Beyerdynamic Lagoon ANC Explorer Headphones: Modern Audio Superiority

Today we’re talking about a company that’s been on our radar for quite some time now: Beyerdynamic. For those of you who aren’t familiar w/ the company, Beyerdynamic is family-owned and has been around almost 100 years. It was created in 1924 in Germany and been crafting everything from cinema speakers to mics to headphones. You’ve got plenty of legends utilizing them like Abba, Bob Dylan, and even the Beatles used their mics during their tour in 1966.

So now that you know their lineage, let’s talk about their Lagoon ANC Explorer headphones. It was one of the headphones that caught my eye ear back at CanJam NYC in February. The Sony WH-1000XM3 has been my go-to ANC headphones so it was interesting to put them down & use these. Its been 2 weeks and a few days worth of time we’ve had to enjoy and let you know how well did they live up to their legacy.

At 1st glance, the Lagoon ANC Explorers look like your average headphones these days. And for the most part, it would be an accurate statement. Beyerdynamic checked off of the necessary boxes for a great pair of cans. You got a solid plastic build coupled w/ a faux leather memory foam pads for the cups + headband, swiveling cups to rest around your neck, smart sensors for automatic play/pause, touchpad on the right earcup for media/volume controls, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and USB-C port for charging + updating. All while weighing in at 0.62lbs

Minimal aesthetics while being modern & functional.

When I 1st took them out of the box, I thought they would offer a stiff overall fit but I was definitely mistaken. The Lagoon ANC Explorers are pretty comfy to wear, that’s w/ glasses on and wearing them for 8-10 hours at a time. The seal is good and snug but not too snug to the point of being tight or uncomfortable. The build materials even handle sweat well w/o getting gross ergo covering pretty much all bases of comfortability. But the more interesting part is their RGB-based Light Guide System which shows off different colors to show off the different levels of battery life, Bluetooth connection, media playback, a phone call in progress, and more. We got a breakdown of how it works below:

These cans are powered by 40mm drivers and utilizing Bluetooth 4.2 w/ a range of up to 33 ft. Beyerdynamic made sure to equip it w/ high-quality codecs of aptX, aptX Low Latency, & AAC as well. This all leads to damn-near superior audio quality for superb clarity to hear every element/instrument crisp & clear. The bass levels are simply perfect as it has the right amount of thump but not overbearing.

Making these ideal for listening to all types of content – from Season 3 of Westworld to podcasts to YouTube videos to music. A good example I heard to take full advantage of the sounds is the latest single from Nicole Bus called Rain. It sounds amazing on these. There’s some sort of customization available via their MOSAYC app that allows you to offer a personal sound profile and a hearing test. Moving to their noise-canceling abilities, the onboard ANC arrives in 3 levels: one, two, & completely off. This is a digital & hybrid-based ANC that works OK. But after the March firmware update, it got a lot better. Now its good but not to the point of beating Sony or Bose top of the line cans but good enough.

Taking phone calls on them were actually pretty good. I haven’t had the best of luck making calls on headphones where the other person can hear me clearly all of the time. Beyerdynamic was easily one of the few companies offering cans to do that successfully – at least throughout my experience.

Superior clarity w/ the perfect levels of bass makes for a superb Beyerdynamic sound.

Within my time using these Lagoon ANC cans, they’re definitely within the upper echelon of battery life. It gives you more than 24 hours and if you don’t need noise-canceling, it will give you almost 2 days worth of juice. Beyerdynamic quotes these giving you up to 45 hours w/ ANC off and 24 hours w/ ANC on. Throughout our time w/ it, its pretty much spot on. Although I did get a little less than 24 hours w/ ANC on max – more so around 21 hours. So this covered me for about 2 and a half workdays before getting the low-battery alert. It will also take about 3-hours to charge fully from being dead. A good amount of juice and depending on your use, close to being superior.

Beyerdynamic crafted an amazing pair of ANC headphones for everyday use, targeted to audiophiles.

I stated earlier about the curiosity of what Beyerdynamic and after rocking out w/ these for a few weeks, I was completely satisfied. The Lagoon ANCs are an amazing pair of cans that can easily replace my Sony WH-1000XM3s. I say that as they offer a much better-looking design, the same features, better sound quality, not too far off in similar battery life, and offer better call quality. However, I would still put Sony’s ANC abilities a bit higher than these but not by much.

These are premium cans w/ premium sound and of course, premium pricing. The Lagoon ANC Explorers usually retail for $299 but you can get them for a little less than that on Amazon. Beyerdynamic does an amazing job maintaining their glorious legacy and I actually didn’t miss my Sonys during my time using them.

Lagoon ANC Explorer headphones provided by Beyerdynamic for review. There are affiliate links present as we do get a cut from purchases made from there.

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