Cowin E8 is an officially updated version of Cowin E7. The later garnered lots of positive reviews for its powerful ANC, long battery life and bass-driven sound. E8 comprises all the features that are great about E7. But what I like even more is that it has brought some stark improvements on the not-so-good features of E7 in the E8 headphones.
Cowin E8 is a perfect mid-range headphone for daily commuters who want to enjoy their peace of mind in noisy environments. But nobody buys headphones just for ANC. If it doesn’t sound good, what’s the point? Throughout this review, we will try to find out whether Cowin 8 truly manages to live up to the hype or it is just another fancy Bluetooth ANC headphone in the market.
Design and Comfort
Cowin has seemingly put a lot of effort to make E8 look as upmarket and attractive as BOSE and Sony headphones. Well, guess what? The effort has paid off. E8 headphones look like a piece of art and have a more robust build than E7 and E7 Pro combined. It comes in 4 color variations, namely black-gold, black-rose, black-silver, and orange. My personal favorite model is the one with a black and gold color scheme. It has a regality in it that’s hard not to love.
It’s large stature surprisingly works in its favor. Large headphones like that can house large earcups with thicker padding. This leads to great comfort and a drastic reduction of sound leakage. The ample padding on also reduces clamping sensation that results from wearing heavy headphones for long hours.
Another advantage is that E8 is quite lightweight for a Bluetooth headphone of such large and robust build. The package includes a sturdy E8 case that lets you neatly fold the headphone along with all the essential accessories like cords, piano adapters and airline adapters included with the product.
Even though the headband is equally well-cushioned, the padding isn’t as soft as that on the earcups. Individuals with large heads might fund the headphone a bit tight after wearing it for a long time. I wish the headband could be a wee bit more adjustable.
Coming to the headphone factor, the E8 is slightly bulkier than E7 and E7 Pro. However, the generous padding on the earcups is the redeeming factor here. On the downside, the padding isn’t highly breathable, therefore, you may start sweating after a while.
For the same reason, I won’t recommend it for wearing during workouts and sports. But the issue isn’t beyond repair. Since the padding on the earcups is magnetically attached, you can easily replace them with more comfortable cushions if required. You can find more about replacement ear cup padding in the E8 accessories section later on in the review.
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Controls
Like most Cowin headphones, the control buttons of E8 are also located on the right earcup. The tactile buttons provide good feedback. There are dedicated buttons for activities like call, skip and pause track and volume controls.
The power button also enables Bluetooth pairing if you press and hold it. You will get easily accustomed to the control scheme after a few hours of use. In case of any confusion as to which button does what, refer to the Cowin E8 user manual.
Connectivity
Cowin E8 uses Bluetooth 4.0 for connectivity which delivers enough bandwidth for good quality audio signal. You can pair up with a BT-enabled device under 10 seconds in the 33 feet range. The sound delay during video playback and gaming is hardly noticeable. However, the lack of NFC pairing makes it lose a brownie point. Pairing is much easier when you have NFC like E7 and E7 Pro have.
But E8 again manages to redeem itself with the inclusion of not one but four high-quality microphones. Whether you are in a busy street or inside a crowded airport terminal, the multiple mic configurations ensure excellent call clarity by separating the voice from background noises.
The multi-mic configuration results in difference of pickups, leading to superior active noise cancellation, even in severely noisy environments.
Battery Life
The 545 mAh battery of E8 isn’t nearly as impressive as the 30-hours battery runtime provided by E7 and E7 Pro. As we all know, ANC is a tremendously battery-hungry feature. When you switch it on and crank up the volume to max, the battery drains super fast.
However, if used at moderate settings, it provides a playback time of approximately of about 20 hours. On the plus side, the battery takes only 2-3 hours to receive a full charge.
Active Noise Cancellation
Cowin E8 is capable of dampening the ambient noise by about 30 dB. This may be not humongous but does serve the purpose well. Put on some music when the ANC mode is on to reap maximum benefits. It will effectively filter out the annoying humdrum of idle talking, engine noise in city traffic and sound of announcements at the airports.
Audio Quality
Now comes by far the most important section of my Cowin E8 headphones review. Cowin E8 uses 45 mm large drivers that makes the tonal clarity and volume range much better than that of E7. It is almost 30% louder than E7 to be precise.
If you love bass-heavy music, this headphones won’t disappoint you at all. The low-bass responsible for the kick in music is right on point. The mid-bass makes bass guitar tones well pronounced.
However, the high-bass is overemphasized by 4 dB which slightly affects the warmth of the bass tone. But the good thing is, the well-pronounced low-mids prevents the warmth from getting totally marred by the overemphasized high-bass.
The mid-tones are the biggest strength of E8’s sound output. The low-mids are also It significantly enhances the vocal clarity, making these headphones absolutely perfect for listening to audio books, movies, and songs in foreign languages. The neutral low-treble range affects the clarity of vocals to some extent by it is hardly noticeable, even by trained ears.
- Robust construction.
- Decent noise isolation.nBass-driven, groovy sound.
- Large drivers for wider sound frequency.
- Thick earcup padding.
- No NFC pairing.
- Only 20-hours of battery life.
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Cowin E8 Headphones Accessories:
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If you want a better and thicker earcup padding to enhance the breathability and comfort of E8 headphones, consider buying Cowin E8 Ear Cushion Kit made from imported memory foam.
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