already come to the S7 range, via a recent update.

The main changes to the S Pen's toolbox are adding a GIF maker, the ability to instantly translate text, the option to magnify the screen and – for some reason – the ability to paint directly from the Notes app and then blend those colors as if they're real oils.

The latter feature is a neat trick, although it doesn't feel like something that's going to change the world – I'm thinking the notes section is going to be more used as a to-do list rather than an entertainment centre – but I'm really impressed that Samsung is still looking to enhance this area, and keep making it more attractive to a wider selection of users.

The Magnify option feels rather pointless; I get that it can be used to help accessibility, and that's a great thing, but so much of this phone's UI is small and precise to make use of the S Pen's direct input, so it doesn't feel that user-friendly in that case.

It's the same with Translate – it's a cool feature to have, but there are equally good apps out there which can do the same thing. I'm on the fence with this one, as I'll be interested to try it out and see how often it really does come in handy.

The GIF maker is another contentious issue. My colleague loved the idea, as it gives you a granular level of control frame by frame, and you can add stickers and other pictures over the top for the ultimate in social network sharing.

But you can only use it to pull GIFs off video, not capture the screen as you're working, which feels more like the sort of business-like implementation you'd expect here – it's a shame that's missing.

The Samsung Galaxy Note 7 is - like the Galaxy S7 - IP68 rated, which means you can lob it around i the dust and water. However, the screen has been retooled to support the S Pen even underwater, meaning that with water drops all over the screen you'll be able to take some notes.

Are you desperate to make lists in the rain? Well, then the Note 7 will work perfectly for you.

The user interface is a lot more muted than the colorful overlay on the Samsung Galaxy S7 range, which again makes it feel like Samsung is leaning the Note 7 towards a more business-like audience; one that doesn't want to be seen with a device that's too ostentatious.

Then again, you can get it in a silver option that's clearly more gold (we're not sure how that's come about either), so perhaps being a little more bling is on Samsung's roadmap.

The 5.7-inch screen is larger than anything in Samsung's current range though – with the S7 Edge side by side it looks very much the big phablet of the group that we expected.

Next to the iPhone 6S Plus it seems smaller and more refined, despite packing in so many more pixels and a larger display.

Better display

That display also comes with a big headline element: mobile HDR. For the uninitiated, this means you're getting a screen that can display dark areas and bright zones equally well – as long as the content is filmed that way.

More studios are filming in this format each year, with Netflix and Amazon being big supporters of the technology, and now you'll be able to get those benefits on the go too.

Right now, though, there isn't a whole host of mobile HDR footage out there. It feels a bit like when Sony launched the Z5 Premium with the 4K screen... yes, there is Ultra HD content coming, but it's not being piped into your phone at the moment.

I couldn't see the larger screen on the Note 7 benefiting from the tech in general use, but that could be because the Super AMOLED technology Samsung is using these days is so good that it's hard to see the incremental improvements.

Sure enough, the experts at DisplayMate has crowned the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 the best phone display ever, citing its higher brightness levels, contrast ratio and color gamut. It also sports the lowest reflectance rate of any phone, which means it'll be easier to see in direct sunlight.

Iris scanning

It's hard to know precisely why Samsung decided to bring iris scanning to the Galaxy Note 7 – it feels very much like a luxury addition when there was already something good there. The fingerprint scanner is present and correct, and is as swift as ever: press the home button to wake the phone and you're already into the main display – exactly what you want to see.

But with the iris scanner, you need wake the phone, swipe right and then place the phone perfectly in front of your face to make it work. Yes, when it's held in the right position it works instantly – and that's mega impressive – but it was too erratic in my early tests for me to see it as a winning feature – especially when there's already a great security feature right there in the fingerprint scanner.

Perhaps you can argue that the iris scanner is more secure, as it comes with 200 points of recognition over the approximately 80 for a fingerprint. But neither are flawless, and given that this is just a safer way to avoid having to put in a PIN, I'm not convinced.

