I recently got a pair of Surface Headphones 2 and I was disappointed by them. To start with the build quality feels quality made and premium. They look amazing with an amazing presentation right out of the box in quality made box and case.

Style

The ear cups go either direction to make the storage much better in the amazing protective case with the Microsoft logo. The presentation on these are great Microsoft made the look and presentation great.

Controls

The nobs on the cups are great for turning up and down volume and thirteen levels of noise canceling.

Where the headphones fall short are the controls for pause, play, and skip a track. They have known issues with iPhone or Android when you Google the issue you need to connect the headphones to a Windows PC and reset the firmware or use the app to change the language of Cortana then change it back to trigger a firmware upgrade. I do not understand why you can’t just do that through the Surface app on iPhone or Android.

One feature I really like is a physical mic mute button which only Microsoft Surface Headphones 2 has but I expected that from a pair of headphones built by Microsoft and optimized for their Microsoft Teams product.

Battery

The battery is impressive at 18.5 hours of music listening time. When you use them for an entire day of phone calls and Skype I found them to last about 8 – 10 hours so I was impressed. The battery life on these really is the shining point, especially with the calls.

I do like how Cortana tells you everything when you turn them on like the remaining battery time and what device it’s connected with for audio.

Cons

Another issue I had with them was with the multi-point Bluetooth connections it’s buggy. Sometimes the headphones just do not know what audio source to use especially if you are connected to both your phone and your PC and the phone rings and you try to pick it up. These even happened with Microsoft’s Your Phone app which really annoyed me considering its Microsoft’s app and headphones.

Final

I really feel that most of these issues are software and if Microsoft can figure them out they are going to do great in the headphone market because these headphones are built great it’s the software that’s downfall and Microsoft is a software company.

If Microsoft figures out the few software issues they have a real winning set of headphones.