If you thought that neckband-style earbuds were a thing of the past, you certainly weren’t alone. That is far from the case, as the Beyerdynamic Blue BYRD 2 ANC earbuds show. Unlike most other neckband earbuds on the market, these have actually moved forward in terms of features and comfort.
As the name implies, these earbuds are outfitted with active noise cancellation as well as a Transparent mode to let you hear your surroundings. While older neckband style earbuds used a rigid plastic collar of sorts, the Blue BYRD 2 ANC are flexible, making them much more comfortable than the older type.
Beyerdynamic can pack all the modern features and conveniences it wants into the Blue BYRD 2 ANC, but the real question remains whether there is still a place in the world for neckband-style earbuds.
Beyerdynamic Blue BYRD ANC 2
The Beyerdynamic Blue BYRD 2 ANC take neckbud-style earbuds into the present by making for a more flexible fit, modern Bluetooth connectivity, and a solid app to control EQ and other features. If you’re not a fan of true wireless earbuds, these make a great alternative.
- Brand
- Beyerdynamic
- Battery Life
- 14 hours
- Bluetooth
- 5.2
- Additional Tips
- XS, S, M, L, XL
- Noise Cancellation
- Yes
- Charging Case
- No
- Codecs
- SBC, AAC, AptX, AptX Adaptive
- Drivers
- 10mm
- IP rating
- IPX4
- Wireless charging
- No
- Multipoint support
- Yes
- Weight
- 1.16oz (33g)
- Dimensions
- 3.54 x 5.31 x 1.18in (90 x 135 x 30mm)
- Price
- $149
Pros
- Great sound with a solid low end
- Good battery life
- Nice choice of audio codecs
- USB-C charging is fast
- Features multipoint Bluetooth
Cons
- No custom EQ in the MIY app
- ANC isn’t great
- Neckband design isn’t for everyone
Price and Availability
The Beyerdynamic Blue BYRD 2 ANC retail for $149, which may seem a little much for an “older” style of earbuds. That said, these have come a long way from the previous Blue BYRD model, and considering the features and build, the price seems fair.
You’re out of luck if you’re looking for more colorful options. The Blue BYRD 2 ANC earbuds are only available in black.
Design and Fit
The neckband of the Beyerdynamic Blue BYRD 2 ANC might look like the neckband from older earbuds, but it’s much better in terms of comfort. By making the neckband flexible, Beyerdynamic has eliminated most of the comfort issues of older-style designs.
While the backs of the earbuds are glossy plastic emblazoned with the Beyerdynamic logo, the rest of the cable and neckband are made from sweat-resistant rubberized plastic. This is part of what gives the Blue BYRD 2 ANC earbuds their IPX4 water resistance rating. This means they’ll withstand sweat or a few splashes, but don’t try washing them off in the sink.
In terms of fit, Beyerdynamic includes five sizes of silicone tips, with extra small and extra large joining the typical small, medium, and large tips. I usually take a medium-sized ear tip, and the medium here fit securely and comfortably. You do need to be mindful of how you position the neckband so they’re balanced from your left ear to your right ear, a consideration you don’t need to make with true wireless models.
You’ll find most of the controls on the right side of the cable: a multifunction button to control playback and calls, joined by two volume buttons. Another multifunction button on the left controls the power and cycles through noise cancellation modes.
Sound and Call Quality
One of the advantages neckband-style earbuds have over true wireless earbuds is more room to fit the battery and other components. In this case, it leaves the earbuds themselves with plenty of space to fit 10mm dynamic drivers, which usually offer better bass response than smaller drivers.
Beyerdynamic offers a feature called Hearing ID that tailors the sound to your own hearing. We’ll look at this more later, but I didn’t use this feature while evaluating the sound of the headphones. I simply listened to music with the EQ set to the Original setting, which appears to be as flat as you can get with these.
Kendrick Lamar’s “i” sounds good on most headphones, but it’s still a great test track. The Beyerdynamics lent plenty of heft to the bass line, but not enough that it overpowered the guitar sample that drives the track. While all the instruments were well-balanced, Lamar’s vocals still cut just as they should.
New Order’s “This Time of Night” is a song both ahead of and very much of its time, and the Blue BYRDs handled both aspects of the song well. While the keyboards and echo-laden guitars sound dated, the pulsing bass line that drives the song can still get a dance floor moving, and the earbuds represented the low end well.
