How much did you spend on your last set of headphones? If your budget is generous there are plenty of options out there. It can depend on how many features you want. Active noise cancelling, adaptive sound, even sensors that automatically pause audio when you remove the headphones – these can all add up. But what about the more budget conscious among us?
Canyon’s OnRiff 10 ANC give you some good features for a knock-down price. But can €50 headphones challenge the big guns?
Canyon is certainly trying. The headphones offer active noise cancelling to improve your audio, environmental noise cancelling for calls and a low-latency mode for gaming. Battery life clocks in at 25 hours if you are using the headphones wirelessly, as they are intended, and 20 hours with active noise cancelling enabled.
Straight out of the box, the Canyon headphones look good. The design is simple – cushioned earcups, a few buttons to control the functions – and clean; the version reviewed here was the green, which was a nice change from the standard black or beige.
Inside the box, you get the headphones, a 3.5mm cable so you can connect the headphones to a non-bluetooth-enabled audio source, and a USB C charging cable, alongside a small booklet of instructions. There is no case, as you might expect given the price, or any other extras that some headphones supply.
On one ear cup, you have the power button, the volume controls and the active noise cancelling button. The charging port and LEDs to indicate battery status and functions can also be found here. On the other, you have a 3.5mm jack should you need to abandon wireless for some reason.
There are no touch controls on the headphones; the volume buttons double as controls for skipping or repeating tracks. This isn’t the worst move for Canyon. Besides the cost, learning the various gestures for touch-sensitive headphones can be tedious. You know where you are with buttons, and because Canyon keeps even these to a minimum, it is easy to get to grips with.
The ear cups are comfortably cushioned, as is the headband, so wearing them for a longer period of time doesn’t cause discomfort. The ear cups also block out a lot of external noise, even without the active noise cancelling turned on, and it minimises sound leak.
This turned out to be a wise move. The overall audio quality was decent, especially if you plan to use the headphones mainly for work video and phone calls, podcasts while out and about or video streaming at home.
If you are serious about audio, you might find these headphones don’t quite live up to your standard. The volume was a bit lower than I’d like, and there was no bass boost or other way to tweak audio aside from your device’s EQ settings. That may not suit everyone, and it left the audio feeling a bit flat at times.
One thing I did like was the ability to connect the headphones to two Bluetooth sources simultaneously. That means you can switch between your phone and your laptop as needed, which is handy in an office environment.
Call quality using the built-in microphone is also decent, with the environmental noise cancelling suppressing some – though not all – the background interference.
There are some sacrifices. There are no sensors that auto-pause audio when you remove the headphone, which is a feature that you may have got used to on other devices. That meant the headphones were sometimes left playing audio unintentionally. It is a minor inconvenience, but once you have got used to the feature it can be hard to break the habit.
Good
- Comfortable fit, decent all-round audio, especially for video streaming, calls and podcasts.
- The active noise cancelling is fine, although not the best we have tested. It blocked out some of the more annoying background noise and improved audio.
- Battery life is decent, at 25 hours, and once you decode the LED meanings – green for ANC on, flashing blue when audio is playing – you can see the headphone status at a glance.
Bad
- A bit on the quiet side. There is no auto-pause for audio when you remove the headphones.
Everything else
- The headphones can fold up more compactly to be carried in your bag. They also support low-latency gaming, and can connect to two bluetooth sources at the same time.
Verdict
- A decent set of headphones given the price, although there are some limitations.
