Heavy bass isn’t everyone’s main priority in a pair of wireless headphones, but if it’s yours, there’s a new pair you should have on your radar. The “Beyond” wireless headphones from a brand called Sonic Lamb see your ho-hum “bass you can hear” and raise you a “bass you can feel.”
Specifically, using something Sonic Lamb calls “Impulse Drivers,” the company says you can actually register the bass vibrations in your face as an added layer of immersion.
Here’s how Sonic Lamb describes it:
“Low end (<120 Hz) doesn’t hit your ears—it becomes precise mechanical impulses you feel through your body. All to give sound the physical dimension it’s missing.”
To make things even more tactile, Sonic Lamb marries the low-end vibrations with your audio, so the two are in sync. I’m not going to lie, it all sounds a bit weird, but I don’t know, maybe it’ll move your sinuses around or something? This is not a medical device, by the way, I’m just hypothesizing. There are three incremental modes for face-shaking audio, including “feel,” “immersive,” and “beast,” in ascending order. You can also turn the Impulse Driver off if you’re not feeling particularly shaky that day.
Outside of the face-jiggling audio of it all, Sonic Lamb says the Beyond have a dynamic driver, though the company doesn’t list the size of it, so it’s hard to get a sense for how the rest of the frequency range works. One thing to note here is that there is passive noise cancellation through the earcups, but there’s no extra software layer for active noise cancellation (ANC). A bit of a strange choice for a modern pair of wireless headphones, but maybe all of that bass will just drown out your surroundings anyway.
The good news is, with the lack of ANC, the battery life is decent, with a maximum of 42 hours total, though that’s if you’re not making your face all buzzy. If you choose to use the Impulse Drivers, Sonic Lamb says you’ll get a max of 12 hours of playback in Beast mode, which is the highest setting.
Overall, they seem like an alright pair of wireless headphones, though the bass is really the star here, so it’s tough to say whether they’re worth it until I can both hear and feel for myself.
