Denon PerL Pro review: The do-it-all earphones setting new standards

Denon’s PerL Pros have a very recognisable silhouette. That’s because they’re based on the NuraTrue Pro earbuds – Denon owner Masimo acquired Nura in April 2023. The NuraTrue Pro were well received, and minus the silver accents on the logo and around the edges, the Denon PerL Pro earbuds look identical. That certainly bodes well for their performance.

The key feature of the Denon PerL Pros is the addition of Masimo’s Adaptive Acoustic Technology (AAT), which creates a personal audio profile to deliver on the PerL’s ‘PERsonalized Listening journey’ mission statement. In addition, the PerL Pros include all the bells and whistles you’d associate with a set of earbuds at this price point, including spatial audio, noise cancelling, and a five-band in-app EQ to tweak the sound further.

But the real question is: are they worth the extra premium over Bose and Apple’s flagship models? I’ve spent the past two weeks putting them through their paces to find out.

Price, specs, and availability

The Denon PerL Pros will set you back a $349/£299 premium compared to the $199/£189 price for the standard PerL model. That’s not an inconsiderable difference in price, but you do get quite a jump up in features too, including better sound and aptX Lossless support in the Pro, as well as spatial audio support, wireless charging, multipoint Bluetooth, improved battery life and better call quality thanks to more microphones.

Its pricing puts the Pros up against some stiff opposition in the form of the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds at $299/£300, the Sony WF-1000XM5 at $299/£259, and the slightly cheaper AirPods Pro 2 at $249/£249.

Design

Subtly sophisticated

Denon’s PerL Pro earbuds are a fine-looking set of earbuds. In pure design terms, they’re as pretty as earbuds get. We’ve all got so used to the AirPods aesthetic that we no longer question the stems. Not so long ago, social media was awash with content creators inserting Oral B toothbrush heads in their ears and mocking Apple’s creation. Now, we celebrate the AirPods’ design. How things change.

The PerL Pros are an altogether different beast. The circular discs are a subtle, sophisticated matte black with an understated Denon logo on the outer casing. A piano black trim around the edge lends them a premium look.

On first use, the earbuds rattled around in my vast ear canals. A quick swap of the supplied ear tips – you get a very generous 10 in total – and I had a solid fit, as verified by the Denon Headphones app – but more on that later.

Initially, they didn’t feel quite as secure as my AirPods, partly due to the weight of the outer casing. After an hour or so, experience uncovered that if you twist them, they anchor themselves neatly on your antitragus (that’s the cartilage on the outside of your ear canal – and yes, I Googled that), which keeps them locked in position. In any case, if you’re concerned, Denon has included stability bands that you can add to help keep them firmly in place.

The charging case is an elegant matte black number with a glossy black Denon logo. It’s a wider, shorter rectangular case compared to the Bose or Apple charging cases and its clean lines are only broken by the USB-C charging port at the rear (they can also charge wirelessly).

Up front, three charging LEDs – a central one to give you the charge level for the case and two on the left to let you know when each earbud is charged – are completely invisible with the case shut but illuminated when opened.

Together, it’s a classy package. Black hardware can often look cheap, given it’s the colour of choice for every off-brand earphone you care to mention, but Denon has succeeded in pulling off a sophisticated mix of gloss and matte black, delivering an overall look that says ‘understated,’ not under-funded.

Features and battery life

Setting themselves apart

It’s in the setup that the differences between the PerL Pro and the AirPods Pro 2 begin to make themselves known. Initially, you’re prompted to download the Denon Headphones app (available on Android and iOS), which guides you through the connection process.

It’s all achingly simple. The app offers a 30-second fit test, blasting tones through the earbuds to ensure a well-sealed in-ear fit. Once that’s sorted, you move on to assigning controls to each earbud, configuring single, double, and triple taps, alongside the trickier double tap and hold command, to set specific earbud controls, such as volume up/down or skip track.

Where the Denons truly shine over Apple’s near-ubiquitous earbuds is the opportunity to customise the sound to suit your ears using Masimo’s AAT technology. AAT creates a sound profile by measuring Otoacoustic Emissions (OAEs), which are the sounds the earbuds are able to perceive from your inner ears in response to a variety of tones.

These OAEs are then analysed and used to create a personalised sound profile that suits the way you hear music. The app suggests the whole process will take around a minute, but I clocked it at around two and a half minutes, just to be pedantic.

One tip: I’d advise you to run a second profile once you’re used to the fit and have used the buds for a few hours. My second profile – once I’d remedied minor fit issues – was markedly different to the first, which was way more treble-forward and lacked low-end presence. The second, with a more secure fit, was a much more pleasing mix of high and low frequencies, with the mid-range dialed down. I always tend to reduce mids when given an EQ to play with, so it’s reassuring to know the algorithm agrees with me.

Once you’ve been ‘profiled,’ you’re given the opportunity to listen to the default profile and your personal profile side-by-side with some example music. The default EQ sounded bland and uninspiring next to the AAT version. You can, of course, tweak the sound further using the five-channel EQ and add spatial sound or boost the low-end with some immersion mode tuning, meaning the performance of the PerL Pros is very much in your hands.

The big addition in terms of sonic performance is aptX Lossless. Of course, you’ll need a suitably equipped Android or other device to take advantage of it. Unfortunately, Apple’s iPhones don’t support aptX Lossless. Boo hiss, etc.

