HolyHigh’s A3S noise-cancelling headphones offer a lightweight and affordable choice for noise-cancelling headphones, featuring up to 20 hours of playback, quick charging and Bluetooth 5.0.
Video Review
Design
The headphones have a lightweight design, with a plastic and metal construction. Most of the headphones are plastic, along with the headband slider being metal with a silver finish. Both have a matte finish, so the headphones will continue to look good as they will not easily become covered with fingerprints.
The headband and earpads are very soft, making the headphones comfortable to wear and the headband has plenty of flex. Although I do wish that the headphones had a little more clamping force as they may shuffle around a little if you have a narrow-shaped head or try to do any exercise wearing the headphones. This is likely due to the fact that the earcups can’t tilt to adjust to your head, which could be an issue at times, preventing you from getting the best fit. The ear cups have a circular shape, and they fit well over the ears.
The controls for the headphones are spread across both ear-cups, with power and track controls on the right and a toggle switch for the active noise cancellation found on the left-hand side. If you don’t feel like using Bluetooth, the headphones also have a 3.5mm input. The headphones can have their active noise cancelling turned on, whilst the main Bluetooth aspect of the headphones can remain turned off, so I think that the separate switches are appropriate.
The HolyHigh A3S headphones can be folded up when not in use. Although the earcups only swivel 90 degrees so the headphones can sit flat down, they can’t tilt. I also think the adjustment slider for the headphone band is also a little too forgiving as it can sometimes move around on its own without any input from myself. Therefore, I would’ve liked to have seen a stronger slider.
Sound Quality
Headphones
These headphones feel insanely light, so I was not expecting them to sound great – but I was pleasantly surprised with what I heard.
The headphones come in with much more emphasis on the bass than the mid and treble frequencies, so if that is something you like, these headphones are for you. This does mean that, for some tracks, the headphones can sometimes sound a little lacking as it restricts the amount of presence a song can have.
The high frequencies sound clear enough for casual listening, but the mid frequencies do sound a little lacking in comparison to the rest of the soundstage. The bass is powerful and deep, which works well for electronic and dance music.
I have found that the active noise cancelling can have a negative impact on the listening experience, which is certainly not to be desired for a pair of noise-cancelling headphones. The best way I can describe it is that it makes the listening experience sound like I’m listening through a tube, it sounds hollow.
The headphones also manage to get loud and can tune out your environment, but they can leak quite a bit of the sound to the people around you.
The active noise cancellation does a good job of removing low pitch sounds and hums around me, but higher-pitched sounds to still manage to seep through.
Microphone
The microphone on the headphones sounds great, but it’s very quiet, which would make it difficult to make or take phone calls with as the person on the other end may not be able to hear you at an easily audible volume.
Features
The HolyHigh A3S headphones feature Bluetooth 5.0, so if you have a newer mobile device that supports it, you’ll be able to take advantage of the features that come with Bluetooth 5.0. If you don’t want to use Bluetooth the headphones also support the choice to listen with wires.
Active noise cancelling also works whether you’re listening to music or not, so you can toggle the feature independently of you listening to music with the headphones.
One issue that I have come across is that the headphones don’t seem to connect to my phone automatically, every time I wish to connect, I have to go to the Bluetooth Settings on my device and select the headphones from the dropdown list – which can be quite annoying.
Battery Life
The headphones support up to 20 hours of listening time with the active noise cancelling turned off, which halves if you decide to use active noise cancelling. You can still use the active noise cancelling whilst using the headphones wired, which will give you 14 hours of AUX listening.
The headphones also support quick charging, so you can get 2 hours of listening time with a quick 10-minute charge. The headphones charge with a micro-USB cable, but it would’ve been nice to have seen USB Type-C instead.
Conclusion
So, to conclude. I, personally, think that there are better fitting headphones out there that have a bit more clamping force to ensure the headphones stay in place, so I don’t think these headphones are personally for me. At the same time, I can understand that some people may want a pair of headphones that don’t press onto themselves too much.
If you’re looking for a lightweight pair of headphones with decent sound quality, these are worth a consideration. The design of the headphones is good, and the touches of metal give the headphones a premium edge.
The HolyHigh A3S headphones are available to purchase on Amazon.
