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Tired of sounding faint and indistinct on phone calls and video conference meetings? Or not being able to hear anyone else because of your ambient noise? That's the exact environment for the EPOS Adapt 560 BT Headset with Bluetooth Dongle. Tech expert Dave Taylor of https://www.AskDaveTaylor.com/ hooks up a pair of Adapt 560 to his Windows computer and found that they work great for Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, Skype and phone calls too. And that sound! They sound surprisingly excellent and fit perfectly into any business environment.
Check them out at https://amzn.to/3rpVITN
Note: EPOS is a division of Sennheiser.
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These headphones will up your game on every video conference. Let's check them out
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Yes, boss, I understand what you're saying. I will get back to you. Oh, sorry. Sorry, boss. Gotta go
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So, Dave Taylor here, and I'm checking out these. These are the EPOS Adapt 560s. Now, who's EPOS
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Turns out that's a company of Sennheiser, so you can know from the get-go that they have really
0:33
great sound. But these are specifically designed for video conferencing and for call centers and
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similar. So, let me tell you about them, and then I'll give you a sample of the audio that they
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pick up, because it's pretty darn impressive, and then talk about the sound reproduction
0:50
All right, Bluetooth 5.0. But wait, it's not just Bluetooth 5.0, but these include a little
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Bluetooth dongle. So, if you're going to hook these up to a Mac or PC that doesn't have Bluetooth
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I guess every Mac has Bluetooth, but if you're going to hook them up to a computer that doesn't
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have Bluetooth, they've solved that problem for you. And while we're looking in the case, there
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is a USB-C charging cable, and it's actually a pretty nice soft case. So, it's sort of firm
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enough to give you good protection, but soft enough that it's not an annoying hard shell
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All right, back to these. So, like I said, Bluetooth 5.0. They support AAC and APTX
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which isn't going to make much of a difference on your next Zoom call or Microsoft Meet or maybe
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even your phone, but they are going to make music sound fantastic. So, we'll come back to that
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but these are clearly Sennheiser headphones, because they sound really nice. It has a
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foldable boom arm. That's where your speaking mic is, and you fold it up, and it's muted
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You fold it down, and it's on again. So, that's super easy, very convenient way to mute yourself
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if you need to talk to someone in the office rather than someone on the call. It features
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two microphones for your voice and four more microphones for active noise canceling
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and this does a really good job with ANC. This is clearly designed for like a loud call center
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or something. So, if you're in a loud home office or you're at a call center, then turning on the
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ANC definitely impacts your battery life, but gives you really good active noise canceling. So
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you're not going to hear much of anything other than the person on the other end or in the case
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of maybe a Zoom conference or, sorry, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, all of those. You're going
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to just be able to focus on that event and on that discussion and not worry about your environmental
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sounds. Nice. So, three separate volume controls, so you can really fine tune this to get volume
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for your phone calls versus volume for your music versus volume for your ringtones and voice prompts
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You can also turn off voice prompts, which a lot of people like. It is actually certified for
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Microsoft Teams and Google Meet, and it is Alcatel-Lucent compatible. So, this really is a
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corporate solution, and I think that's why Sennheiser has it under a different brand
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is this is for like international call centers and similar. So, when you call someone else and
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they're at a corporation, they might be wearing this, but you can get it too. So, 46 hours of
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battery life, unless you turn on ANC, in which case that's cut in half, but still give it a full
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charge and you're still going to get up to 24 hours with ANC. Now, that battery life will also
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be affected by the volume of the music you're listening to or the volume of just the audio
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you're listening to. So, if you want to listen to heavy thrash metal with ANC on, then your
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battery life is going to be a little less than if you're listening to very faint spa music. Sorry
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I should say heavy metal really loud, right? One impressive number, 81 days of standby. That's a
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lot of standby. Now, it does, like I said, come with that Bluetooth dongle. There's two versions
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There's a USB 3 version or USB-C version. Pick the right one and you'll be happier
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And in terms of controls, pretty much all the buttons are tossed onto the right earpiece. And
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here's a close-up. You can see there's a lot of different buttons and you're going to really just
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have to learn the buttons because there's no kinesthetic feedback that gives you the clue
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of which one does what. And there are multi-function buttons. So, here's a little cheat sheet of all the
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different button pushes on the different buttons. It's complicated. To me, the most important ones
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to know are power on and off and ANC on and off. Other than that, you can probably manage your
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controls on your source device. So, having said that, let me give you a sample of the audio. So
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what I'm going to do is I'm going to put these on and I've already paired them with my Windows
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computer. And if everything is working correctly, I can go into voice recorder and I'm going to
