Beyerdynamic's Aventho 300 Headphones Sound Good but Have Imperfect Noise Canceling
As I type this, I can hear the clack of my mechanical keyboard and a bit of HVAC rumble make it through my moderate volume music, which just isn't something I can say about the best from Sony and Bose. That largely has to do with just how much sound is leaking through the ear cups.
Microphones and noise-canceling itself are fine but not top-tier. I got decent call and Zoom quality but nothing to write home about for a pair of $400 headphones. The noise canceling was more than adequate for cross-country flights, but it wasn't dead silent. It's not utter trash, it's just overpriced. For $400, you should get better noise cancellation. World Class Sound
The real reason to consider the Aventho 300 for daily headphones is how good they sound. They have a classic and clean Beyerdynamic sound that really makes them a pleasure when you get some alone time with them.
As long as you're not battling too much noise, these sound better than most high-end noise-canceling headphones do, especially when it comes to instrumental separation. Songs like Atlas Sound and Laetitia Sadier's 'Quick Canal' show layers both high and low, with the rhythmic bass line swirling below a sea of synths and organ. Many noise-canceling headphones seem to take a bit of life out of songs like this, favoring overall silence instead of musical nuance.
Photograph: Parker Hall
I'd normally call out an overly scooped midrange and overly bright high-end on headphones with this sonic profile, except I can't, because the midrange is very present and clear here without feeling muted at all. Songs like Foxwarren's 'Everything Apart' find Andy Shauf's perfectly tuned vocals sitting right in the middle of the sound profile, flanked on either side by hi-hat, guitar effects, and bass. It's a clear musical image no matter where your ears turn, and a very impressive one for a pair of wireless headphones, noise-canceling or otherwise.
The real question to ask if you're considering a pair of these headphones is: How much noise canceling and microphone access do you really need on a day-to-day basis? These can keep up with most of your noise canceling needs, so long as you're not trying to block out construction noise or you're not the world's most frequent flyer. In exchange, you get better-than-average sound. If you really need the silence, I'd look elsewhere, but if you put sound quality first, the Aventho 300 are actually worth considering, especially if you can snag a pair on sale.
With 50 hours of battery life and build quality that matches up with any of Beyerdynamic's classic studio products, I'd expect many years of solid use out of these headphones if you do bite the bullet. It felt unlikely at first, but they're actually one of my favorite new pairs.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Tom's Guide
5 hours ago
- Tom's Guide
Does your OLED TV look funny? Here are 5 common issues and how to diagnose them
OLED TVs aren't perfect. Despite their reputation of being some of the best TVs money can buy, OLED displays are susceptible to some odd visual quirks that range from minor blemishes like color banding to major issues like image retention. Having been in the TV-testing business for over a decade, I've seen everything from the earliest OLED models all the way up to the latest and best OLEDs on the market today and have needed to troubleshoot a fair number of them over the years. Here's a list of the strange oddities you might encounter with an OLED TV and whether or not they're worth worrying about. Though not a prevalent issue in recent years, some OLED TVs — particularly WOLED TVs used by LG and Sony — demonstrate minor color tinting when viewed a few feet away from a head-on position. Typically, the effect is most pronounced when the screen displays white a or near-white picture, like during the broadcast of a hockey game. The white portions of the picture will subtly shift into a pale pink or green, shifting as the viewer moves. As mentioned, it's been a few years since I've seen this issue, but folks with OLED TVs from around 2021 to 2023 might notice it from time to time. The cause of the tinting isn't one for concern. Fortunately, the cause of the tinting isn't one for concern, most likely having to do with variance in manufacturing. Based on reports across the web, the severity of the issue appears to be random, and I can personally attest that I've never witnessed a case so severe as to compromise the picture entirely. Get instant access to breaking news, the hottest reviews, great deals and helpful tips. While the above photo has been edited to illustrate the issue, it's plain to see that the OLED depicted is struggling to display a dark gray screen without saddling the left and right sides of the picture with a bold, pink column. Unfortunately, in my experience, this visual artifact tends to be more noticeable than the off-axis tint detailed above. This is because it tends to rear its head during any dark scene with low color saturation. In