Office technology isn’t the sexiest category out there. Designing a headset for a cubicle smurf might not win you any awards, or even get you coveted YouTube minutes, which is why I need to give a shout out to the heroes at Logitech for doing it anyway.
Hardware
The Logitech Zone Wireless headset sets to bring cool tech to the average worker bee. It has some neat surprises built into its fairly mundane frame. The headset is grey with some darker grey accents. These are on-ear headphones with soft, faux leather ear pads, a padded headband, with fabric covered wires and a boom microphone that swivels up.
The headset folds up into a smaller package that can stand on its own thanks to a hinge on either side of the headband. This is the first pleasant surprise, and it’s a double. Not only does the headset stand up on its own, but embedded Qi charging coils allow you to charge this headset wirelessly on the included charging plate. When you come in in the morning and pick up the headset, the arms swing down with a satisfying click, and they’re ready to go.
The headset is largely made of plastic, with the exception of the adjustable arms below each hinge, which are stainless steel. Overall, these feel very solid and durable, able to stand up to an everyday office environment.
Sound
The headset has good sound, but certainly not the best sound. They are very good for things like podcasts, phone calls, video calls. They’re not bad with music and videos, but they’re also not particularly great. You lose extreme high and low ends, even when cranking those frequencies with the app-based equalizer I’ll talk about later. I wouldn’t describe it as bad sound, but it’s definitely not as full as it can be.
Where this headset kills it is in its active noise cancellation. That is no joke, cutting out most background sounds, and even dulling sudden, non-droning sounds like people talking in the background. The on-ear headphones don’t have great isolation, but they make up for it with really good ANC.
Software
The Logitech Zone Wireless headset comes with an app for iOS, PC, and Android, though I only tested on the latter two. The PC app is just there to update the firmware on the headset, and they need to be connected via a micro-USB cable to do that. On an Android smartphone, you can fine-tune your experience by turning voice prompts on and off, muting the microphone, and turning on ANC (the latter two can be controlled with buttons on the headset as well. The app also comes with preset equalizers and allows you to set custom equalizers as well. Plus you can adjust the sidetone, which is how much of your voice comes through the headset when speaking. That’s a really nice touch.
Controls
In addition to the app controls, the headset sports several control buttons on them. The power button doubles as a Bluetooth connectivity button. A short press powers the headset on and off while a long press enables bluetooth. Just below that rests the ANC button and on the microphone boom, lies a mute button. Also on the left ear cup you’ll find volume buttons that control the headset’s volume independently from the device and a center button you can use to answer and end calls, and to pause and play media. I discovered that second function by accident – it wasn’t all the intuitive.
Comfort
Unfortunately, this headset isn’t all the comfortable over long periods of time which flies in the face of this being the perfect office headset. After about 3-4 hours, several testers reported the headset got quite uncomfortable. It’s hard to pin down what exactly causes the discomfort, but just below the surface of the soft ear pad is a hard dome of some sort – part of the speaker, which might be pushing on the wrong part of your ear. A little extra padding in that area might have been a welcome addition.
Connectivity
The headset does not have a headphone jack for a wired connection, something which seems like an anomaly. The headset has a reported 10 hours of battery life which seems consistent with testing. The micro USB port can also charge the headset, which is great, but it’s micro USB in 2019. I’d also like to see a headphone jack that allows you to connect in the event that the headset can’t quite last all day. Maybe it tipped off the Qi charger over night. It happens.
Conclusion
Overall, these are some nice sounding headphones which free you from tethers in the office and have great active noise cancellation. Add to that Qi wireless charging, and you have a real hit. However, the lack of wired connection and more importantly the discomfort after half a typical work day are big misses for this headsets’s stated goal–to be the goto headset for the office worker. If you don’t have to wear them for an entire day without breaks, these might work, but if you’re a call center employee or otherwise live under headphones, you will want to look elsewhere.