I suppose if you have wet fingers A LOT (wait... what are you actually doing? You're not a dolphin trainer) then this could be a good alternative – or if you could use it by simply lifting the phone up to your face, without having to wake it first. But as it stands, it feels a little bit like a feature for the sake of it.

That said, you can put a fun cartoon mask on the iris-scanning screen if the night-vision eyes scare you too much.

Design and specs

The design of the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 is pretty impressive – it's like the S7 Edge, but slightly refined to cater for a new audience. There's a slimmer curve into the metallic rim around the edges, and the back is curved into the same frame.

The Note 5 had the curved rear, as does the Galaxy S7, but the combination of front and back is more reminiscent of the S7 Edge. It's not quite as pronounced and smooth, which is a shame, but it does mean fewer accidental taps of the screen.

The edge display is on offer though, which is great, as you can add in your favorite apps and shortcuts to quickly get to things that matter to you – and hopefully more elements to download to here will appear soon, as Samsung expands the feature.

In terms of specs, things are a little confusing – in the US you're getting a Snapdragon 820 CPU, which is quad-core, but the UK and other parts of the world will be getting the Exynos option instead (Samsung still hasn't confirmed which model this will be), to deliver a little more power.

There's 4GB of RAM backing up both CPUs, and 64GB of internal storage, with the option to expand that by up to 256GB with a microSD card.

One of the surprising additions here is a USB-C port, which is something the brand decided against just a few months ago for the new S range – apparently the technology has matured enough in that time to make it worth including here.

That means faster data transfer and charging – and don't worry about having to upgrade all your leads, as there'll be an adaptor in the box. Phew.

Camera and battery

The camera is largely the same as the one found on the Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge – which means a 12MP snapper with optical image stabilisation and the customary bump on the back to allow for the larger sensor.

It takes the sort of great pictures you'd expect from a Samsung handset, and as fast as you'd expect, and you can flip between the modes really quickly with a flick of the finger. The South Korean brand has been working hard to make the user interface more one-hand-friendly, and you can easily flip between filters and the front-facing camera now.

The battery is confusing though: it's 3500mAh, which is smaller than the Galaxy S7's (although bigger than the Note 5's from last year), despite being in a bigger chassis.

I can only assume this is because the S Pen takes up a lot of room down the side... but it does mean that battery life will be compromised. That said, the Note 7 will charge up super-fast – and the wireless charging options mean it'll start topping up the instant you pop it down on a charging pad.

Early verdict

The Samsung Galaxy Note 7 is all about refinement, while bringing a key product line back to the whole world. The S Pen is a great addition for those that like the precision it brings, and some of the new features seem fun, if not exactly indispensable.

The iris scanner doesn't seem to have much of a point to it at the moment, as it's too slow and doesn't seem to add much over the fingerprint scanner that's already there.

But with a brilliant camera and a design rebooted slightly, as well as IP68 waterproof smarts, it's hard to see how anyone is going to dislike this compact, yet intensely, powerful, phablet.

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Samsung Notebook 7 Spin Review

Samsung’s gone and done it guys. It’s made a perfectly wonderful laptop that retails for under $US1000, is of exceptional quality, and is neither under-powered nor teeming with crappy finishes. This is the college-bound laptop everyone, including Apple, has failed to make for the last couple of years.

AU Editor’s Note: The Notebook 7 Spin isn’t sold in Australia, unfortunately. But you can buy it internationally if you like the look of it, and have it shipped from a reseller like Amazon to your doorstep. — Cam

What Is It?

We’ve been busting Apple’s balls a lot lately, and it definitely has everything to do with my four-year-old Macbook Pro being on its last legs and my refusal to spend $2000-plus on the paltry-arse upgrade that is the current Macbook Pro. While other laptop companies furiously pack whiz-bang features and new ideas into a slab of aluminium and plastic, Apple’s been moseying along with a product so long in the tooth you might mistake it for an elderly relative who says inappropriate things at family gatherings.

