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Combining great style with great music reproduction and ANC, there's lots to like about the new SHURE AONIC 40 wireless noise canceling ANC headphones, but there are some aspects you'll want to know about before you make a purchase decision too. Audio expert Dave Taylor checks out the AONIC 40 and finds them a solid option for people looking for studio sound on the go...
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0:00
New ANC headphones from Shure. Let's check them out
0:03
Oh, Dave Taylor here. I'm checking out these. I should say I'm really enjoying these. These are
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the Shure Ionic 40 wireless noise-canceling headphones, and they're really nice. They
0:23
feature 40 millimeter neodymium dynamic drivers, which give you a clean and crisp 20 to 20,000
0:31
hertz frequency response. Bluetooth 5. They support aptX, aptX HD, AAC, and SBC. So basically
0:40
any Bluetooth device you connect these to, you're going to get the best possible sound quality. 25
0:46
hours of battery life, and if they're running low on battery, 15 minutes of charge will give you
0:51
more than 25 hours of listening. That's pretty sweet. They also have beam-forming microphones
0:57
so you can actually use these on a call, and the person on the other end will actually hear you
1:02
really well. I'll demonstrate that in just a second. It also works with the Shure Play app
1:07
which is really, really important. We're going to come back to that too. I'm going to give you a
1:12
little demo of that, but I also want to show you that in the box is, let's see, some very nice
1:18
instructions with that sort of customary corner cut out, and a hard case. Not a huge fan of hard
1:26
cases. This one's reasonably small because they do fold up. In the case, you have, let's see what's
1:34
in here. We have a charging cable, which is USB-A to USB-C. There is a cheat sheet, and there is
1:43
some more instructions. This is the owner's manual, so I guess when you get to the really
1:49
small print, you can see a lot, but what I really wanted to show you was they have a 2.5 millimeter
1:55
to 3.5 millimeter cable because you can also use these wired. Why would you do that? Well
2:01
for example, on an airplane, you might want to plug into the airplane audio system
2:07
and that will let you do that. The airplanes do not give you Bluetooth connectivity options for
2:12
fairly obvious reasons. When you plug them in, they are 31 ohm headphones because I know some
2:18
people that use wired headphones like to know the impedance. They do have multi-point support in
2:24
Bluetooth, and they are really, really nice build quality. It's aluminum, and this is the aircraft
2:32
grade aluminum alloy, as they call it, and they use something called glass-filled nylon. I don't
2:37
know what that is. It sounds scary, but I can tell you that there's nothing scary about glass-filled
2:44
I guess that's just to make it stronger, but it's a really, really premium-looking design
2:49
and you can see it is actually something where it almost takes some design notes from the Apple
2:55
Beats headphones, which are super popular. They are very light at 11 ounces, but hey
3:00
enough talking about them. Let's get some demos, and so what I'm going to do first is I'm going
3:06
to show you the very slick SurePlay app. So get the recording started. There we go, and so you can
3:16
see in the app that I've already paired it with my headphones, and I can do things like change my ANC
3:23
level. There's three levels of active noise canceling, which is great, and I can also go
3:28
and personalize all sorts of things, including what audio mode I'm in and when I should be
3:35
charging it and all sorts of things. The real fun, of course, is when you get into the equalizer
3:40
and then this gives me presets, so I have lots of presets. You can see I've been using loudness for
3:47
now, but I can also go to manual, and I can just fine-tune exactly what I want, where it's like
3:53
well, let's do this and maybe up that a little bit, and then go here, and there's a lot you can do
4:01
If you decide you've gone down the wrong path, just go back to presets, and you can do something
4:06
like, all right, let's do bass boost. Easy enough. Finally, when you're in music, as I am here with my
4:12
doubled track electric light orchestra, great band, really good for headphones. I don't know why I have
4:21
two copies of every track. That's just part of the fun of having digital music, but I can just easily
4:27
pick a song, and now I'm listening to it, and if I want, of course, I can go back and I can try
4:33
different EQ settings. So, let's try this with treble cut, treble boost. I can do a vocal boost
4:44
if I really want to hear the vocals, and I can turn off EQ. Simple enough. So, really nice. I'm
4:52
not going to get lost in the yellow. I love the band, actually. So, let's go, and now I'm going to do a
4:58
voice, so you can hear what it sounds like. So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to switch my audio
5:06
source for this video, and now you're hearing my voice as picked up by the Shure Ionic 40 headphones
5:16
So, this is exactly what someone on a phone call would hear if you were using these, say, on a Zoom
5:23
call, or on a phone call, or any other device, or any other software where you want to get audio
5:29
input. So, they actually sound surprisingly good. I was really surprised at how clean and
5:36
and listenable it was. So, let me switch audio back. Now, that's my demo. I interrupt my own video to make
5:47
sure that you also learn about the buttons on the headphones. On the right earpiece is a button that
5:53
controls Bluetooth, and if you double push it, you can get a battery status update. It's super handy. On the
5:59
left side, there's another single button, and then there's the three-button multifunction. So, the three
6:05
buttons have volume up and volume down on the outer edges, and then that middle button has about, I don't
6:11
know, 5,000 different options and features. Here's a cheat sheet, and if this doesn't make you feel like maybe
6:17
you should control it from your device, then you are better at memorizing patterns than I am. And then, the
6:24
other button there also gives you access to controlling the ANC itself. So, one button on the right, a three
6:32
button, plus one button on the left. That's pretty much everything. And then, there's charging on the left, and
6:38
then there's also that 2.5-millimeter jack for you to use it in wired mode. Now, back to my regular video. I am quite
6:46
favorably impressed with the Shure Ionic 40s. Now, the most important question, of course, is how do they sound
6:54
with music? And I will tell you, particularly given that app that you can play with, you can really dial in the EQ
7:01
that you want, and you can really, they sound really good. I really enjoyed listening to various music with these
7:08
from symphonic to jazz to reggae to some classic rock and roll, and it's all doing a good job. Now, the one limitation I
7:18
would say is the ANC is really good on the lower frequencies, but I found that it wasn't all frequency ANC like some
7:27
other systems do, and so that was a slight bit disappointing. I would give these like a strong B-plus on noise
7:35
canceling, which isn't quite as good as I would like for the very top end, but I think for the vast majority of users, these
7:42
will absolutely meet your needs, and you will find them to be really wonderful. Now, most importantly, of course, is that
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audio reproduction is terrific. So, lots to like here, lots to enjoy, and then we need to talk about price, but before we get to
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price, let me ask if you could subscribe to my channel. Super easy. A click or a tap on that subscribe button, then don't forget to
8:05
turn on notifications, and we're connected. Now, they come in white. This is what these are, obviously, and they also come in
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black, and they are $249 at either Shure.com or Amazon.com, and you could read lots of reviews of the Ionic 50, but these are
8:25
really new, so when you read those reviews, make sure you're reading them for the correct headphones. So, I really like these. These
8:33
are going to be my new headphones, my new go-to headphones for a while until the next pair come along. So, lots to like, excellent
8:42
style, and really comfortable, and I told you I'd show you how they fold up. They fold up pretty small, so you might not even need to
8:50
use that case. That's all I got. I hope to catch you in my next video
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