Review: PuroQuiet Plus headphones from Puro Sounds Labs deliver the goods while protecting your children’s hearing
Paul Brackley reviews the new headphones from Puro Sounds Labs.
Ever wondered what hours spent with headphones strapped to their ears is doing to your children’s hearing?
Whether gaming with friends online, listening to music on their phones or watching a movie during a car journey, many youngsters are rarely without them.
Niki Russell learned to her cost what can happen when the volume of the headphones is excessive.
She says: “When I was young, I was listening to them too loudly for too long and over time, it damaged my hearing so much that I now can barely hear my friends talking to me from across the dinner table. Scary, huh? Want to know something even scarier? One in five teens (approaching one in four) will lose their hearing, too.”
After being told by doctors that Niki’s noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL) in both ears was probably due to excessive volume on her headphones, her family scoured the market and found nobody addressing the issue.
Her father Dave Russell, after a career in the electronics industry, founded Puro Sounds Labs in 2014 to change that and created high-quality, studio-grade headphones that have their volume limited to 85dB - recommended by Hearing Health Foundation, OSHA and the World Health Organisation as the safe listening level.
The company, now in the ownership of his three daughters, is building on the success of its PuroQuiet headphones - which were top rated for children by the likes of Wirecutter and CNN - by releasing the new PuroQuiet Plus.
These wireless, Bluetooth-enabled headphones feature a classy aluminium construction, plush noise-isolating earpads and a new USB-C connector.
Available in six colours - purple and teal are new to the PuroQuiet range - the headphones are available from Amazon with an RRP of £115.
So how do they sound?
Puro Sounds Labs says the PuroQuiet Plus are designed to match the natural sound from a perfectly tuned listening room.
And sliding them on to listen to some dance tracks from Ministry of Sound two things are immediately obvious - there is excellent clarity and solid bass. Switching to something heavier and the PuroQuiet Plus continue to excel, handling the high notes of a Kirk Hammett guitar solo as comfortably as the double kick of Lars Ulrich’s drums.
The Puro Balanced Response curve and digital signal processing (DSP) is designed to provide a clear sound that reduces the need to turn up the volume to hear vocals or movie and game dialogue clearly.
Testing that out as a passenger in a car, Tom Cruise’s quips in Top Gun Maverick could be clearly discerned at a relatively low volume, while the roar of the planes was suitably guttural, despite a constant flow of traffic, the radio on in the front and two children bickering.
That can be put down to the headphones’ ability to block out daily noise and background sounds up to 22 dB, along with the 82 per cent noise isolation.
As Puro Sounds Labs says, this “puts the wider world on mute so youngsters can listen clearly in a loud environment”. The company is the first to be Certified Sensory Inclusive and suggests its headphones can even “help calm children down in a loud and unfamiliar environment, reduce noise-related stress and increase their overall focus on one thing without the distraction of ambient noise”.
The Active Noise Cancellation (ANC) technology can be turned on and off from a switch on the right headphone and makes a noticeable difference, particularly to the potency of the bass.
For many children, it is long gaming sessions that could do the damage. So how do the headphones perform during a session on Fortnite?
Here, they proved suitably immersive - enough that calls for dinner could be thoroughly ignored - and the sensitive built-in microphone, designed for gaming or calls, delivered the goods.
Advanced digital signal processing is designed to make the 85dB noise limitation imperceptible and so it proved - the headphones delivered all the volume needed and not once during our testing did it feel like you were getting a cut-down experience.
How do they feel?
Comfort can be as important with headphones as the sound quality. After all, if you don’t enjoy wearing them, you won’t care how much the bass kicks.
But PuroQuiet Plus have a good quality feel to them. There is a soft protein leather wrapped headband and ear cushions, and these weigh in at 169g.
The sliding arm to adjust to different head sizes is smooth but strong - there’s no slippage.
Size-wise, these on-ear headphones are obviously designed for children, and received a double thumbs-up from our young testers.
Features
The PuroQuiet Plus features Bluetooth v4.0 technology for wirelessly connecting to devices.
Activate the Active Noise Cancellation (ANC) and you’ll get up to 23 hours of battery life, while turning it off will give you an even more impressive 35 hours.
The headphones stay wirelessly connected up to about 30 feet.
Of course, if you don’t want or need to go wireless, you don’t have to - a cable with 3.5mm jack is provided.
When you’ve finished with them, they pack away neatly into a flat case that is handy for travel, with a net inside for your cables and a useful strap outside.
Final verdict
Puro Sounds Labs have created an excellent all-round product here - the PuroQuiet Plus headphones deliver in terms of sound, comfort and quality build and have that all-important noise-limiting technology built in, meaning you can be sure that your children’s hearing is being safeguarded while they play, listen or watch. Just don’t expect them to respond when you call them down for dinner.
