Yamaha YH-L700A Review: When Premium Features Aren’t Enough

When it comes to noise-canceling headphones, there are several effective options that do the job. It’s the combination of great audio quality, powerful noise cancellation, and other practical features that have many companies floundering. Bose and Sony have nearly perfected the craft, while the rest of the industry is trying to beat them to the punch. Yamaha is the latest company to shake the throne, adding a collection of 3D sound options to its latest active noise-canceling headphones (ANC). The YH-L700A has unique qualities, but $499.95 is a steep price for Yamaha’s latest blend of design and features.

Yamaha has created a unique aesthetic for the YH-L700A. They have opted for square earcups instead of the typical oval shape. They stand out immediately – for better or worse. But the combination of leather, fabric, matte black plastic and silver accents makes for a sophisticated look. The company also opted to attach the headband to the front of the earcups rather than the middle. This does not make a huge difference in terms of comfort, but it does mean that the headband sits further forward on your head. The earcups fold flat for easy storage, making the YH-L700A a good choice for on-the-go use.

There are no touch controls here, Yamaha opting for physical buttons instead. On the back edge of the right earcup are the power and 3D sound field buttons, with the former doubling as a Bluetooth pairing button and the latter letting you scroll through presets. On the outside of the right earcup is a small leather-covered panel with buttons for volume, track control, play/pause, and voice assistant activation. The latter two options are located in the center (single and double press, respectively), while the outer two arrow buttons control volume by the single press or skip tracks by long press. Unfortunately, these buttons are hard to find; they are not deep enough imprinted to be easily felt. On the left side, at the back edge, is a single button for noise cancellation mode. A single button press toggles between ANC, ambient noise, and off.

The main attraction of the YH-L700A is Yamaha’s 3D sound field feature with head tracking. Basically, the company has developed a collection of seven audio presets for music and movies or shows: Cinema, Drama, Music Video, Concert Hall, Live Outdoors, Listening Room, and Background Music. Each of these presets “transforms stereo sound into a three-dimensional listening experience,” according to Yamaha, and adjusts the parameters for each virtual environment to make the sound even more realistic. Another aspect of this setup is dynamic head tracking, which makes it seem like the sound is coming from a fixed point in space as you move around. This is a little odd for music in my opinion, but it’s an asset for more cinematic viewing.

It’s obvious that 3D Sound Field changes the sound significantly with each preset. However, all of the philters are very heavy-handed and change the EQ and other parameters so drastically that none of them work well in all genres. Outdoor Live, for example, creates the exact feeling of being at a festival, with the heavy bass and muffled vocals that you would experience in real life. This is fine for things like metal and rock, but it’s not so great for softer, acoustic styles. If you listen to a wide range of music, you’ll need to change the presets when you venture into a new genre. Oddly enough, the Kino preset is the best all-around setting for melodies. Almost all of the music presets have reverb, which works well for the Concert Hall preset, but becomes exhausting in other areas. All of the options reflect the venue at hand, but none of them are really enjoyable if you want to listen to an entire album’s worth of music.

When it comes to movies and TV, the cinema and drama options are quite nice. There’s no content that highlights those skills better than Netflix’s Formula 1: Drive to Survive. With a mix of spoken interviews, car racing, and dramatic overtures, there’s plenty for the headphones and speakers to do. The YH-L700A does well with the dimensional sound that’s usually best rendered by a Dolby Atmos setup in your living room. Everything sounds spacious, and the directional drone of the cars comes through well.