Meanwhile, there is Samsung. Last year it had exactly one laptop in its line up. It was a great laptop, but it was hardly going to help the company take the computer business by storm. This year Samsung has been quietly rolling out a multitude of devices. It started with the brutally efficient Samsung 9, and now it’s back with the chunkier, and much more affordable, Samsung Notebook 7 Spin. The Notebook 7 Spin is the rare quality “do everything” laptop for under $US1000.

Yeah, it’s bigger than the laptops we usually prefer here at Gizmodo — large enough that it feels clunky opening and closing and making use of the 360-degree hinge. And at 2kg for the 15-inch, it’s heavy enough to be used in your daily workout routine. Yet it’s also got a 1TB hard drive, space for a zippier M.2 SATA drive, a 15.6-inch 1080p display, USB and USB-C ports, and the 15-inch even has an Nvidia Geforce 940M video card — in case you need to get in some clutch play of the games in Overwatch. More importantly, it’s a lot more satisfying and easy to use that similarly priced laptops like the Dell Latitude 5000 series or HP Envy 15.

This may sound shocking to a lot of you cheapskates, but it is actually very hard to find a really good Windows laptop for under a thousand dollars. There’s always a drawback. They’re all huge, and screens are washed out and ugly, or keyboards feel like your typing on marshmallows. The worst offender, though, is the trackpad. Budget laptops always have trackpads designed in the seventh pit of hell and put on this earth to destroy our will to compute.

The Notebook 7 Spin has a remarkable trackpad. It’s every bit as intuitive and responsive as a MacBook trackpad — the gold standard. There are no misclicks. No accidental icon draggings. No “oops” right clicks when you meant to click left. The trackpad doesn’t feel buggy and the mouse doesn’t hop around the screen as if possessed. For a Windows machine it’s exceptional.

There are other little nods of quality that are unexpected in a laptop so cheap. The 45Wh battery in the 15-inch variant gave me a solid 6 hours of Nyan Cat streaming at full brightness, and the 13-inch version, which features the same battery and much less battery-consuming screen, should perform even better.

The Notebook 7 Spin also features “fast charging,” so in my testing it went from zero to 20 per cent battery in under twenty minutes, and it would be fully charged in less than two hours. I don’t know if I would characterise it as the fastest-charging laptop available, but it’s certainly in the upper echelons.

The ability to upgrade keeps it up there. The bottom of the laptop is covered in soft-touch plastic and held together by glaringly shiny screws. Remove the screws and you have instant access to the hard drive, M.2 SATA slot, and RAM slots. You can also peer at the latest generation i7 Skylake processor, if you really want to (the 13-inch comes with an i5). That means in addition to being cheap and powerful, it’s also user upgradable. This instantly tags another two years onto the lifespan of the computer.

Samsung’s also included an Ethernet port. That’s usually the first port to get sacrificed to the thinness gods, especially in a world in which Wi-Fi is more or less a given just about everywhere you go. Its inclusion here is a deliberate move and not just a vestige of the wired times of yore. Thin laptops and super-light laptops are still a luxury in Samsung’s book, and Samsung is betting that most people would be happy to forgo that luxury to experience a laptop that can tackle any need that might arise.

 In other words, Samsung is trying to build a Swiss Army Laptop for everyone. So there’s an ethernet port for lugging this thing to college where the dank library basement or science lab might have spotty wireless. A USB-C port for the nerd who needs to run their 4K monitor, an HDMI port for streaming anime on a TV, and three regular USB ports for thumb drives, hard drives, and the charging of the countless USB-powered devices we’re all stuck with.

There’s an SD card slot for the photographer too. There’s also a touchscreen for the dad who insists he needs one (whether he actually uses it or not), and there’s a 360-degree hinge because some people actually like to use their 15-inch laptop like a tablet, or prop it up so they can lie on their beds watching new episodes of Orange is the New Black.

Another feature meant to please the crowd is the “HDR mode” that alters the colour of the 1080p display. I’m using quotations when calling it “HDR mode” because it is an infuriatingly confusing feature. HDR is a term currently used to describe two things.

1. HDR in photography, where identical photos with different exposures are layered together to provide a highly detailed image (either static or moving).
2. HDR in video, where those highly detailed images are then reproduced perfectly on very expensive TVs.

