Why You Can Trust CNET Samsung Level On Wireless Pro review: A wireless, noise-cancelling headphone with special appeal to Galaxy S6, S7 owners
The Level On Wireless Pro, which features active-noise cancellation, is a modest upgrade over the original Level On and has special appeal to owners of Galaxy S6 Edge and S7 series smartphones.
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Samsung jumped into the headphone game a few years back with its Level series, which includes on-ear, in-ear and over-ear models. They tend to be quite likable headphones -- both in terms of their design and performance -- but they don't necessarily wow you.
The Good
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The Bottom Line
The new-for-2016 Level On Wireless Pro Bluetooth headphone, which features active noise cancellation and and lists for $250 (£230, AU$400), falls into the same camp: a good but not great headphone for the money.
This successor to the standard (non-Pro) Level On includes support for Samsung's proprietary Ultra High Quality Audio or UHQA Bluetooth streaming format, which is supposed to offer superior audio performance when streaming over Bluetooth. UHQA streaming is available only on Samsung's latest Galaxy devices, including the Galaxy S6 Edge and Edge+ (the standard S6 does not support UHQA), Note 5, and Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge.
While the Level On Pro is best paired with a Samsung phone -- there's a companion Level app for Android phones that allows you to tweak the sound with various preset sound profiles -- this does work with any Bluetooth-enabled phone, including iPhones.
It's fairly comfortable but as its name implies, this is an on-ear model, and isn't quite as comfortable as a full sized around-the-ear headphone, though it is more compact. I liked how it folds up to fit in its included carrying pouch and it has an attractive, mostly plastic design, that seems pretty durable and is Samsung's answer to Beats headphones.
The Samsung Level On Pro has touch controls and comes in two color options (black and bronze).
Like the Level On, this Pro version has touch controls on the outside of right earcup so you can tap the headphone to pause and play your music or swipe to raise and lower volume or skip tracks forward or back. I'm a fan of the touch controls, but not everybody feels the same way because you sometimes accidentally touch the earcup while adjusting the headphone on your head and end pausing your music, which is a little irritating.
The headphone worked well as a headset for making calls but if you're looking for a headphone with heavy duty noise-cancellation this isn't it. Although it does a reasonable job cutting noise, the NC is fairly light and it isn't as effective as the noise cancellation found in Bose QC25 headphone. However, the lighter NC may appeal to those who are sensitive to the sensation of pressure that active noise cancellation can put on your ears.
Battery life is rated at 10 hours, which is good but not great.
Decent sound but not better than the competition
The headphone held a general solid Bluetooth connection with the devices I paired it with and sound quality is decent for Bluetooth, with fairly strong but not bloated bass and good detail. That said, I wouldn't say this is an exceptional sounding headphone for the money. Competing models, such as Plantronics' Backbeat Sense, Skullcandy's Grind Wireless and Bose's SoundLink On-Ear, sound as good and are lighter and arguably more comfortable to wear. (Both Steve Guttenberg, who wires CNET's Audiophiliac column, and I preferred the sound of the $90 Grind Wireless). I slightly prefer the sound and look of Beats' Solo 2 Wireless, but that headphone costs about $100 more than this model, so the Level On Pro is the better value.
I tried the headphone with both an iPhone 6S and a Galaxy S6 Edge, which supports ultra high-quality audio (UHQA) audio. I listened to very high quality lossless files stored on the phone, as well as the Tidal Music service, which offers high-quality lossless streaming. I also listened to the Level On Pro both as a wireless and wired headphone (a cable is included and the headphone does sound slightly better in wired mode).
The headphone folded.
It's hard to tell the difference sound quality when switching between UHQA audio and standard audio. With a higher grade headphone we noticed a slight improvement using UHQA, but the Level On Pro, used in wireless mode with UHQA enabled was a touch more open-sounding.
Using UHQA didn't make a significant difference, and if you're streaming with Tidal, it didn't seem have any noticeable impact. (UHQA is Samsung's version of AptX, another codec that's supposed to improve Bluetooth streaming performance.)
UHQA aside, the bigger issue is that the headphone's sound quality is only good. As a wireless headphone, it sounds about as good as a lot of wired headphones that cost around $75 to $100. As noted, there's a reasonable amount of detail and strong bass, but it just doesn't come across as a terribly exciting headphone or one that sounds natural and accurate enough to listen to for long periods.
Using the Level app, you can tweak the sound, but what I'm after in a Bluetooth headphone is one that sounds more like a wired headphone (more natural-sounding). Very few Bluetooth headphones accomplish that and in this case no matter what you do with the EQ settings, things still sound slightly processed.
That doesn't make the Level On Pro a bad Bluetooth headphone. As I said previously, it's actually quite decent, and has enough merits to make it worth considering, particularly if you're someone who owns one of the latest Samsung Galaxy phones. I just wish it was a level up.