other words, a background wall doesn't need to be gray for the discoloration to appear. Black-and-white content will bring it out almost immediately. Much like the off-axis color tinting, this problem affects OLED TVs seemingly at random. However, not once have I seen the issue manifest on quantum dot-enhanced OLEDs like Samsung's excellent flagship, the S95D OLED TV. This leads me to believe that QD-OLEDs aren't as susceptible to the root cause. In my experience, QD-OLED TVs like the Samsung S95D tend to exhibit fewer visual quirks than TVs with WOLED panels. The S95D (one of our favorite OLEDs of its year) delivers an incredible picture and a sensational suite of features for gaming, streaming and beyond. To check your OLED TV for this issue, switch off your lights and, on your OLED, pull up this Dirty Screen Effect YouTube video uploaded by Sunil Raman. This short clip will start with a 100% black screen and gradually move up the grayscale until it displays 100% white. The dark gray-colored slides at 5% to 20% are particularly useful at coaxing out the pink tint. As far as I know, if you do discover pink-colored blotches, it can't be addressed outside of replacing the TV. Above is a close-up of a QD-OLED TV panel displaying a black-and-white checkerboard pattern. If you look along the edges of the black squares, you'll notice green- and magenta-colored rows of pixels. This is a result of QD-OLED's triangular subpixel structure, which places the green subpixel above red and blue. Fortunately, this minor, near-imperceptible color fringing is not a substantial mark against QD-OLED TVs. In general, you're most likely to notice this fringing when light-colored title cards or subtitles are on screen. Unless you intend on using a QD-OLED display as a monitor (or if you plan on regularly sitting very close to a QD-OLED TV), it's not a cause for concern. On rare occasions, I've seen OLED TVs arrive out of the box with vertical or horizontal banding across most or all of the screen. They usually manifest as straight lines of varying widths. Like the localized pink tint, this banding is most noticeable when large portions of the picture are white or gray. In my experience, OLED banding tends to work itself out after about five to ten hours of use. While it's frustrating to see these imperfections shortly after setting up a brand-new TV, I've got some good news: In my experience, OLED banding tends to work itself out after about five to ten hours of use. In the past, when I've reached out to LG about one of its TVs exhibiting this banding, a representative has recommended that I run the display's pixel refresher. Known as Pixel Cleaning on LG OLEDs (or Pixel Refresh on Samsung OLEDS), this process automatically adjusts the luminance of pixels depending on whether or not an unevenness is detected. Be warned, however: I would not manually run these pixel-cleaning features with any regularity. They can be aggressive over time — akin to scouring your display — and there's a good chance your OLED TV is already running a lighter, preventative version of the feature automatically when it's off. If none of these measures eliminates the TV's banding issue, I would brush up on the warranty and reach out to customer service. Burn-in is the only one of these issues that happens as a direct result of how an OLED TV is used. It describes the ghostly image of previously viewed content, now embedded within the display after many hours of use. Due to the organic nature of OLED displays, they're particularly susceptible to burn-in — or at least they were. Burn-in was something of an OLED boogeyman in the early days of the technology, but brands have built up plenty of defense against the issue in the years since. For instance, all major OLED-makers offer a pixel-shifting feature that occasionally (and subtly) moves the picture to ensure that each pixel is switching things up from time to time. The aforementioned pixel refreshing cycle remains an option, too, if you're noticing some image retention taking place. In general, the OLED TVs of today are far better equipped to prevent burn-in than earlier models. In general, the OLED TVs of today are far better equipped to prevent burn-in than earlier models. However, it still wouldn't hurt to give your TV a rest every now and then, particularly if you play games with static HUDs, or watch content with chyrons and/or tickers. If your OLED TV is exhibiting burn-in, it might be covered by the brand's standard warranty. LG, for instance, offers a one-year warranty on most of its OLED TVs which ought to cover burn-in, but the likelihood that you'll be dealing with OLED burn-in that soon is very, very low. Personally, I wouldn't let the prospect of burn-in stop me from shopping for an OLED TV. Nor would I let any of these issues dissuade me. The truth is, no TV is perfect — regardless of display technology. Due to the nature of their hardware, OLED TVs certainly need to be coddled a bit more relative to their LCD/LED counterparts, but those TVs come with their own potential quirks, too.
