Austrian Audio Hi-X25BT review: ample detail, sonic clarity and fun at a competitive price

“Imagine recording a song in a professional studio, listening to your favourite music on the way home on the underground, calling your bandmates… and then working on your song at home again without ever changing headphones. No matter where you are… your Hi-X25BT headphones will be there for you.”

That’s the promise of Austrian Audio’s first foray into the ever-competitive world of Bluetooth over-ear headphones. With one eye on studio use and the other on domestic listening, the Hi-X25BT promise to bring the best of both worlds to consumers at a competitive price, melding the comfort and convenience that modern users crave from Bluetooth headphones with the clear, revealing sound that has served Austrian Audio so well in the wired space.

To our ears, it’s a promise that they’ve delivered upon in quite some style.

Price

The Hi-X25BT sit in an attractive, oft-neglected mid-range price point. Frequently we’ve griped that there are very few talented wireless headphones occupying the £100-200 / $100-200 bracket, making the Hi-X25BT a welcome addition to the landscape. Priced at £149 / $179 / AU$269, they’re just what we’ve been hoping for.

There aren’t, then, many rivals around the new Austrian Audio cans, though strong contenders sit above and below them. The Award-winning Sony WH-CH720N currently hover around the £80 / $100 / AU$195 mark, whereas more costly alternatives, such as the five-star Sennheiser Momentum 4 Wireless have, at the time of writing, dropped to around £240 / $300 / AU$400.

Build

If you’ve seen a pair of recent Austrian Audio cans, little about the Hi-X25BT will surprise you. Despite not relying on good old-fashioned wires, there’s very little to distinguish the Bluetooth budget buys from, say, the Austrian Audio Hi-X15 wired over-ears. At a distance, you would have to squint hard to tell the difference.

That isn’t a criticism. Like the five-star X15, the X25BT are lightweight, attractive and built to last, and when placed side-by-side with their nearest rivals – the Sony WH-CH720N – you would think they cost a good deal more. It’s all here: smart, shiny metal hinges which allow the earcups to fold away neatly, a smoothly adjustable sliding headband, ample soft leather adorning the headband and earcups which are soft and supple without feeling flimsy or unsupportive.

They’ll go the distance, too, and from your first minute to your second hour, you can feel Austrian Audio’s studio pedigree infusing the comfy cans. The memory foam earpads remain relatively cool and comfortable over extended periods of listening, while the overall clamping force provides enough pressure around your head without it feeling as though it has been trapped in a vice. Better still, the earcups fold neatly away, making the lightweight Hi-X25BT a strong choice as your go-to travel companion.

While ostensibly a Bluetooth pair of headphones, you can also choose a wired connection to your source device, thanks to a provided USB-C to 3.5mm jack connector. What’s more, you don’t even need the headphones to have battery life or to be powered-on to listen in this wired way; something that many premium wireless headphones can’t do. As candidates for professional and personal use, the Hi-X25BT fulfil their multi-purpose brief nicely.

Features

That said, if you’re somebody who wants all the latest gizmos from their shiny new headphones, the Hi-X25BT might leave you a little cold. They’re not entirely Spartan in the functions offered, yet we get the impression that Austrian Audio has placed far more emphasis, and indeed time, on how its latest over-ears sound rather than what they can actually do. More on that later.

The big omission here is active noise cancelling. We’ve come to expect ANC (active noise cancelling) in some form or another from headphones and wireless earbuds that cost anywhere north of £100 / $100, so if you’re after noise-cancelling cans at this sort of price, the Sony WH-CH720N are your best bet. The Austrian Audio are able to block out some external noise physically thanks to those earpads, but if you require comprehensive, algorithm-driven noise-cancellers, these aren’t the headphones for you.

This being a Bluetooth pair, there has to be a battery providing power when the wired cables are taking a back seat. Thanks to what is described as a “high-efficiency battery”, the Hi-X25BT grant you a very solid 30 or so hours of wireless playback – for context, the Sony CH720N offer you 50 hours without ANC switched on, with the mid-range Sennheiser Accentum Wireless (tested at £160 / $180 / AU$300) also boasting around 50 hours. Those are decent numbers, and you can always switch to wired listening if your battery runs dry.

For home or work use, the Hi-25BT are capable of handling voice calls, a task they perform with pleasing professionalism. The Austrian Audio cans make voices sound clear and expressive when used during video calls, isolating speech effectively without dropouts or distortion. On-ear touch controls housed on the right ear cup add to the X25BT’s ease of use, granting responsiveness and precision to commands ranging from play/pause through to volume adjustment and track skipping. It’s frustrating that there’s no app from which to customise our cans’ functionality, but again, Austrian Audio seems to have put most of its time and resources into ensuring the best sound possible.

Sound

That time has been well spent, and while the wires may have gone, that signature Austrian Audio flavour remains. Like the budget Hi-X15 and premium Hi-X65 wired cans before them, the X25BT provide a resplendently clean soundscape for us to enjoy, bringing the sort of clarity and sparkle that we’ve rarely heard at this level. There’s very little muddiness or compression here – imagine that the X25BT are a pristinely polished set of bay windows granting a wide, unclouded view of your musical catalogue.

As you stare through the sparkling metaphorical glass at the musical picture before you, you’ll be able to pick out plenty of extra details thanks to the X25BT’s insightful nature. Pearl Jam’s Present Tense is replete with textural insight, from those quiet, perfectly placed electronic guitar plucks to Eddie Vedder’s sincere vocal balladry. We found the Sony WH-CH720N to be a revealing rival at their £99 / $129 / AU$259 test price, but even they don’t match the Austrian Audio for insight and detail.

Not that there isn’t fun to be had from these trailblazing wireless over-ears. The Hi-X25BT are a little leaner in the bass than most rivals, and while that sounds like a limitation, there’s a fleet-footed lightness to the cans’ presentation that allows tracks to zip along nicely, unburdened by booming bass notes or muddy mids. Gorillaz’s 19-2000 is snappy, free and fun, whereas Wang Chung’s Dance Hall Days gets our toes tapping as the X25BT gobble up the tune’s propulsive tempo.

True, committed bassheads will perhaps crave more lower-end fullness to get their favourite hip-hop classics thumping along, but for precision and sharpness at the bottom end, the X25BT provide something of a masterclass. The tautness they bring to those deeper registers is immensely impressive, and there’s still enough bass power to prevent the X25BT from sounding treble-heavy or sonically unbalanced.

Switching from a wireless to a wired connection only enhances our enjoyment. That crisp, controlled sound feels even sharper and more punchy than ever as we load up a Tidal recording of Tom Petty’s Love Is A Long Road and we can’t help but nod happily along. Flicking over to Free Fallin’ reveals so much texture and space that we could easily be fooled into thinking we were listening to a far more expensive pair of studio cans, and as we run the gamut across the whole of Petty’s seminal Full Moon Feverthe Austrian Audio just seem to shine more brightly than ever.

Verdict

The Austrian Audio Hi-X25BT are a fascinating proposition on paper. Sending out a pair of wireless headphones without noise cancelling, or many other features besides, is a bold choice, especially when cheaper rivals grant you ANC and decent sound at a lower price.

Austrian Audio, though, has prioritised sound above all else, squeezing as much performance as possible from its mid-range wireless cans. They won’t appeal to feature-hungry consumers, but for those buyers who want versatility and exceptional sound at a great price, the Hi-X25BT are solid gold winners.

SCORES

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