GRADO GW100 v2 Wireless Bluetooth Headphones - Open Back and On Ear

Excellent Bluetooth headphones, the best imo, amazing sound! Get the v2 though, longer battery life (40 hours), and supports more types of audio codecs than v1. Was surprised of how far the range could go, between walls and floors no problem in my house:)

Was looking for a pair of wireless open backed heaphones for a long time. Finally found it in the grado GW 100 V2. It's pretty comfortable, has great battery life and pretty good sound quality (not exactly neutral but has a fun sound signature).

Absolutely blows other headphones I've tried out of the water for sound quality including HD 660S, DT 1990 Pro and Sundara. No matter the quirks/cons, these are worthy of 5 stars.Pros:-Sound quality, sound quality and sound quality. (UPDATE) Thought I'd add some more to this pro since I've had these for a while now. Treble is a little more laid back, maybe leaning slightly warm neutral, but still plenty of clarity. Mids are the bomb and string instruments in particular are to die for. I actually can't believe the clarity and depth on the lows and how there's almost no roll off. It surprises me every time when the bass guitar plays in Sex in a Pan by Bela Fleck & The Flecktones.-Light weight.-On ear design is surprisingly comfortable and clamping force is perfect for me, but see related con in the con section below.-Battery life seems good, however did not test thoroughly. I believe these are advertised for 40h on 50% vol. That being said, 50% is a pretty good listening level for a quiet setting in my opinion. (UPDATE) I use these for a few hours every day and charge once a week. They have never died yet.Cons:-These need to be used with Bluetooth. Connecting them with Aux will severely lower the sound quality due to loss of DSP.-The above con makes these less versatile due to Bluetooth delay.-Clamping force might be too light for a small head. Band can be shaped a bit, but may make the drivers go too low at their smallest setting, again not working for a small head.-Bluetooth range is fine for what these are intended for, but could be better. Really solid if you're in the same room, but don't expect to walk around a house unless your phone is in your pocket.-Sound leaks from open back, but that is expected. These aren't for travel.-On/off and connecting voice prompts are loud and distorted sounding.-Button placement is a little awkward. Button functionality works fine otherwise for music.-(NEW) Creeks a little bit when moving your head. Nothing to crazy.Overall the GW100 is specifically perfect for audio listening at home within a fairly close range of your device that is broadcasting Bluetooth. Not so much for any other scenario due to quality loss from a wired connection. That's why my HD 660S will keep it's spot for low latency in things like gaming and videos.Two things to note about this review:-I did not test the microphone quality or call functionality with the buttons. Probably will never use these for that. (UPDATE) I've made a few calls including on Zoom and everyone's said these sound fine so far.-There is a different ad for this product with 100+ reviews. This seems to be the same product and the old ad was discontinued, causing split reviews for no apparent reason. Since this is the one I purchased and it was the most recent version by the official Grado store 4OurEars, this is where I'm leaving the review.

I am not someone new to audio world and know what I am specifically looking for, hence an 'OPEN BACK' with bluetooth with unique sound that is of not Sennheisers, AKGS, Bayer, Audio Technia, BW, Sonys, and others from endless list which consists of 99.999% of open back headphones ranging from low to high end. So to compare this to other bluetooth - Sony WH/WF XM3s - both I own also.GW100 V2, while it was working was great for literally less than a week. In terms of sound quality, it beats the Sonys WHXm3s and takes names - remember this is an open back, so from the get go, no close back headphones can even touch it - this applies to pretty much all other open backs, closed back and open backs don't even belong in the same sentence in terms of natural sound production.Anyhow, what is wrong with GW100 V2 or with the set I got? Well, I let it charge and tried to use it afterwards but no sound coming out of right side using bluetooth. I tried for couple of hours to reset and reconnect, shut down and restart both on pc and cell but no luck. Restarted all the systems and tried other devices but still no luck.Connected the headphone wired and it works. So, its bluetooh that is bad. I plugged in the charger after and let it run for an hour with just one side working - draining the battery but nothing has worked.After some time, I put the volume up all the way, still no luck. Turned it off and restart. Now turned the volume all the way up on the headset and on the playing device, then all of a sudden the right side kicks in. WTH????? Its like there was some sort of discharge that needed to happen.Well, I am not playing this crazy game the next time, so I am getting it exchanged and return the current unit. Maybe they can figure out exactly what is going on with this unit. But if your your unit doesn't have this problem, then you would really enjoy open back with great sounding headphone that does good in both rock and edm trance athems/vocals. Also, if you have dolby audio on your source device - it will make any of your headphones shine - often too much - making unique headphones not unique anymore, sadly.

tl;dr: They're great when they work. But I've had two of them essentially brick on me in 8 months.I've had two pairs of these headphones over the last 8 months. Long story short for the first pair, they stopped taking a charge. They power on and off but will not charge and constantly sing the "low battery" chime regardless of which charger or cable I plug them into. Contacted Grado about it and was told that since I'm out of warranty my only option was to send them in and pay for whatever service was required. That didn't sound like a great plan because I use these headphones on a daily basis and being without them for a minimum of 3 weeks was not going to work for me. I ponied up and bought a brand new set on Amazon and thought that was that. 6 weeks later and this pair will no longer turn on. The charging LED doesn't light up when plugged in. Completely bricked. This pair is still under warranty but then I'm still without them for at least 3 weeks while they're repaired (or more likely just replaced).Now onto how they are when working normally:I love these headphones when they work. They aren't the best sounding headphone, but they're bluetooth. They sound good enough that I rarely feel the need to use other (better sounding) headphones. The convenience of wireless wins most of the time. They're also incredibly uncomfortable out of the box (to me at least) with their on-ear design. I replaced the stock pads with GS1000i pads and this fixed that issue. It turned them into over ear headphones and I can wear them all day 16+ hours and have no issues. The power on and power off chimes are absurdly loud (to the point that I take them off to turn them on/off because it's so loud). The low battery chime is very annoying, instead of telling you the battery is low once it hits a certain percentage and then waiting to chime again when it gets even lower, it repeats the chime like once a minute. It's very annoying (and again, painfully loud) and makes the headphones unusable until charged again. I get about a whole day of battery life out of these. I can get most of a second day, but near the end of the second day the low battery chime starts and I have to take them off and let them charge because once the low battery chime starts they're unusable. These issues are annoying but definitely not deal breakers. The reliability issue is a deal breaker and I will not be buying another pair of these.