REVIEWED: Kygo Life A9/600 BT wireless headphones
Great sound, a travel-friendly 320g design, and a 23-hours battery make these branded wireless cans fit for travel, but where’s the noise-cancelling?
TravGear has no idea who Kygo is, but he makes good headphones. These wireless Bluetooth cans come from a brand called Kygo Life, the branded brainchild of Kyrre Gørvell-Dahll, a Norwegian DJ, record producer, musician, and songwriter better known as Kygo. So what?
Design
Designed and engineered in Scandinavia, but made in China, the A9/600 have a pretty standard look. Available in black, white, burgundy, palm and grey, they have a high quality, very soft faux-leather covering and memory foam ear-cups. However, most critically for when you’re on the road, they fold up into pocket-size (or near enough) without becoming too flimsy. Build quality is excellent.
Features
Here are a few of the A9/600’s claims that us travellers might be into; 23 hours battery life (so good for long-haul travel), a weight of just 320g, touch-sensitive controls on the ear-cups, and AptX tech. The latter of which means wireless Bluetooth music with good sound quality (most Bluetooth headphones without AptX are terrible). There’s a 3.5mm input and a cable provided if that’s your thing, a microphone for making hands-free calls, and a nice carry bag for keeping them in good condition.
Performance
Luckily, the A9/600 pair easily, though you do have the read the manual (urgh!); a five-second press and they go into pairing mode. TravGear found the sound quality surprisingly versatile, able to deliver enough treble detail and (just enough) bass depending on the genre, largely because it’s adept at mid-range. The Kygo Sound app is there to fine-tune the A9/600’s performance, but on first use it seems like just a chummy interactive app that lets you listen to music the way Kygo experiences it when he’s traveling the world. Err … what? There are presets for clubs in Bergen, New York, Ibiza and Los Angeles, and you can move between them to find what you want. It may be framed in slight narcissism, but as an equalizer, it works well. The only straight audio tweak you can control easily is a ‘bass boost’, which is effective.
Summary
If you like dance music and you travel a lot, then great, the A9/600 are definitely for you. If you listen to all kinds of stuff and you want some headphones that are as good with classical and folk as they are with dance and rock, the A9/600 also do a really good job. There’s really only one thing not to like about these well-designed, well-made and easy to use wireless headphones, and that’s the lack of any noise-cancelling. Would you pay this much for headphones that don’t help you fight those 80 decibels at 35,000ft.? TravGear wouldn’t.