It’s Crazy How Effective It Can Be to Simply Make a Good Product
Which brand comes to mind when you think of ‘noise-cancelling headphones?’ Bose is probably either first or second. For a long while, Bose was the only brand most people thought of when it came to the category of expensive wireless headphones that felt premium and cancelled noise. Then Sony came out of left field with their MDR-1000X headphones; a bit of a mouthful, but it was a fantastic product that went right at Bose.
Not only was Sony directly competing with Bose’s offering, but they were confident enough in their product to charge $50 more for it compared to Bose’s best offering ($400 vs $350). Sony knew they had a great product on their hands and got it out to as many people as they could. They needed people to know and talk about their product to generate word-of-mouth and positive reviews. They had their Sony vendors go into Best Buy stores like the one I worked at, and told the vendors to give the headphones to employees.
We as sales employees already had experience with the Bose QC35 headphones. We felt they were rather pricy, but they were really the only offering that checked the ‘premium,’ ‘quiet,’ ‘good-sounding,’ and ‘comfortable’ boxes. Once I put the MDR-1000X headphones on for the first time, I was actually in awe. They were more comfortable than the Bose headphones, sounded fantastic, had better noise cancellation, and additional features like the unique gesture controls. You could swipe around on the earcups to adjust the volume and play/pause songs — I thought this would be a terrible gimmick but it worked really well. You could also hold your hand over your right earcup to amplify background noises in order to hear people without taking your headphones off.
The more I used Sony’s new offering, the more I knew they had the better product. Sony actually came to play. If you’ve played sports or video games before, you might have realized that the worst kind of players to play against are the ones that say nothing to you while dominating you. They don’t trash-talk you, they don’t taunt you, and they don’t go easy on you at first to thrash you later. It’s like silent, methodical murder. You almost want them to taunt you so you have something to complain about, forcing yourself to ignore the fact that you’re being outplayed. That level of muted confidence is exactly what Sony had with their new product offering. They didn’t have to explicitly say “our headphones are better than Bose’s headphones.” I, and many others, knew that just by putting them on our ears.
Sony’s MDR-1000X did everything right except for the name, which looks like a generic model/part number. It’s not mememorable, it’s not catchy, and it doesn’t roll off the tongue easily. While they did change the name to WH-1000XM2 for the second generation of this product, it’s still just as generic. Despite that, Sony’s headphones are now widely considered the king of this product category. They continued to improve upon the headphones in every meaningful way. The second generation made them more comfortable, and the third generation cranked up the noise-cancelling to a new level.
Bose eventually introduced a brand new offering called the ‘Headphones 700.’ This product was meant to leapfrog their existing QuietComfort 35 offering because it was a better product and Bose wanted people to know that. Thus, they ditched the QC name and raised the prise to $379. To me, this felt like a desparation attempt from Bose to re-claim their crown. They knew Sony had the better product but had to figure out a way to snatch back victory. Thus, they released a flashy-looking product that just undercut Sony on price.
The verdict? Sony’s WH-1000XM3 (3rd gen) — which had come out prior to Bose’s new offering — still wiped the floor with Bose’s new offering. The Sony headphones had better sound quality and noise cancellation, more battery life, and were less expensive to boot as Sony had dropped their MSRP to $350. Bose’s Headphones 700 were not a poor product, per se; Sony just absolutely came to play with that first-gen product that gushed confidence.
Sony then released the fourth generation of their headphones, which are still priced less than the Bose offering. There is talk that Sony’s fourth-gen headphones ‘take back the crown’ from Bose. I don’t buy that, because Sony never lost it. Sony came out of nowhere and went for the jugular with their first-gen headphones and never looked back.
I didn’t see invasive advertisements from Sony talking about how their headphones will wipe the floor against the competition. Instead, they just talked about their own features; they practically pretended like Bose doesn’t exist. They didn’t need to bad-mouth the competitor’s products when their exceptional new product did all the talking for itself.