Engadget
17 hours ago
- Engadget
Everything new at Summer Game Fest 2025: Marvel Tōkon, Resident Evil Requiem and more
It's early June, which means it's time for a ton of video game events! Rising from the ashes of E3, Geoff Keighley's Summer Game Fest is now the premium gaming event of the year, just inching ahead of… Geoff Keighley's Game Awards in December. Unlike the show it replaced, Summer Game Fest is an egalitarian affair, spotlighting games from AAA developers and small indies across a diverse set of livestreams. SGF 2025 includes 15 individual events running from June 3-9 — you can find the full Summer Game Fest 2025 schedule here — and we're smack dab in the middle of that programming right now. We're covering SGF 2025 with a small team on the ground in LA and a far larger group of writers tuning in remotely to the various livestreams. Expect game previews, interviews and reactions to arrive over the coming days (the show's in-person component runs from Saturday-Monday), and a boatload of new trailers and release date announcements in between. Through it all, we're collating the biggest announcements right here, with links out to more in-depth coverage where we have it, in chronological order. Epic hitched its wagon to SGF this year, aligning its annual developer Unreal Fest conference, which last took place in the fall of 2024, with the consumer event. The conference was held in Orlando, Florida, from June 2-5, with well over a hundred developer sessions focused on Unreal Engine. The highlight was State of Unreal, which was the first event on the official Summer Game Fest schedule. Amid a bunch of very cool tech demos and announcements, we got some meaningful updates on Epic's own Fortnite and CD PROJEKT RED's upcoming The Witcher IV . To view this content, you'll need to update your privacy settings. Please click here and view the "Content and social-media partners" setting to do so. The Witcher IV was first unveiled at The Game Awards last year, and we've heard very little about it since. At State of Unreal, we got a tech demo for Unreal Engine 5.6, played in real time on a base PS5. The roughly 10-minute slot featured a mix of gameplay and cinematics, and showed off a detailed, bustling world. Perhaps the technical highlight was Nanite Foliage, an extension of UE5's Nanite system for geometry that renders foliage without the level of detail pop-in that is perhaps the most widespread graphical aberration still plaguing games today. On the game side, we saw a town filled with hundreds of NPCs going about their business. The town itself wasn't quite on the scale of The Witcher III 's Novigrad City, but nonetheless felt alive in a way beyond anything the last game achieved. It's fair to say that Fortnite 's moment in the spotlight was… less impressive. Hot on the heels of smooshing a profane Darth Vader AI into the game, Epic announced that creators will be able to roll their own AI NPCs into the game later this year. Another company getting a headstart on proceedings was Sony, who threw its third State of Play of the year onto the Summer Game Fest schedule a couple days ahead of the opening night event. It was a packed stream by Sony's standards, with over 20 games and even a surprise hardware announcement. To view this content, you'll need to update your privacy settings. Please click here and view the "Content and social-media partners" setting to do so. The most time was given to Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls , a new PlayStation Studios tag fighter that fuses Marvel Superheroes with anime visuals. It's also 4 versus 4, which is wild. It's being developed by Arc System Works, the team perhaps best known for the Guilty Gear series. It's coming to PS5 and PC in 2026. Not-so-coincidentally, Sony also announced Project Defiant, a wireless fight stick that'll support PS5 and PC and arrive in… 2026. Elsewhere, we got a parade of release dates, with concrete dates for Sword of the Sea (August 19) Baby Steps (September 8) and Silent Hill f (September 25). We also got confirmation of that Final Fantasy Tactics remaster (coming September 30), an an all-new... let's call it aspirational "2026" date for Pragmata , which, if you're keeping score, was advertised alongside the launch of the PS5. Great going, Capcom! To view this content, you'll need to update your privacy settings. Please click here and view the "Content and social-media partners" setting to do so. Rounding out the show was a bunch of smaller announcements. We heard about a new Nioh game, Nioh 3 , coming in 2026; Suda51's new weirdness Romeo is a Dead Man ; and Lumines Arise , a long-awaited return to the Lumines series from the developer behind Tetris Effect . There were absolutely no Summer Game Fest events scheduled on Thursday. We assume that's out of respect for antipodean trees, as