Bang & Olufsen Beoplay H100 Review (2024)

There is nothing else in this category built like the H100. Aluminum earcups, rotating glass faceplates with integrated touch sensors, cowhide and lambskin leather across the pads and headband, titanium drivers, and a modular design where pads snap off magnetically and the headband lifts free for replacement. At every point of contact, you feel materials that cost what they cost for a reason. The design is not ostentatious — it's genuinely tasteful, with restrained colorways like Infinite Black and Hourglass Sand that feel more like a luxury accessory than a tech gadget. And the fact that B&O backs this with a five-year warranty and a philosophy of long-term repairability means the build score here isn't just about how it feels today — it's about what it promises for the next decade. This is a class of its own.

Comfort is good but comes with a clear weight trade-off. At 375g, the H100 is noticeably heavier than most competitors. The good news is that B&O's weight distribution is thoughtful: the padded headband spreads load across a wide area, and the lambskin pads are soft and well-shaped enough that you don't feel pressure hotspots. Most users can wear it for two to four hours without real fatigue. Beyond that, the weight does start to register, especially on longer travel sessions. If you're used to a featherweight Sony or Sennheiser, the H100 will feel substantial. For a premium product intended for measured, attentive listening sessions, it's more than acceptable — but for all-day background wear, you may reach for something lighter.

The titanium drivers deliver bass that is full, controlled, and texturally very good. Low-end is present and satisfying without tipping into aggression, and the titanium material adds a certain tightness and speed to transients that softer driver materials can lack. Kick drums hit with precision, bass lines have definition, and low frequencies don't bleed upward into the mids. What it doesn't do is thrill. It's bass for people who appreciate quality over quantity. Via a wired connection at 96kHz, the bass tightens and extends further, hinting that Bluetooth codec limitations are holding the H100 back somewhat until LDAC arrives.

The midrange is where B&O's Danish refinement philosophy shows most clearly. Vocals are natural, open, and unhurried — they don't push forward or recede, they just sit in the right place. Instruments have body and tonal accuracy; there's a smoothness to the presentation that makes long listening sessions feel effortless rather than fatiguing. It's a step below the Sennheiser HDB 630's microscopic midrange clarity, and it doesn't have the punchy, musical character of the B&W Px8 S2. But it's warm, honest, and very pleasant — the kind of midrange that makes you feel like you're at a well-tuned live venue rather than in a recording studio.

Treble is polished and smooth, with enough extension to feel open and detailed, but clearly tuned to avoid fatigue at the cost of some ultimate resolution. Cymbals shimmer gently, reverb tails are rendered cleanly, and there's no sibilance to speak of at any volume. The H100 is not a headphone that will ever bite you in the treble. The other side of that coin is that it's slightly soft at the very top — not rolled off in the Sony XM6 sense, but more 'graceful' than 'sparkling.' If you love air, detail retrieval, and treble energy, you'll want slightly more aggression than the H100 provides. It sounds polished because it is — but polish and resolution aren't always the same thing.

For a closed-back wireless ANC headphone, the H100 stages well, with a natural, spacious presentation that feels more like a wide closed-back than a cramped travel can. Dolby Atmos and Spatial Audio with head tracking add a genuinely useful extra dimension for compatible content, and the implementation is among the better ones available. Via wired connection at 96kHz, staging noticeably improves — with cleaner separation and better layering than over Bluetooth with current codec support. Until LDAC lands as promised, you're not fully unlocking what the H100 can do spatially, which makes the wireless imaging good but not definitively class-leading.

On the usability front, the app experience is thoughtful and well-designed — circular EQ, spatial audio controls, head tracking toggle, and precise battery readout. ANC is excellent and among the better implementations at this tier, comfortably ahead of the B&W Px8 S2 and arguably competitive with Sony's best. Standby battery drain is extraordinary — inside the case, the H100 essentially holds its charge indefinitely. The glaring omission is the codec situation. Launching a $2,200 headphone with only AAC and SBC, promising LDAC later, is a meaningful credibility gap. The circular touch controls and rotating bezel volume/ANC adjustments are elegant and precise, but some users find the learning curve steeper than standard button controls.

This is the number that will end conversations: at $2,200 MSRP, the H100 costs more than three Sony WH-1000XM6s, more than four times a strong midrange ANC headphone, and significantly more than the B&W Px8 S2 or Sennheiser HDB 630 — both of which are excellent and sound competitive or better in critical listening comparisons. What you're paying for is build quality, design philosophy, longevity, and brand prestige — and those things are real. But 'real' doesn't mean 'proportionate.' The sound is great, not transformative. The ANC is excellent, not otherworldly. Unless you can afford it without thinking too hard, the value proposition for the H100 is extremely weak. It is, frankly, a luxury tax.

The Bang & Olufsen Beoplay H100 is the most beautifully made wireless headphone you can buy, and the most defensible reason to own it has nothing to do with sound — it's built to last, designed to be repaired, and comes with a five-year warranty. The sound is genuinely good: refined, smooth, and natural. But at $2,200, 'genuinely good' needs to be 'transformatively great' to justify the price, and it doesn't quite get there. Buy it because you value craftsmanship and longevity. Don't buy it expecting to be sonically destroyed.