Kygo Xellence, excellent sound and noise cancellation

With the wide variety of wireless cell phones flooding the market, I finally found the first ones that would raise some serious questions with the AirPods Pro. Kygo Xellence delivers exceptional sound, with good noise cancellation, huge battery life and touch controls be a serious rival to the AirPods Pro.

Different and bold design

It’s very annoying that all earphones look the same, and today it looks like you look like AirPods or have no chance of getting it right. Fortunately, we still have those who prefer to bet on a more conventional design, in which an LED located on the X-shaped touch surface clearly stands out.. Don’t worry, if you don’t want anyone to notice your headphones, you can turn them off. These are “in-ear” headphones with silicone plugs, with different sizes available inside the box to choose the ones that suit us the best, helping the noise cancellation function.

Available in white or black, the finish of the headphones and the charging case is very good, with magnetic systems for closing the cover and for the headphones, They are placed in the perfect position inside the face box just by dropping them then they start to recharge. A small LED on each earbud indicates connection and when the battery is low, and four LEDs on the box indicate how much battery is left. The box is small enough to fit in any pocket. A USB-C allows us to recharge it using the supplied cable.

30 hour battery life

Headset specifications include Bluetooth 5.0 connectivity, compatibility with aptX and AAC codecs (which is the one we iPhone users are interested in), sweat and water resistance with IPx5 certification that allows you to use them for sport without problems, Touch controls, proximity sensor to stop reading when you take them out, microphone for hands-free use and compatibility with Siri and Google Assistant. And we leave for the end the two features that make the difference: active noise cancellation, transparency mode and battery life up to 30 hours.

Noise cancellation has already become a feature that must be demanded of all high-end headphones, and of course these Kygo Xellence do the job with a high mark. Silicone plugs help passively cancel noise, and we also need to add an active system that we can control from the headphones themselves thanks to its touch control system. Its cancellation level I put it at the height of the AirPods Pro, in the tests I carried out, I cannot find any differences between the two. Transparency mode also works great, letting you hear what’s going on around you, although the sound you hear might not be as clear as in Apple headphones.

Its other star feature is its excellent battery life. Headphones alone can hold you up to 10 hours of continuous play on a single charge, something I couldn’t verify because I can’t spend this time with headphones, and with the charging case you have two more full charges, so you can use the headphones for 30 hours without having to connect them to an outlet. This battery life can satisfy anyone, I don’t think you can fault the battery life for one thing. Also, if you leave them in the charging case for several days, you won’t find them discharged when you go to use them, which is quite common in other models.

Also worth mentioning is the touch control system included in the helmet. Touch controls generally perform relatively poorly on these small earbuds as you have to touch a small area very precisely, so sometimes to do what you want you have to repeat the action until you get it. Xellence have a large surface area, and everything responds to touch, so even if you have to get used to making gestures, controlling playback, answering calls, raising or lowering the volume, or activating noise cancellation or transparency modes are all achieved with relative comfort

Application control

Kygo also offers us an application with which we can control the headphones. With it we can turn on or off functions, such as noise cancellation or transparency mode, as well as turn the headphone LED on or off, depending on how you like it more or less. This is the only way to activate “Bass Boost” mode, a bass boost that goes very well with certain music., but that for example when listening to a podcast, it is better to turn it off for a more natural sound. Another option that we can control is the proximity sensor, so that when you take off the headphones, the playback is automatically stopped.

But it doesn’t stop there, because this app lets you customize your audio, and I’m not talking about manually changing an equalizer, but perform a test that will adjust the sound of the headphones to your hearing, as we don’t all hear the same thing

, especially with advancing age. This personalized audio can also be modified later by means of a sliding bar which allows you to vary the degree of personalization of the sound emitted by the headphones.

Sound quality

We come to the most important section of headphones and the most difficult to describe: their sound quality. If I take the AirPods Pro as a benchmark, the audio from these Kygo Xellence is better in almost every aspect. The volume offered by these headphones is high, more than in AirPods Pro, without deforming, but The first thing you notice is some really powerful bass, surprisingly for headphones of this size.. The rest of the frequencies are also pretty good, it’s not bass that hides the deficiencies in the mids and treble, it sounds good across its spectrum, although the bass stands out above the rest, especially with the Bass Boost function activated.

If the sound of the AirPods Pro doesn’t convince you because it seems a bit “flat”, these headphones are just what you’re looking for. The sound quality of calls is good, with the limitations of headphones in terms of the microphone they incorporate. We can say that, in this aspect, they largely fulfill their mission, without further delay.

Editor’s opinion

After many headphones, I finally find the ones that, in a lower price range than the AirPods Pro, put them face to face. Not only because of the superior sound quality and wide-eyed bass, but they also include features like noise cancellation, transparency mode, and touch controls, as well as an app that lets you customize the sound. depending on your hearing and incredible autonomy. Due to their lower price, functions and sound quality, these Kygo Xellence are a great option for those looking for quality headphones with great features. They are available on Amazon for 199 $ (link)