Best List: Wearhaus’ Arc ‘social’ headphones
Wearing headphones tends to cut you off from the world, but Wearhaus’ Arc headphones are more sociable.
The wireless Arc headphones allow multiple headsets to stream audio from the same source. Think silent disco, watching a movie together, or sharing tunes with your BFF.
Powered by the latest Bluetooth 4.0, the Arc headphones claim to the first wireless headphones that allow sharing. Connected through the complementary Wearhaus app, the headphones let you introduce friends to new music, or help you discover music from people around you — assuming they’re also listening through Arc headphones.
Sharing works by through Wearhaus Arc app, free on the App Store. The broadcaster sets up a “station” in the app — it can be music, a movie, or any other source — and the listener joins by double-tapping the side of their Arc headphones. It’s simple and easy.
Can to Can
Developed at PCH International’s Highway1 hardware incubator after a successful crowdfunding campaign, the Arc headphones have been on the market for a few weeks. They’ve already received a couple of firmware updates, which add new features like bass boost and cinema surround-sound mode.
The headphones are on-ear. There are touch controls on the side, and a large light ring around the cups that can be customized via the app. You can change colors, enable pulsing mode, or match colors to album artwork, and more.
The Arcs are based on 40mm dual-diaphragm neodymium drivers, which Wearhaus says are equivalent to many $400 studio-quality headphones. There’s a built-in mic for taking calls, and a 3.5mm audio jack for wired listening. The battery is rated for about 15 hours of playback.
Wireless music sharing is a neat idea, and something that should be more widely availbale. Imagine if all wireless headphones had this capability. For now, it’s limited to Arc’s cans.
Price: $199
Buy from: Amazon
Wearhaus provided Cult of Mac with a review unit for this article. See Cult of Mac’s reviews policy and check out more stuff we recommend in our Best List reviews.
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