There is a fair amount of sonic chaos on the Dirtbombs cover of Stevie Wonder’s “Livin’ For The City,” thanks to two drum kits, two bass players, and a trebly sounding guitar. The Blue BYRD 2 ANC’s delivered without everything turning into a harsh-sounding mess, but they didn’t do quite as well with this as they did on the two other songs.
As the name implies, the Blue BYRD 2 ANC earbuds feature active noise cancellation. That said, it’s not particularly effective unless you have music playing. Even then, I had a difficult time telling whether it was enabled or not.
On the other hand, the Transparent mode was pretty good. As is usually the case, it didn’t come close to the Transparency Mode you’ll find on some Apple AirPods models. Still, while it sounded like I was listening to a microphone rather than something completely natural, it still worked quite well.
Voice quality for calls and video chats was decent, but nothing special. There appeared to be some heavy compression applied to my voice that can amplify background noise rather than filter it out, but this didn’t happen often while I was testing the Blue BYRD ANC 2.
Microphone Audio Sample: Indoors
Microphone Audio Sample: Outdoors
Software: Easy to Use, but Has Some Limits
You can use the earbuds without installing the Beyerdynamic MIY app (available for iPhone and iPad, as well as Android devices), but it was a handy enough app that it’s worth installing.
When you first set up the Blue BYRD 2 ANC earbuds with the app, after walking through a few steps, it prompts you to set up Hearing ID. The process is relatively simple: go to a quiet room and listen as the app plays a series of rising and fading beeps, first in one ear, then the other. Press an onscreen button when you start hearing the beeps, then let it go once you don’t hear them.
This feature seems useful, especially since many people hear differently in each ear. That said, I found that my results always seemed to make music sound unnaturally crispy in the high-end, almost distorted. You can run the Hearing ID test as many times as you like to try for better results.
The MIY app is also where you can toggle between the ANC and the Transparent mode or change EQ settings. While there are a few different EQ presets like Bass Boost, Smooth Treble, Speech, V-Shape, and Warm, there is no custom EQ feature, at least at the time of this writing.
Battery Life
Beyerdynamics claims up to 8.5 hours of listening time with ANC enabled, or 14 hours without ANC. This will obviously go up or down depending on the volume you listen at, but in my case, I was able to easily get over eight hours of listening time using a mix of ANC and Transparent modes.
While many people are used to carrying around earbuds in the charging case, the Blue BYRD 2 ANC earbuds have no such thing, as these aren’t true wireless. There is a case, but it’s only to protect the earbuds. What you end up with is longer continuous playback time than true wireless earbuds, but more frequent recharging.
It takes less than two hours to charge the earbuds using the included USB-C cable. This could take longer if you’re using an underpowered charger, but even with a low-power charger, it shouldn’t take much longer. That said, if you’re in a rush, a 10-minute charge will get you up to two hours of listening time.
Competition
You won’t find many neckband-style earbuds on the market, and of those you do find, the vast majority will likely be from LG or Sony. For example, the LG Tone Style HBS-SL5 are cheaper, but clunkier, with a rigid plastic neckband that likely won’t be as comfortable as the Beyerdynamic earbuds.
On the more expensive side of things, the Sony WI-1000XM2 earbuds go for roughly twice the price of the Beyerdynamic Blue BRYD 2 ANC. These may have better noise cancellation, but the Beyerdynamics will still be the better option for most people thanks to the price and the more flexible design.
Should You Buy the Beyerdynamic Blue BYRD 2 ANC?
Looking strictly at performance, the Beyerdynamic Blue BYRD 2 ANC earbuds had good sound quality for the price, intuitive controls, and an easy-to-use app. The ANC wasn’t very effective, but was available, while Transparent mode was quite a bit more useful.
The design has certainly evolved beyond the earlier, more rigid style of neckband earbuds, but the overall idea remains the same. This is the aspect of the Blue BYRD 2 ANCs that will either make or break them for you. The good news is, if you love neckband-style earbuds and are reading this to make sure there is nothing wrong with the Beyerdynamics, there isn’t.
For anyone who isn’t already a fan of neckband-style earbuds, these are more similar to older-style traditional wireless earbuds with a cable connecting both sides. They’re not up to par with higher-end earbuds that cost twice the price, but if you like the design, these are absolutely worth checking out.
Beyerdynamic Blue BYRD ANC 2
The Beyerdynamic Blue BYRD 2 ANC take neckbud-style earbuds into the present by making for a more flexible fit, modern Bluetooth connectivity, and a solid app to control EQ and other features. If you’re not a fan of true wireless earbuds, these make a great alternative.