Audio-Technica ATH-M50xBT Bluetooth Headphone Review

The ATH-M50xBT is Audio-Technica’s Bluetooth version of their hugely successful ATH-M50x wired headphones. Along with adding Bluetooth 5.0, Audio-Technica have included plenty of other features such as aptX support and 40-hour battery life to improve user experience.

Audio-Technica have sent us a set to find out if they measure up to their wired siblings and we’ve been using them for the last few weeks before starting this review.

What’s in the box?

Inside the box, you get a nice soft touch pouch to carry your headphones in, a short Micro USB charging cable and a 3.5mm headphone cable for connecting the headphones to non-Bluetooth devices. The headphone cable includes inline buttons for controlling your music.

Design

The headphones are mid-sized but reasonably light at 310 grams. The cans can pivot through 180 degrees to allow you to fold them for storage in the pouch but they can also rotate 90 degrees left or right so it should be possible to get a good fit no matter what your head shape.

The ear cups are soft but there isn’t a huge amount of padding. The holes for your ears were a little small for me which meant my ear either caught a little between the padding and my head or they squashed a little to fit in.

The headphone band out of the box exerts quite a force on the cans and while this makes for a good seal around your ear, it also meant that they were a little fatiguing to wear and things got hot around the contact areas. This is obviously affected by the size and shape of your head so it’s hard for manufacturers to provide a one size fits all band. You can get over this a little by giving the band a gentle bend outwards before you use them and over time they will loosen.

The left can houses a Play/Pause button, volume up and down buttons and a Bluetooth On/Off button. The buttons are easy to locate and identify when you are wearing the headphones and we had no issues hitting the right button each time. In between the buttons is a Micro USB port for charging, a 3.5MM headphone port and a small LED indicator light. The Audio-Technica logo on the left side is also touch-sensitive and if you press and hold your finger on it your voice assistant on your device will be invoked.

Sound isolation levels are good for most scenarios due to the tight fit with only loud noises getting through. At home and in the office they were perfect for me. Out and about passing traffic can be heard when listening at lower volumes so you can keep a level of awareness of your surroundings if you wish.

Bluetooth

To test the Bluetooth connection on the ATH-M50xBT we used three devices. An Astell&Kern SR15 which has Bluetooth 4.0 and supports aptX HD, a MacBook Pro with Bluetooth 4.2 and a Samsung Galaxy S10+ which has Bluetooth 5.0 and supports aptX.

During all our testing the Bluetooth connection was rock solid and we experienced no drops outs on any of the devices.

ATH-M50xBT Sound Quality

Out of the box, the ATH-M50xBT had what seemed like an exponential volume curve. After charging the headphones I quickly paired them to the Galaxy S10+ to have a first listen. Up until about 60% volume on the phone, there was very little sound coming from the headphones but then with small increases after that, they really started to come alive. That leaves a somewhat small window of control for the volume as they start to get very loud, very quickly.

The ATH-M50xBT produce a sound that I think a lot of people will quite like. They do a good job with most types of music and are tuned in a way that will keep a large percentage of consumers happy, especially if they are upgrading to these from earbuds that were included with their smartphones. For those people, the ATH-M50xBT will seem like a big step up in quality.

Bass levels are pronounced but not to a level that interferes with the sound. There is an impressive punch from the large drivers, vocals are clear and there is a sense of width to the soundstage.

Out of the three devices we used to test the ATH-M50xBT the Astell&Kern SR15 can produce the best sound hands down. Strangely when paired with the ATH-M50xBT the volume was incredibly low and no matter what I tried, I couldn’t achieve a satisfactory volume level. This is not something I have experienced before with the SR15 so I can only put it down to some quirk when paired with these headphones. I did, however, use the SR15 to test the headphones with the 3.5mm cable attached and this gave us a great baseline to judge how the Bluetooth sound quality performed in comparison on the other devices.

When connected to my MacBook Pro the initial sound was quite flat. This is more an issue with the output of the Mac rather than the headphones, so to achieve a sound that you like, an equaliser will be needed. In my case, I used an app called Boom 3D. It’s very user-friendly and allows you to make changes across the frequency range easily and create your own profiles. With the software, it was easy to achieve a sound I was happy with.

For sure, the best combination we tested was when the ATH-M50xBT were connected to the Galaxy S10+. Most likely this was due to the better Bluetooth 5.0 connection plus the aptX support but the sound was far more balanced and there was no need or want to adjust it in any way. Most people who purchase these headphones will probably connect to them most often using their smartphone and the ATH-M50xBT really excelled here.

We had very different experiences across the different devices so it certainly matters what device you are using to get the best from the headphones. As I pointed out with the SR15 above, your mileage may vary if you are using older versions of Bluetooth.

Battery

Battery life on the ATH-M50xBT is exceptional. The quoted time by Audio-Technica is 40 hours and while I never ran the battery down completely during my testing, I have no reason to doubt that claim. I charged the headphones fully when they came in and then used them for a few hours each day over the next 2 weeks. During that time I only topped the battery up once and considering the size of the headphones, that’s impressive.

Conclusion

I wasn’t a big fan of the headband but that should loosen in time and be less of an issue.

After spending some time using the ATH-M50xBT my overall impressions are positive. I enjoyed listening to all types of music, battery life is excellent and the headphones are light to wear.

The Bluetooth connection was flawless with all the devices we used to test and the sound quality the headphones can produce is great.

The ATH-M50xBT are available from the Audio-Technica website now for €199