Skullcandy Crusher ANC Bluetooth Wireless Over-Ear Headphones, Noise Cancellation, Adjustable Bass, and Personalised Sound, Up to 24 Hours Battery Life - Black

Product Information

Tile (the Bluetooth tracker) finding technology is built in, so if you ever mislay the headphones, you can reunite yourselves using the Tile app. The result is that some high-pitched sounds reach your ears relatively well, while others sound surprisingly quiet. The mids are a bit too dampened for my liking, but the highs tend to be on the livelier side of things, with the Crusher ANC keen to swallow transients when the material is rich in overtones. Nevertheless, the overall sound is relatively homogeneous, reproducing from the bass foundation, right up to the highest frequency floor without making any major blunders. At 10%, however, the drums still get some thunder without ruining the richness and crispness of the vocals.

The app also allows you to use Skullcandy’s built-in voice control technology—once you enable it, the headphones listen for the “Hey Skullcandy” wake phrase and can carry out basic operations. It would have been nice to see a silver or off-white model too, given the popularity of these colors on some of the competition. Active noise cancelling works very well too, and you can toggle easily between this option and also ambient mode. Skullcandy actually employs two sets of drivers—the 40mm dynamic drivers we mentioned above and a pair of haptic drivers that produce vibrations (much like passive bass radiators on Bluetooth speakers) in concert with frequencies between roughly 10Hz and 150Hz.

Each earcup houses vibration motors that activate in time with the music’s bass notes to create a more visceral audio experience by adding physical sensations to auditory ones. It also has quite a lot of variable settings when taking into account the Crusher mode and the five-band equalizer. While the ear pads on the Skullcandy Crusher ANC 2 feel comfortable, they do not isolate you from outside sounds particularly well.

Crusher ANC 2 is loaded with everything you love about Crusher ANC plus Skull iQ Smart Feature Technology®, Voice Control, Multipoint Pairing and much, MUCH more. The Skullcandy Crusher ANC 2 headphones don't cancel noise as well as the competition, but that’s not really their purpose. The hearing correction capabilities of these headphones also make a welcome addition, although less successful is the mediocre noise cancellation properties, the lacklustre ambient mode, as well as the rather awkward implementation of the above-mentioned hearing test. It can take a while to get used to which button does what, but once you’re familiar with the layout, the buttons feel tactile and are much more accurate than touch sensors. if you need more bass (or want to reduce it), you can do so with the EQ preset on the accompanying app.

First up, we carried out the test via Bluetooth, without ANC enabled, without hearing profiles activated and with the bass in a neutral position. While it is true that the competition in this premium headphone space do offer better all-round packages, a quick glance at our comparison table further down shows the Skullcandy Crusher ANC 2 are the cheaper pair by some margin.