REVIEW: EPOS Adapt 660 Enterprise headphones – The one stop shop

Enterprise headphones are a segment of the market that is broached by nearly every audio company on the planet, and largely done (in my fussy opinion) quite poorly. From designs that are too bold and make you look ridiculous, to not balancing the need for call quality verse music quality – I find myself left wanting.

Which has made the EPOS Adapt 660 a wonderful breath of fresh air. I’ll head into detail below, but let me preface my review by letting you know that the Adapt 660’s will fulfill the gaping hole in your life that is enterprise audio, at a price. The headset retails for ~$600, which may be hard to justify for a lot of consumers. Although as you’ll soon find out, there’s a good chance you’ll find me shelling out for it…

DESIGN

The EPOS Adapt 660’s have an incredibly stealthy and dare I say bland aesthetic. A feature that I greatly admire them for. As office workers, commuters and general public alike, we’ve come through a period of accessories and outerwear in tech that has seen designs and styles of modern technology take very a ‘statement piece’ approach. I’m a simple dude… I don’t want my headphones to scream PERSONALITY at you – which is why the blacked out, brushed style of the 660’s is so appealing;

The part that stands out the most on the headset is the thumb-sized ‘EPOS | SENNHEISER’ tile that sits on either side of the headband – and while I could do without, it’s not too bothersome.

I’ve found the strength of the band and size/weight of the cups were clearly well considered by the EPOS team as they handle very well over long periods of time.

All of the external controls are bundled neatly on the back of the right cup as is standard and barring the blue tip of the Microsoft Teams/pairing button. Speaking of, let’s talk about the;

AUDIO AND CONTROLS

Allow me to dive straight in to my favorite mechanism of the Adapt 660’s controls; the touchpad. They’re equipped with by far and away the most intuitive and accurate touchpad I’ve used on a headset or earbuds before – with various ‘zones’ across the device as well as a slider for volume control, I’ve found myself leaving my phone on the other side of the room and relying entirely on headset based control of volume, track selection, play/pause and phone interaction.

The headset boasts an adaptive noise cancellation via the EPOS app and I’ve noted that the noise cancellation itself is absolutely wonderful, however the scalability is questionable. Regardless of the setting I had it on, noise cancellation was noise cancellation and I couldn’t distinguish much of a difference between the low and high settings. In saying that, at no point did I have to listen to my colleagues smacking their keyboards or discuss Tipping Point…

Other notable features of the EPOS Adapt 660’s include;

• Multi-point Bluetooth connectivity, allowing you to connect to your phone and computer simultaneously (computer via USB dongle).
• Microsoft teams button via the aforementioned USB dongle.
• Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant integration.

The only time I was able to fault the 660’s was the machine learned method of handling wind when using the microphone. While the algorithm is able to remove loud wind sounds from making it through to your phone/call, it simultaneously garbles your vocals along with it – pigeon holing the device quite firmly in the office and home environments.

APP INTERFACE

The EPOS Connect app is wonderfully intuitive and easy to navigate. The Adapt 660’s don’t have an incredible amount of control via the app, but you’re able to handle the basics.

I’ve admittedly never been a fan of preset acoustic/equalizer modes in headset configurations, but Epos nailed it with the 660’s. They offer; Neutral, Speech, Club (bass heavy), Movie and Custom. Switching between Speech and Club has seen the provided the perfect balance of clear vocal meetings and blasting music through my skull every other minute of the workday.

The app allows you to customize your microphone feedback, call enhancement, smart pause (when headset is removed and placed back on the head) and your Alexa integration. There are no earth shattering advancements or features unlocked with the Epos Connect app, but it has done the basic well and that’s truly all 99% of us need.

With a whopping 30 hours of battery life and it’s intuitive control pads, noise cancellation and sleek design – I can comfortably say that I was very impressed by the EPOS Adapt 660 headphones. If you’ve got the money to spend and want a quick and easy all-in-one solution that won’t leave you disappointed, I highly recommend picking up a pair.