Arctic P614 BT Bluetooth Headphones Review

1. Introduction2. Packaging and Bundle3. The Arctic P614 BT Bluetooth Headset4. Comfort and Performance5. Closing Thoughts6. View All Pages

Setting up the Arctic P614 BT was very simple indeed.  The headphones automatically enter pairing mode when they are switched on, and were instantly picked up by our Apple iPhone 6.  The headphones also offer NFC paring, however this is not compatible with iOS devices so we were unable to test this feature.

We were pleasantly surprised when we first tried on the Arctic P614 BT as it is significantly more comfortable than it looks.  In fact we tested it for four hours straight and they remained perfectly comfortable throughout.  We also found that the headphones fit securely in place during use, meaning that they do not move around too much when exercising.

Some users might find the leatherette earpads irritating after a few hours, but we prefer them to the cloth alternative.  The earpads themselves are designed to sit on your ears rather than around them, so the material stretches across the padded foam ring which can be felt inside.

The leatherette pads have perforations in them so the sound can pass through undisturbed.

There is plenty of adjustment in the headband, with the wire hinges extending far out from the main body on demand.  This means that the headphones will comfortably fit most people, irrespective of the size of their head.  When correctly adjusted, the headband sits comfortably against the top of your head, spreading out the weight of the unit evenly.

The P614 BT has clearly been designed as as mainstream headset, with most people expected to use it to listen to music or watch movies.  We are more accustomed to testing gaming headphones, so we will be adapting our tests slightly today to reflect this. We commenced our testing procedure with our music playback tests.

We tested the headset both with our Dell Inspiron 15 notebook and an Apple iPhone 6.

One of our favourite tracks for testing headphones is Chopin's Nocturne Op.9 No.2 by Arthur Rubinstein, as this has a series of mid range and higher frequency piano melodies which tend to highlight poor performance in the upper registers.  The P614 BT performed superbly in this test while the high melodies rendered accurately with absolutely no distortion or over-exposure. The heapdhones lend themselves particularly well to electronic tracks like the ZHU Remix of Lana Del Rey's Summertime Sadness.

When moving on to other modern tracks such as Rescue Me by You Me at Six, the headphones also perform very well.  Some may be disappointed to hear that these headphones do not offer bass bias towards the lower registers, with Arctic favouring a well-balanced soundstage instead.  We prefer a more neutral soundstaging, though, as it much better lends itself to a wide range of music.

Moving on to our movie playback tests, we played the opening sequence of The Dark Knight through our Dell Inspiron 15 notebook.  The headphones generally created an immersive experience. The deep bass notes in the opening sequence were rendered with considerable presence and sound panning was pretty good for stereo headphones.

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