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switch from this audio to this audio. So, there's going to be a moment where I'm going to be talking
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and you won't hear anything and you'll understand why. So, okay, here we go
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So, now I'm talking and you're hearing the microphone from the EPOS ADAPT 560. And of
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course, if I turn the boom mic up, turn it back down and I'm back on voice again. As you can hear
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the voice quality is exceptional. It's really nice. Great. Now, let me switch back to being on camera
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Okay, just had to pause that and wait. Now, it's playing back into my headphones
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Not great, but it does give me the entree to talk about the audio quality when you're listening
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It's really impressive. I mean, Sennheiser has such a great reputation. They have such great
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audio gear. It doesn't surprise me a bit that the headphones, the drivers in these headphones
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do a beautiful job reproducing music and a surprising amount of bass too. So, when you're on
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a phone call, you might find that you'll have to fine tune things just a little bit on your source
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device. Or you could also do that, of course, on an iPhone or an Android phone or a tablet. Doesn't
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have to be a PC. Any Bluetooth device will work for both recording your speaking and giving you
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audio. But the audio itself is really nice. These are just nice little headphones. Actually, if you
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forget that you have the little microphone on it, they're just nice headphones with really nice
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sound reproduction, big sound stage, big vibrant sound. I mean, music. I was listening to the
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soundtrack from the film Passengers. Kind of a weird movie, but the soundtrack's really nice and
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it just sounded crystal clear on this. Now, a couple of issues to know about. Number one, I found that
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with some applications, the default setting for the microphone was low. You can't adjust that on the
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unit. But in software like Skype or Microsoft Teams or something like that, there is a setting that
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lets you adjust the input gain. You'll probably have to use that to get just the right amount
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Not a huge crisis. In terms of Bluetooth connectivity, it can connect to multiple
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devices simultaneously. And like all devices that do that, it's a little problematic to have that
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because other devices throw off audio pings even if you're not doing anything. And so every so often
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I found that this dropped its connection, which was kind of super frustrating. But when I went to
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all the other devices that were connected that I didn't want to have connected and just dropped
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that Bluetooth connection, that issue went away. So you can dual pair this with your phone and your
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computer. I would highly recommend that you actually just use it in single mode. Or if you're
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going to do that, go and actively mute the device you're not using so that it doesn't false send an
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audio signal or a notification ping or an email ping or something like that and have you drop your
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connection on the device you're actually working with. Really, those are my only concerns and my
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only limitations. It is a solid business solution. It works great with video conferences. I've tried
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it on a number of different calls on Zoom and Google Meet and Microsoft Teams, and it's worked
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beautifully every time. And I also like that when you have these on, it's a little more discreet than
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some of the gamer headphones, which tend to be a lot bigger and a lot more overt. I don't really
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want people thinking about the gear I'm wearing. I want them to think about what I'm saying
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ideally. So that's something that's really nice. And of course, the biggest win with this is that
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this is something you can convince the boss to get for you if you're on the phone or on video calls
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all the time. And what you also will then secretly have are really great headphones for music when
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you're not on calls and not otherwise engaged. So it's a win-win all around. When you're ready to
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charge them, there's USB-C on the bottom. Plug them into anything, they'll charge up in a couple of
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hours, and then you'll have a week easy of being able to use these for calls, for listening, for
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whatever you want. Lots to really like about this. It is not really a consumer product. It is not
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flashy. It is definitely not gamer headphones with little built-in neon or fluorescent or
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lightning bolts or, I don't know, little skulls or anything. It's just a solid, straightforward
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solution. Which brings us to the final piece, which is the price. But before we get to the price
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can I ask that you subscribe to my channel if you wouldn't mind? It's just a click or a tap on that
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little red button on the lower right, and we're connected. And I really appreciate your subscription
10:12
Okay, great. This is the EPOS Adapt 560. I'll put the microphone out. And that includes the little
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Bluetooth dongle in the case too. And it is $222.12 at Amazon.com. It's kind of a strange price, but
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honestly, it's a really solid option if you spend a lot of time on phone calls or you spend a lot
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of time in video conferencing. And it's super compatible. They're going to sound good. You're
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going to sound fantastic. And that's a win-win. So I'm actually going to go back to some music
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which means I'll catch you in my next video. Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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