Samsung has introduced a third HDR mode that has nothing to do with HDR and everything to do with the rising popularity of the term. Samsung’s HDR mode is really just “brighter colours and higher contrast at the cost of accuracy.” It’s not so much HDR as a badly named display preset for people who don’t know any better.

Which is a lot of people! I review displays for a living, so I’ve gotten very good at judging the accuracy of one and I deeply value that accuracy, but I also know that friends and family often find “accurate” to mean “dull and sort of brown.” This mode is absolutely for them — too bad it couldn’t have a different name.

As it stands, calling the preset “HDR mode” is bound to lead to people proudly showing off their $US800 ($1,048) laptop and saying it’s got a display that’s better than the one on an $US8000 ($10,481) TV. This would be inaccurate, so if you buy this laptop do not do this.

Should You Buy It?

And you should buy this laptop — at least if you’re in the mood for a not-so-lean but very mean Windows machine. Sending a kid to college? Are yourself a kid headed to college? This is the perfect device for you. It’s what used to be the bread and butter of Apple and Dell. This big guy can go anywhere and do just about anything, and won’t make your bank account cry in the process. Apple take note, this is what people are actually looking for in a laptop under $US1000.

README

• I really, really hate that HDR mode, but if you don’t know any better it makes video look real pretty
• Between this and the 9, Samsung knows what they’re doing with regards to trackpads.
• A 360-hinge and touch screen. Because reasons.
• Memory and storage can easily be upgraded by the end user.
• It is not attractive unless you think soft touch plastic and fake silver finishes are hot, but hey, appearance isn’t everything you jackass.

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Samsung Level On Pro Wireless Headphones review

High-end noise-cancelling headphones are a tough market to break into. Around the house or at the gym, fans of pricey, decent-sounding cans flock to the Beats brand. On planes, it's like stepping into a Bose advertisement with one out of every five seats occupied by someone rocking a pair of QuietComfort 25 or QuietComfort 35.

So where does that leave Samsung's Level On Pro Wireless Headphones if it can't hang out at your home or cruise with you 30,000 feet up in the air?

Around the neck of hundreds of thousands of Samsung phone-owners around the world … or at least that's what Samsung hopes will happen.

The Samsung Level On Pros are designed work with every Bluetooth and 3.5mm jack-equipped cell phone on the planet, but you'll really need a Samsung handset, like the Samsung Galaxy S7, Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge+ or Samsung Galaxy Note 5, to really get the most out of these $249 (£224, AU$399) noise-cancelling cans.

Design

The Samsung Level On Pros have an almost space-age look to them. Our review unit had a reflective silver-gold frame and snow white earpads.

While Level On Pros are marketed as on-ear headphones they almost perfectly encircle the ears, with the pads just barely touching the outskirts of the ear. This makes them exceptionally comfortable – they're loose enough to hang on the ear for an hour or two without causing discomfort, and tight enough that they're not liable to fall off.

On the underside of the bridge is a cushy white pad that seals the gap between the top of your head and the fragile-feeling plastic bridge. The pad itself is as comfortable to wear as you might imagine. The cheap plastic bridge, however, leaves a lot to be desired, especially for its price point.

What I do like, though, is the fact that the Level On Pros fold up, allowing you to pack them in your bag without worrying about a heavier object smashing them in two.

The buttons on the Level On Pros, similarly, are amenable, if not overtly simple. On the right earcup you'll find two switches, one for Bluetooth that also serves as a power button, and an ANC – or Active Noise Cancelling – button that does exactly what you'd expect.

Connections-wise, you'll find an auxiliary jack – the Level On Pros come with a 4-foot 3.5-to-3.5mm cable – and a microUSB port that you'll use to charge the headphones in between sessions.

If you're going wireless, the Level On Pros support Bluetooth version 4.1 and are compatible with the Sound With Me app that allows you to share your music with anyone around you who might also have a Samsung-made pair of cans. Samsung's website claims that Bluetooth is supported for up to 10 meters (30 feet), but I found that I'd often get disconnected after walking about half that distance.