June 5 was Arbor Day in New Zealand. (It's probably because everyone was playing Nintendo Switch 2.) It's fair to say that previous Summer Game Fest opening night streams have been… whelming at best. This year's showing was certainly an improvement, not least because there were exponentially fewer mobile game and MMO ads littering the presentation. Yes, folks tracking Gabe Newell's yacht were disappointed that Half-Life 3 didn't show up, and the Silksong crowd remains sad, alone and unloved, but there were nonetheless some huge announcements. To view this content, you'll need to update your privacy settings. Please click here and view the "Content and social-media partners" setting to do so. Perhaps the biggest of all was the "ninth" ( Zero and Code Veronica erasure is real) Resident Evil game. Resident Evil Requiem is said to be a tonal shift compared to the last game, Resident Evil Village . Here's hoping it reinvigorates the series in the same way Resident Evil VII did following the disappointing 6 . We also heard more from Sega studio Ryu Ga Gotoku about Project Century, which seems to be a 1943 take on the Yakuza series. It's now called Stranger Than Heaven , and there's a (literally) jazzy new trailer for your consideration. To view this content, you'll need to update your privacy settings. Please click here and view the "Content and social-media partners" setting to do so. Outside of those big swings, there were sequels to a bunch of mid-sized games, like Atomic Heart , Code Vein and Mortal Shell , and a spiritual sequel of sorts: Scott Pilgrim EX , a beat-em-up that takes the baton from the 2010 Ubisoft brawler Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game . There were countless other announcements at the show, including: As always, the kickoff show was followed by a Day of the Devs stream, which focused on smaller projects and indie games. You can watch the full stream here. Escape Academy has been firmly on our best couch co-op games list for some time, and now it's got a sequel on the way. Escape Academy 2: Back 2 School takes the same basic co-op escape room fun and expands on it, moving away from a level-select map screen and towards a fully 3D school campus for players to explore. So long as the puzzles themselves are as fun as the original, it seems like a winner. To view this content, you'll need to update your privacy settings. Please click here and view the "Content and social-media partners" setting to do so. Semblance studio Nyamakop is back with new jam called Relooted , a heist game with a unique twist. As in the real world, museums in the West are full of items plundered from African nations under colonialism. Unlike the real world, in Relooted the colonial powers have signed a treaty to return these items to their places of origin, but things aren't going to plan, as many artifacts are finding their way into private collections. It's your job to steal them back. The British Museum is quaking in its boots. To view this content, you'll need to update your privacy settings. Please click here and view the "Content and social-media partners" setting to do so. Here are some of the other games that caught our eye: To view this content, you'll need to update your privacy settings. Please click here and view the "Content and social-media partners" setting to do so. After Day of the Devs came Devolver. Its Summer Game Fest show was a little more muted than usual, focusing on a single game: Ball x Pit . It's the next game from Kenny Sun, an indie developer who previously made the sleeper hit Mr. Sun's Hatbox . Ball x Pit is being made by a team of more than half a dozen devs, in contrast to Sun's mostly solo prior works. It looks like an interesting mashup of Breakout and base-building mechanics, and there's a demo on Steam available right now. To view this content, you'll need to update your privacy settings. Please click here and view the "Content and social-media partners" setting to do so. Then came IOI, the makers of Hitman, who put together a classic E3-style cringefest, full of awkward pauses, ill-paced demos and repetitive trailers. Honestly, as someone who's been watching game company presentations for two decades or so, it was a nice moment of nostalgia. Away from the marvel of a presenter trying to cope with everything going wrong, the show did have some actual content, with an extended demo of the new James Bond-themed Hitman mission, an announcement that Hitman is coming to iOS and table tops, and a presentation on MindsEye , a game from former GTA producer Leslie Benzies that IOI is publishing. Now you're all caught up. We're expecting a lot of news this weekend, mostly from Xbox on Sunday. We'll be updating this article through the weekend and beyond, but you can find the latest announcements from Summer Game Fest 2025 on our front page.
