120 MACWORLD JUNE 2019
PLAYLIST REVIEW: BANG & OLUFSEN BEOPLAY H9Ithe headphone arms don’t fold. You can’t
get them into an ultra-compact form factor
like you can with the Bose QuietComfort 35
or the Sony MDR-1000XM3.
ANGLED DRIVERS FOR
OPTIMAL SOUND
Most over-the-head headphones position
their drivers in the middle of the ear cups.
The drivers therefore fire directly at your
ears. The drivers inside the Beoplay H9i’s
ear cups are positioned forward and at a
slight angle. The end result is the drivers
fire sound slightly from the front of your
ears, creating a sound stage that tends to
be slightly more in front of you, mimicking
(to a slight degree) what you’d get with
traditional loudspeakers. You typically
need to spend hundreds of dollars more
to find such a driver positioning.
The Beoplay H9i are also built with
some slick integrated intelligence. A
proximity sensor knew when I took off the
headphones and would pause the music.
When I put the headphones back on, the
music would pick right up again. The
feature worked almost every time. The
times it didn’t work as advertised were
when I didn’t take the headphones off in a
typical fashion. Lifting both ear cups and
then placing them back on my head
re-engaged the music. All in all, this
feature worked really well.
These headphones support Bluetooth
4.2 and the the AAC codec, but you won’t
get any of the more advanced Bluetooth
codecs: aptX, aptX HD, or LDAC.SOLID BATTERY LIFE
The proximity sensor also helps the
Beoplay H9i deliver 18 hours of Bluetooth
playtime with ANC engaged on a single
charge. The number jumps to 23
hours if you’re using only
Bluetooth without noise
cancellation, and up to 24 hours
if you’re using ANC with the
headphones plugged into your
music source. It takes about 2.5
hours for a full charge.
Some wireless headphones
today are pushing even longer
play times. But here’s what is
truly unique about the Beoplay
A detailed view of the Beoplay H9i’s angled drivers. H9i: Its 770mAh battery is