Hey there folks. I review a lot of headphones, and these just might be the most unique and interesting ones that have come across my desk this year. They're called the NW M1 Wireless, and they're open-ear headphones. I'm going to tell you what's good about them and what's not so good about them. Let's go do [Music] this. Now you've probably never heard of nwm. I hadn't until recently, but it's a relatively new brand developed by NTT sonority, the audio engineering arm of Japan's largest telecommunications company. Aside from the fact that there are no ear cups, just a ring pad to hold the drivers in place around your ears, what's a little strange is that there's no branding on the headphones themselves, no logo, nothing. These don't even come with a carrying case that could be branded with a logo, and you can barely see the R on the headphones that lets you know left from right, which is slightly irritating. But if you're into streamlined minimalist tech products, the

design has its appeal, and the headphones are certainly lightweight at 185g and also seem pretty durable. They do have a bit of metal in their construction. They are comfortable once you get them on your head in the right position. My only two complaints are that while the driver swivel, the earpieces don't. They're fixed, and I could do with a touch more padding on the top of the headband. I should also note that the silicone ring that sits on your face takes a little getting used to. It's got some give to it and is generally comfortable, but I'm just so used to plush padded memory foam ear pads that the ring felt a little weird at times. The obvious benefit to having a completely open ear over your headphone is that you do get really nice ventilation. There's a bit of a breeze here. It's about 75°. I usually don't like wearing over-ear headphones on super hot days, but these feel really nice with my ears or air condition. No, nothing steaming up. The downside is like you

know there's sirens in the background, there's people around, and I can hear all that. Um, I have the volume on pretty low. There was a horn beep there, but I can talk to my camera woman here, um, without taking my headphones off, which is also a good thing. There were three things I was surprised about. First, the price. These list for $300, which seems like an awful lot. I was sort of expecting them to be more like $150, but to their credit, they sound surprisingly good for open headphones. Each earpiece is equipped with a 35mm driver along with a 12mm tweeter, and they sound quite respectable. Some people have said they don't get quite loud enough. That may be an Android thing, but I use them with iPhone 14 Pro, and I didn't have an issue with the volume. They don't produce a ton of bass, but they sound fuller than I thought they would and also offer decent clarity. And not surprisingly, they sound quite open with a wide sound stage. Soundwise, they just can't quite compete.

with a good set of $300 noise-canceling headphones, but they did exceed my expectations for this type of headphone. The other thing that's surprising is that they leak very little sound. Apparently, they're equipped with active phase cancellation to reduce sound leakage, something I've started to see in open earbuds. People had to stand quite close to me to hear anything coming out of them. I have it at about 30% volume so I can talk to you and hear you. I can barely hear them, to be honest. I could kind of hear the music but not too much. I'll go to 60%. Yeah, okay. I can hear the voices of the song that meant about 70%. I can sort of hear something. Yes, I could definitely hear it. There's a surprising amount of bass from you can't even until where anything is kept. This sound quality actually sounds good. I thought maybe it would sound like raspy or something like that. It's not as noise-canceling as you think it is, but

It sounds pretty cool. I think these are kind of nice. I like them a lot. I also thought these were good for voice calling. People said they could hear my voice well, even in fairly noisy environments, and said they heard very little background noise. I could also hear them well, though it did become a little harder to hear them when I had a lot of noise around me because these are open headphones, after all. As far as other specs go, these are equipped with Bluetooth 5.3. There's multipoint Bluetooth pairing and USBC audio for wired listening on computers and smartphones and tablets with USBC ports. Battery life is rated at 20 hours at moderate volume levels. They support the AAC, SBC, and LC3 audio codec, as well as the new Orac cast feature that lets you hear Bluetooth audio broadcasts in public spaces like gyms. And finally, there's a companion app for iOS and Android. It's pretty rudimentary but has an equalizer and allows you to do firmware upgrades. All in all, I got to

say I thought the NW M1 was a pretty cool headphone. It's too expensive and feels a bit beta or experimental, but it's pretty well designed and did exceed my expectations for sound quality and overall performance. Is it the future of over-ear headphones? I'm not so sure about that, but I do think we could see more open over-ear headphones going forward. At the right price, they'd be worth having in your headphone arsenal, particularly for those hot days when wearing over-your-head headphones just isn't fun. But let me know what you think. Does the design of these headphones appeal to you, or are they just too weird? I'm David Carfor, cnet.com. Thanks for watching.

Finally, Over-Ear Headphones I Can Wear on a Hot Day

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