106 MACWORLD AUGUST 2019
PLAYLIST REVIEW: PSB M4U 8 HEADPHONESThe controls are
purely physical—no
touch sensitivity
here—and they
are laid out very
well, allowing
you to easily
find and
operate
them by
feel.illuminated Bluetooth-pairing button
flashes red and blue when waiting to pair
with a source device. If your source device
offers NFC pairing, simply enable NFC and
Bluetooth in the device, place it against
the front of the right earcup, and accept
the pairing on the device when prompted.
Next is the volume up/down rocker,
which does exactly what you’d expect:
increase and decrease the volume from
the source device. You can also press
straight down on the rocker to engage
Transparency Mode; press it again to
disengage Transparency Mode.
Below the volume rocker is a
3-position slider switch that turns the
battery power off and on in the lower and
middle positions, respectively. Moving the
slider to the upper position engages
active noise cancellation.
Near the bottom of the earcup is a
rocker that controls playback from the
source device. Pushing the rocker straight
down starts and pauses playback, while
rocking it upward skips to the next track,
and rocking it downward skips to the
previous track. If you receive a phone call
while listening, press the button straight
down to pause the music and answer the
phone; press it again to hang up and
resume playback. You can also hold this
button for five seconds to activate Siri or
Google Assistant in the source device.
A mini-USB port at the bottom of the
right earcup is used for charging the
batteries and conveying audio from a
computer (using the headphone’s DAC
rather than the computer’s). Also at the
bottom of each earcup is a 3.5mm,
2-channel, analog-audio input; you can
plug a cable into either one, which is a
nice touch. The support structure for
each earcup has a gap that
accommodates the cable.
The controls and connections are
thoughtfully laid out. I especially
appreciate that the main controls are well
separated, which makes them very easy to
find by feel. By contrast, some of the
controls on the JBL Everest 710GA (go.
macworld.com/710g) I recently reviewed
run together, making them harder to find
by feel. Also, I prefer physical controls over
the newer touch-sensitive controls found
on some other models.