Yahoo
19 hours ago
- Yahoo
PlayStation's Days of Play is live — Get a PS5 'Call of Duty' bundle for just $400
All products featured here are independently selected by our editors and writers. If you buy something through links on our site, Mashable may earn an affiliate commission. The best Days of Play deals at a glance: Best Console Deal 'Call of Duty: Black Ops 6' PlayStation 5 Console Bundle (Digital and Standard) $399.99 (Save $119.99) Get Deal Best VR Headset Deal PlayStation VR2 Horizon Call of the Mountain Bundle $349.99 (Save $50) Get Deal Best Controller Deal DualSense Wireless Edge Controller $169.99 (Save $30) Get Deal Whether you're a die-hard PlayStation fan or you're thinking about snagging your first PlayStation 5, it's a good time to go shopping. PlayStation's Days of Play event is here again, and with it comes a variety of significant discounts on games, controllers, consoles, and other PlayStation goodies. There's a little something for everyone on offer here, and you can save some serious cash while jumpstarting your collection at the same time. The PlayStation Days of Play event happens annually, and it features discounts on everything from exclusive console bundles to deals on some of the biggest games in the PlayStation library. This is the eighth Days of Play so far, and it looks to be one of the best yet, with some of the discounted console bundles on offer. The event begins today, May 28, and runs through June 11. During the sale, you'll find some of the deals listed above as well as additional discounts for PlayStation Plus members, like additional free games and much more. Below, find some of our picks for the best Days of Play deals you can shop right now. Opens in a new window Credit: PlayStation 'Call of Duty: Black Ops 6' PlayStation 5 Console Bundle (Digital and Standard) $399.99 at PlayStation Direct $519.98 Save $119.99 Get Deal This PlayStation 5 bundle pairs the console of your choice (digital or standard) with one of the hottest games on the system: Call of Duty: Black Ops 6. This formidable console comes with a DualSense Wireless Controller, a generous SSD to hold all of your downloadable games, as well as the pre-installed Astro's Playroom. It has everything you need in the box to get started as a PS5 gamer and then some. It's the best way to kick off your PlayStation 5 collection and a good introduction to the system as a newcomer. Opens in a new window Credit: PlayStation PlayStation VR2 Horizon Call of the Mountain Bundle $349.99 at PlayStation Direct $399.99 Save $50 Get Deal PlayStation's most immersive experience comes in the form of the PS VR2, which is the most up-to-date virtual reality interface you can get with the console. This bundle comes packing the VR headset itself, a PlayStation VR2 Sense controller, a voucher for Horizon Call of the Mountain, stereo headphones, a USB cable, and three types of earpieces to get you started. There's a wide library of games that are compatible with the headset, so you've got tons of titles to choose from if you want to really dive in. Opens in a new window Credit: PlayStation DualSense Wireless Edge controller $169.99 at PlayStation Direct $199.99 Save $30 Get Deal This is the best PlayStation 5 controller you can get, and for good reason. It offers swappable sticks, mappable back buttons, adjustable trigger lengths, as well as the ability to remap or deactivate buttons to your liking. It has a special customization button as well as all the features you get from the normal DualSense controller. It may be a bit pricey, but it's worth the upgrade if you're a serious gamer. Pulse Explore wireless earbuds — $169.99 $199.99 (save $30) Access controller — $69.99 $89.99 (save $20) DualSense wireless controller — $54.99 $74.99 (save $20)
