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Portable headphones with Bluetooth 5 and Active Noise Cancelling? The Monolith M1000ANC Bluetooth Headphones have that covered but it adds a few key additional features: Dirac Virtua Spatializer, 60-hour battery life, cVc powered mics for surprisingly good audio pickup, and wired AUX compatibility too. It's a great feature set, as tech expert Dave Taylor explains and demonstrates in this detailed review.
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Headphones with ANC and DURAC VIRTUO. Let's check them out
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Dave Taylor here and I'm checking out these. These are the Monolith M1000 ANC Bluetooth
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headphones and first thing you notice is that it's really hard to put them on incorrectly as
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long as you know which ear is your right ear. So as long as you can orient it that works great
0:28
But they're super light, they have nice memory foam ear pads, they're highly adjustable
0:34
very portable, and they have some pretty cool specs. They are powered by 40 millimeter drivers
0:42
so you get a really nice sound reproduction and they have ANC you can have in high or low mode
0:48
and in high mode it'll drop out 35 decibels of your background noise. So that's pretty good ANC
0:54
There are companies that are over 40 decibels but if you're on an airplane or a bus or you're in a
1:00
loud environment or even just at working at home and you want to just get rid of all those
1:05
background hums and everything these will work just fine. What makes these particularly interesting
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though is the company included something called the DURAC VIRTUO Spatializer and this is a feature
1:17
you can turn on and off and when you enable it what it does is it lowers the volume just a little
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bit but it expands the sound stage so you get a more expansive and immersive experience with any
1:30
music or any source you're listening to. It is to be fair a fairly subtle difference but it's really
1:37
interesting to check it out and even without the DURAC VIRTUO they actually have really nice sound
1:44
Now they also feature Qualcomm CVC so there's some noise reduction on the microphone. I'm going to
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demo that in just a second. Bluetooth 5.0 and you can use it at 3.5 millimeter wired. On the left
1:58
earbud there is a 3.5 millimeter jack. In fact let me give you a quick tour of the right earpiece
2:04
because that's really where everything's happening. So here's the close-up. At the top you have the
2:09
ANC mode switch where you can switch between high, low and off. Then there's a little LED indicator
2:16
for Bluetooth. Then there's the DURAC button to enable or disable that feature. Then there's power
2:24
and Bluetooth also on a shared button. A power on off light indicator and finally the USB-C charging
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port. Now one of the other things that Monolith has done that's pretty subtle is that the right
2:40
earpiece is actually a touch sensitive surface. So if I wanted to increase the volume all I have to
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do is swipe my finger up. If I want to go to the next track all I have to do is swipe it forward
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In fact there's a number of gestures. Here's a shortcut cheat sheet for when you're listening to
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music and here's another one for when you're actually on a phone call. Yes because it has a
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built-in microphone you can use this to be on the phone. In fact let me go ahead and do that. So I
3:09
have these already paired. Let me pause this. I have it already paired with my, are you ready for this
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Google Pixel Fold. So right now I'm just in Spotify but if I switch I can actually go to
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the voice recorder and let's just double check it's all set up correctly. So I'm gonna let you
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see what's going on and now what you're hearing is my voice is picked up by the Monolith M1000ANC
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So this is using that Qualcomm CVC circuitry to cut down on echo and reverb and to reduce a little
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bit of the environmental noise around me. Overall I was pretty darn impressed when I reviewed the
3:53
recordings of the microphone pickup. Now let me switch back to my regular microphone
4:03
So pretty cool, also pretty cool phone but that's not what we're talking about. So it has 60 hours
4:11
of playback without ANC. If you turn on ANC high and you listen to music really loud you'll get
4:18
somewhere more around 40 hours of playback but that's still a solid week between charges if not
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a couple of weeks. And here's the good news plug it in for five minutes via that USB-C and you'll get
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two more hours of playback. So there's a lot happening there. There's the touch controls it's
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also IPX4 so it's water resistant. You don't want to wear these while you're in the hot tub but if
4:43
you're actually outside and it starts raining and you come in and they have a couple of drops of
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water on them nothing to stress about. 9.3 ounces it's really everything. So now what I want to talk
4:54
about is I want to talk about the sound quality because they sound really good. Those 40 millimeter
5:00
drivers give you a lot of big sound and there's no brights on the high there's no thumpiness on
5:07
the bass it just sounded really good. I've been going through some old Alan Parsons project music
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really well engineered rock and roll and it just sounds really good with these. And then you enable
5:20
that Durack Virtuo spatializer by just short tap pushing on the power button and it's a sort of
5:27
interesting experience because everything gets softer but then when you turn the volume up to
5:31
compensate you realize that your sound stage has gone from maybe this big to this big. So again as
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I said earlier it's not a dramatic difference the biggest thing you'll notice is it's a little
5:43
softer but once you turn the volume up you might find that it actually brings more detail out
5:49
in music you've been listening to for a long time or you might decide I'd like to have it be a little
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louder so then you turn off Durack. The nice thing is you have the choice you're in control. So I
6:01
really like these and while we're here let's go ahead and look in the box and the box includes
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a tiny user's guide and some reference instructions. It includes a 3.5 millimeter to 3.5
6:17
millimeter cable if you want to use it in wired mode. It includes a USB-C to USB-A charging cable
6:25
and it includes what I got to say is a carrying bag that they probably shouldn't even bother
6:32
including. This feels pretty darn flimsy. I don't know that people are going to use this. People
6:37
might not even find it because it's sort of hidden in the storage container but compliments and props
6:44
to the company because this is obviously highly recyclable cardboard and while you might think
6:51
wow that's not how Apple would ship it the fact is is that the environmental aspect here is really
6:57
great because what you really want are your headphones. You really want the stuff inside the
7:02
box. You don't really need that box so the fact that they've thought this through and said let's
7:08
make sure this has minimal environmental impact is something worth praising the company for. So
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well done Monolith but ultimately it's all about the headphones and I gotta say I really like them
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They're really light. They're very comfortable. Bluetooth 5.0 gives you a nice range from your
7:27
source device and the sound quality is really nice and I also like that it's a relatively small
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touch pad so you can definitely use it to do all the basic controls which makes life really easy
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but you don't feel like if you touch any surface on the headphones to adjust them or something
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that you're going to end up where it's like oh wait I just hung up on my phone call because I
7:49
just adjusted my headphones or something and the fact that they've designed it that way is actually
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really well done. So that's everything I got. I think these are definitely worth checking out
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particularly for both the ANC and that Dirac Spatializer for the price point. These are
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definitely ones to check out. Now let's talk about that price but before we get to the price go ahead
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and tap on that subscribe button and if you found this video useful I'd definitely appreciate a
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thumbs up or a like. Both are really helpful. Cool these are the Monolith. Let me do it this way you
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can see those great letters. The Monolith M1000 ANC Bluetooth headphones and they're $129.99
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currently down to $109.99 at amazon.com. Definitely ones to check out if you're in the market for ANC
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headphones. These might be a great solution for you at a really good price point. So that's all
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I got. I think I'm going to go back to Alan Parsons. Let's see which one's my right ear
8:53
I think this way. So cool. All right I'll catch you in my next video
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