Instead of implementing physical buttons for play/pause, volume and track controls, however, the Level Ons have a touch-capacitive earcup that you'll use in their stead. But there's a huge caveat: unless you figure out which motion correlates to which command, it's a pretty difficult system to use. I gave them to friends and family to try out and, nine times out of 10, no one figured out how to work the controls. Space-age feeling, it seems, comes at the expense of usability.

That said, an aspect where the Samsung Level Ons excel is in the battery life department. Samsung says that on a full charge the Level Ons can play on uninterrupted for up to 10 hours in Bluetooth Mode with ANC turned on; up to 20 hours in Bluetooth Mode without ANC; up to 18 hours with a wired connection with ANC and up to 600 hours on standby.

Also, besides the aforementioned audio cable, the Level On Pros also come with a standard microUSB cable for charging and a faux-leather carrying bag.

Performance

When talking about how the Samsung Level On Pro Wireless perform, you have to divide it into two experiences: using it on a Samsung phone and using it with everything else.

If your handset doesn't sport the manufacturer's label, what you'll hear is a middle-of-the-road sound. It's warm, balanced and completely inoffensive. Songs like Renegade by X Ambassadors have a fair amount of flourish, but lack the same details you'd hear on a proper set of desktop speakers.

That said, if you're using anything other than a Samsung device the Level On Pro's sound quality is close, if not almost identical, to the Beats Solo, the entry-level Beats pair of cans.

Of course, it's a different game when you make the switch to a true Samsung cellphone. Not only do phones like the Galaxy S6 and S7 support AptX over Bluetooth (you can read about the differences in our Bluetooth vs AptXexplainer), but also support a different codec called UHQ Audio. UHQ, or Ultra High Quality Audio, delivers 24-bit audio at 88.2kHz, or two times the frequency range of standard CD-quality wireless sound.

UHQ provides a notable difference in audio quality. It's not enough of a difference to cause non-Samsung owners to run to the store and pick-up a handset to match their headphones, but it's enough to make these a good recommendation for any Galaxy lovers in your life.

What everyone benefits from is the four mic Active Noise Cancelling that does a stellar job of stopping outside noise from melding with your music or video audio. A room full of people talking becomes your favorite audio track with the faces of your friends and acquaintances merely becoming a backdrop for the music. You'll see lips moving, but hear almost none of what they're saying.

It's hard to compare ANC in a head-to-head sort of way (sound is easier to qualify when it's present than when it's not), but to my ears it seems like it's on par with Bose's cans.

Unfortunately, though, using ANC adds a slight hiss to any audio track, slightly diminishing sound quality. It's almost inaudible and, so long as you don't get hung up on it, won't pester you for long once the music starts.

We liked

It's hard to understate how comfortable the Level On Pro Wireless are. They fit snugly thanks to the large – and let's not kid ourselves here, over-ear – earpads. The padded bridge adds an extra layer of pillowy cushion in a spot most headphone manufacturers forget, and the control scheme is minimalistic.

While the Level On Pro Wireless doesn't have amazing sound quality across the board, the UHQ codec means that at least Samsung Galaxy owners get to enjoy premium sound even if the rest of us don't.

We disliked

Despite a fair amount of heft, the Level On Pro Wireless still feel fragile in the hand – the plastic bridge means that one mistake could utterly wreck your $249 (£224, AU$399) investment.

And while the middling sound irked me, it was really the obscure touch controls and short-range Bluetooth that were salt in the wound.

Final verdict

The Samsung Level On Pro Wireless are one of the few headphones I've tested that feel like they're meant as a package deal for another device. Yes they'll work with every Bluetooth and 3.5mm jack-equipped handset on the market, but you're better off sticking to a Samsung device in order to squeeze every ounce of aural goodness from the UHQ audio codec.

It's one of the comfiest pair of cans on the market, and one of the best noise-cancelling, too. If it had a better sound quality for the vast majority of cell phone users it would be an easy recommendation but, as it stands, really makes the most sense at checkout when purchased alongside Samsung's Next Big Thing.

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