Anyone who puts non-tactile touch controls on _headphones_ shouldn't be allowed to design electronics interfaces ever again.
The QC35 had it right with physical controls.
My QC35's died - probably not Bose's fault. Too old to be repaired, apparently. Got the 700's. And I seriously regret it. The fact that it's hard to get the "gestures" right is one thing. What's worse is that the controls trigger spuriously all the damn time.
They also semi-regularly just hang, make a somewhat high-pitched sound, and reboot. They regularly announce "bluetooth off", just after the announcement that a device disconnected. With multiple connected devices there's constant problems with only one of those being audible. Changes which.
I own a pair of Monster iSport Freedom 2's which have a touch control for volume and skipping, and oh boy is touch control a bad idea on headphones. For example when wearing the headphones under a hood, while outside in the rain, it sometimes registers rain as a touch action, so your volume or song changes suddenly. Also the touch control accurancy isn't very stellar indoor either.
So based on my experience, I gladly take physical buttons over touch controls, since for me touch controls are more like a gimmick than good usability.
My biggest issue with touch control is the user experience. That is, when it works flawlessly it's as good as physical buttons, but I rarely experience the same level of reliability with touch as with buttons.
If you have the Sony's and you're happy with them, then good for you. They're good headphones, just not the best ones for me.
But good for Sony for giving that choice to the user via a firmware update.
However, the touch interface is bad. Swiping up/down is often confused for left/right, which is probably me swiping the wrong way, but it's not a natural motion. If I take the headphones off and put them around my neck, my chin often activates the headphones by mistake.
That said, I picked them up at an airport. I wore them with a mask on a 10 hour flight and I've never slept so well on a plane. That alone was worth the price and I can suffer the touch controls for now.
As another negative anecdote I was gifted one, and simply had to return it.
The acoustic performance was really just underwhelming.
I went back to my Beterdynamic DT-770 headset at a third of the price, and it sounds immensely better. It’s a night and day difference.
So much more wonderful.
That said, Dell's button user interface sucks. The "user configurable buttons" revert at inopportune times. I set button 1 to select DP and button 2 to select HDMI. When I'm shutting down the HDMI system and the DP system is asleep, I frequently find myself in a scroll-up-down menu selecting an input.
What I think is that at hardware manufacturers the culture favors hardware design (think no-moving-parts buttons). Or maybe the good UI people are working at companies or departments where there is plenty of work to do, like frequent app redesign.
This is a non-issue.
Edit: lol; my opinions from months of first hand everyday use are wrong, and should be echo chamber hidden by people who have never used the product.
Not really important, but standing around and tapping on my headphone to trying and failing to pause the podcast I'm listening to feels pretty idiotic.
Edit: Have them since early October
And I consider all of those buttons to be pretty important - I use all of them regularly, including when I'm not right next to my phone.
I just hope the 700's are an aberration, and that Bose goes back to a more practical design next time.
Typical HN smugness.
One person who actually has the product, has used it for months, and has themselves designed capacitive gesture button circuits then went back to traditional buttons - says “they aren’t that bad, work fine”...
And a trove of people who have never used the product downvote and tell them they are wrong.
OK.
No; it’s not a terrible design. I’ve maybe twice had to repeat a gesture. It’s drag up/down for volume, tap for mute, and drag forward for skip song. It works fine. Where the hell do you get the opinion it’s a terrible design if you’ve never used them?
Or by slight analogy: You rate a product 4 out of 5 stars. If someone that hasn't used the product insists on a different rating, they're being smug and part of the negative trove you've described. But if someone just says "4 out of 5? Not good enough when other models are 5 out of 5." there is nothing wrong with that.
You giving the overall product a 5/5 isn't the point I was trying to make. I was talking about your rating in the button category, sorry if that wasn't clear, and it was just an example number.
As a user of bluetooth headphones I am really struggling to think of a button not on that list that is important. The only thing that's really coming to mind is pause but maybe that's what you mean by mute?
Those are literally the most essential buttons and by definition you are mostly going to be touching them when the headphones are on your head where you can't physically see the buttons. This is not a great experience.
B. There is nothing you can’t do here with the phone itself. Volume up and down can be done without even looking at the phone. There is nothing that will stop you from enjoying the product even if you for some reason just refuse to accept the capacitive buttons aren’t trash.
Have you actually had a problem with the Bose capacitive gestures? Because I haven’t.
You and everyone else disagreeing with me. “Important” as I in “I can use them all day without ever using a gesture control”.
How are you going to disagree with me having never touched the product? You literally NEVER need to use the capacitive controls, all the VITAL things are buttons. Does that wording work better for you?
You claimed that volume and skip controls weren't important ("the important controls are buttons ... capacitive interface is for ... vol up/down ..." implies volume controls aren't important). That is what I disagreed with. I don't need to have used a particular pair of headphones to know that volume and skip are important controls for me. Same way I don't need to have used a particular keyboard to know I value having an "e" key.