I’ll touch on noise cancellation shortly, but away from that is a Social mode that lets some of the outside in and allows you to communicate while wearing your earphones. This is standard fare these days, but it’s effective, which is handy if you want to have a conversation without turning your music off completely.

In terms of ruggedness, the Denons are rated at IPX4, which means you can happily wear them to the gym without any undue concern. They’ll even handle a rainy day out and about, but they’d be deeply unhappy if you took them swimming.

The PerL Pros get an extra two hours of battery life over the standard PerLs, for a total of eight hours of juice. That’s two hours more than Apple’s Airpod Pro 2 and Bose’s QuietComfort Ultra 2 Earbuds, with three full charges in the charging case for a total of 32 hours.

From a complete charge, I managed eight hours and 20 minutes of real-world use over several days (leaving the earbuds out of the case at all times), which included a combination of Netflix and Tidal streaming at precariously high volumes, with spatial audio on for the duration and noise isolation enabled around 25 per cent of the time. Given the AirPods Pro 2 claims 5.5 hours with the same features enabled, that’s superb performance.

Noise cancellation

Effective, if not leading the class

Denon’s noise cancellation tech is first-rate. The PerL Pros cut out background noise effectively and deliver a serene listening experience in all but the busiest train carriages or bustling streets. The result may not be quite in the same league as the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds, but as class leaders in ANC, there’s nothing to top Bose out there right now.

The PerL Pro offer Denon’s Adaptive Active Noise Cancellation tech, while the PerL makes do with mere Active Noise Cancellation. The word ‘Adaptive’ is key here because the PerL Pro take into account the level of ambient noise and how securely fitted the earbuds are before making the call as to how much noise cancellation is required in any given situation. This is all automatic, and you don’t get a lot of say about it.

You can turn ANC off within the device menu on the Denon Headphones app, but that’s as far as you can go in adjusting AANC. It’s either on or off.

Sound quality

A personalised performance

The Perl Pro’s default sound profile is comparable to the AirPods Pro 2. It’s a neutral and, dare I say it, unexciting profile, which is precisely the criticism that’s often leveled at the AirPods. From the box, they’ll handle most genres, but there’s not a lot of dynamism or excitement to the output.

To be fair, there’s not much in it – both the PerL Pro and AirPods Pro 2 are perfectly listenable. If anything, the Denons have more mid-range emphasis, which is the range I’d typically dial down in an EQ, so straight out of the box, I’d probably go for the AirPods purely on sonic performance.

But that would fail to factor in two features that the Denon PerL Pro have and the AirPods Pro do not. Firstly, as has been the case since they were first launched in 2016, the AirPods have no EQ option. I appreciate there are several preset options, but there’s no way to tweak the default audio profile in a really meaningful way to match your listening preferences. With the Denon PerL Pro, you get the previously mentioned five-channel equaliser in the Denon Headphones app to tailor the sound to your tastes.

However, the second and arguably most important factor is Denon’s Adaptive Acoustic Technology. By analysing your aural responses and creating an individual listening profile, you get the benefit of a set of earbuds tuned specifically for your ears.

And it works. Brilliantly. My results were breathtakingly good – at least once I’d tweaked the fit of the earphones. Being a fan of equalisers, I had a play myself to see if I could improve the sound and came up short. The default sound is perfectly fine, but there was some real dynamism to the generated profile that added a level of excitement not present in either the default Denon sound or the AirPods’ very neutral profile. Denon has set up the PerL experience website that lets you check out several artists’ listening profiles to get a sense of how it all works.

The PerL Pros serve up this sound from a chunky 10mm driver in each earbud, which means once you’ve got them tuned to your satisfaction, they can deliver plenty of low-end grunt. My long-time bass response-testing standby is James Blake’s ‘Limit To Your Love,’ and the Denons handle its head-rattling bass sequences with aplomb.

But it’s not just about low-end power; the Denons are masterful across the frequency range. Highs are crisp and responsive, the snap of a hi-hat is beautifully reproduced, and there’s plenty of vocal and instrumental presence in the mid-range to keep things interesting.

With aptX Lossless enabled, you get a further hike in sonic performance too. There’s a vibrancy to the sound that’s more noticeable with lossless, with individual string sections or bassline elements you may have missed before suddenly so much more apparent.

Verdict

The Denon PerL Pros have so much to recommend them. The ability to fettle and finesse the sound based on personal preference via a five-band equaliser feels like a novelty after time with the AirPods Pro 2. But it’s the individual sound profiles that really elevate the PerL Pros above the competition – with EQ tweaking, spatial audio, and the noise-cancelling immersion mode to further enhance the sound to your liking.

The subtle, understated styling should also appeal to many, and one of many Denon power plays comes in the form of that eight-hour battery life. Quoted battery life is often misleading, but my testing found it to be right on the money.

Sure, they don’t integrate with an iPhone as well as the AirPods Pro 2 do, and you won’t be able to take advantage of aptX lossless without a suitably capable Android phone or other aptX Lossless-enabled device, but, those are really the only caveats.

As a realistic alternative to the AirPods Pro 2s and the excellent Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds, the Denon PerL Pro bring a different take on portable sound for audio purists.