Edifier ES850NB headphones review: Greater than their sum

Buying any piece of cheap tech is a gamble, but headphones can be especially persnickety. From the build, to the audio quality, to the tech features, there are plenty of places a budget set of headphones can subtract from the listening experience. In rare cases, the stars align and a manufacturer gets the equation just right. Edifier’s ES850NB noise-cancelling headphones are one of the few that find the right balance - a luxurious fit with audio quality that surpasses what you’d expect from a $150 set of headphones. There are some divisive qualities, but all in all, these budget cans are greater than their sum.

A dimension and a half

While many budget headphones tend to err towards heavy bass, the ES850NB swing in the opposite direction. If anything, the bass is a touch more muted compared to other sets, but not necessarily to its detriment. All three levels of bass still come through in Carly Rae Jepsen’s “I Didn’t Just Come Here to Dance”, and the sub bass in Childish Gambino’s “3005” still has a chest-filling resonance. They just don’t fill your head and torso the way a hefty sub-woofer does.

Despite excellent clarity across our testing, and the headphone’s Hi-Res audio compatibility, something about the ES850NB’s sound feels hollow. They’re not quite one-dimensional, they haven’t hit 2D, instead they hover around the 1.5th dimension. This comes down to the sound stage. Excellent headphones have a wide sound stage, which means you’ll feel the directionality of the music flowing all across your head. On the best sets you’ll hear the sound start from almost behind you on one side and loop around the front of your eyes to end on the other. On the other side of the spectrum all the sound will feel like it hits you between your eyes. The sound stage on this set of Edifiers sits somewhere in the middle. You get some sense of space on tracks like “Comfortably Numb” by Pink Floyd, and “Blinding Lights” by The Weeknd, but it is limited which makes the sound feel smaller, less grand.

It took me a while to put my finger on the sound stage as the main audio issue. Its thinness can, at times, make the music sound muddy even though it technically isn’t. For me personally this quirk isn’t a deal breaker. I’m more drawn to sharp mid and treble tones than I am to a grandiose, immersive experience. Out of the box, the EQ finds an excellent balance for most listeners, and if something feels a bit off you can always customise the balance in the Edifier Connex app.

Acute angles

Most of the ES850NB’s design and fit features are thoughtful and comfortable for long wear. With a padded headband, extra cushioning on the muffs, and a sleek but easily cleanable plastic build, the headphones look just like they feel. Luxurious. I generally wear them for around two hours every morning on my walk to and from the gym, and the workout in between and they are yet to bother me, save wiping off some sweat. While they start off as a little tight, it doesn’t take long for the headband to loosen. This isn’t ideal when you’re laying down to bench at the gym, but for consistent wear, it sure saves on tension headaches.

The physical buttons aren’t as smooth,h however. There are just four functions, spread across two buttons, with the power/pause, and volume buttons all on the same one. Not only does it feel counterintuitive to press on the long button to pause or turn off the headphones, it is also finicky. If you don’t press the power button just right you can easily end up turning the volume all the way up or down while keeping the headphones on. The only standalone button is the Bluetooth pairing/ANC button, which just feels like a weird choice. I was constantly fumbling for the right button and accidentally switching the noise cancelling around when I was trying to do anything else.

The noise-cancelling itself is just brilliant. Even with medium noise cancellation, I can’t hear anything outside of what I’m listening to. As someone who finds it hard to concentrate when people around me are chatting, these have been an absolute lifesaver for getting work done while my partner has meetings. Ambient mode also has great balance, and it is easy enough to hear people approaching you, bikes, and traffic signals without compromising on sound quality. 

There are some interesting features, like wired listening via USB-C, and Touch-to-chat. The latter is an interesting concept, but I think it is just a little bit slow to respond for its purpose. 

Touch-to-chat allows you to press down and hold on the right ear to temporarily pause your audio and switch to ambient mode. When you release, the settings will revert and your audio will start playing again. While I can see use cases for this, you need to hold on to the cuff for five seconds before it activates. In that time it would be easier to just pull a headphone off, or even pause playback on the headphones, your phone, or your watch. If the response time was closer to two seconds, I could see it being more useful.

Apart from Touch-to-chat, my only other qualm with the ES850NB’s is its multi-point. While the headphones allegedly have dual multi-point, this has never practically worked for me. Any time I switch between my laptop and my phone I have needed to unpair and re-pair again, and again. Using a wired connection on my laptop would stop this issue, but my laptop only has so many USB-C ports. I’ll take that one up with Apple.

The verdict

All up, Edifier has made the right additions, and known what to take away to keep the price point low and the quality high. If you want to spend less for a set of headphones, but it not to look, feel, or sound like you did then the Edifier ES850NB range is the right place to start. From the cushy padding through to the surprisingly balanced EQ, it nails the basics with a bit of added flare. While the button design and novel inclusions might not have a perfect hit rate, the overall quality is well over what you’d expect from the asking price. You’d be hard pressed to find another budget set of headphones that are its equal.

Anula Wiwatowska

Offsite Editorial Lead | Instagram

Anula is the Off-Site Editorial Lead for WhistleOut Australia, and an award winning tech journalist. She has been writing about the Australian telco industry, and consumer technology for over five years, and has been known to tell her Uber driver which phone they should upgrade to next.

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