Apple sets the table when it comes to consumer electronics. When the company announced their AirPods Max, it upended the industry for high end wireless over-ear phones (aside from confusing people who thought a “pod” must be something much smaller).
That was two years ago but the response was… underwhelming. Audiophiles mocked the $449 cans as souped up Beats headphones, and clearly inferior to the closest competitors like the Bose 700s (which are also $150 cheaper). Sales are uncertain, but Apple hasn’t released any updates or future iterations of the AirPods Max and is not believed to be doing so this year, which might be a tell.
This presents an opportunity for companies like Focal, a French company known for high-fidelity speakers, monitors and home theaters. Bathys is not their only high-end consumer headphones (the Stellia are their award winning model that will cost you about as much as a very high end computer; the Celestee are a little closer in price to the Bathys) but the wireless model with noise cancellation features is priced to challenge Apple for the HiFi mobile market.
Design-wise, the Bathys are a baby step away from some of the classy retro styles of other Focal products, but Technics 1200 users will be drawn to the dots as a similar motif to the turntable’s engraved edge. The headphones have a black/silver finish and the backlit Focal logo on the cans lights up when powered on.
The battery life is pretty impressive — I’ve never had them run down after a day’s use. The Bathys are intended to be used wirelessly but you can also use a 3.5mm jack and a USB-C port with a built-in Digital-to-Audio Converter (DAC). Otherwise the Bathys uses Bluetooth to connect to your device and has multipoint Bluetooth pairing for connecting to more than one device.
The noise cancellation is the big deal here and Focal has put some time into this. Promising “perfect sound insulation,” the Bathys go beyond “on” and “off” settings. Instead there are two modes, “silent” and “soft.” You might think “silent” is more quiet than “soft,” but you’d be wrong, it’s the reverse. “Silent” is intended for a place with “high ambient noise,” “soft” is for “concentration” and blocking it all out, and a further “transparency mode” is to connect with your surroundings at a moment’s notice.
A lot of our decisions about sound quality are driven by the “good enough” principle — that you get what you pay for, and cheap products deliver bad sound but if you pay a lot you should expect a lot from your headphones or monitors. Having tried both, the Bathys are far superior to Apple’s AirPods Max. They’re priced at a few hundred dollars more, or $750, so they should be. For a lot of people these will be the end product in terms of headphones — that once you buy these, there is no reason to buy another set of wireless headphones.
⚪️ Disclosure Statement
5 Mag publishes disclaimers with any product we review, indicating whether money or favor exchanged hands. Neither 5 Mag nor the reviewer were paid anything by (and have never spoken to) Focal or any representative for this article, which they were not aware was being published. This article contains affiliate links; 5 Mag stands to make a small percentage if you buy anything from them.
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