I picked up the Bose QuietComfort In-Ear True Wireless headphones with a pretty specific use case in mind: taking Microsoft Teams work calls while walking outside, plus the usual mix of podcasts and music. I live in Wellington, New Zealand — a city famous for two things: great coffee and wind. On paper, Bose’s reputation for noise cancellation made these seem like a safe bet.

Comfort-wise, the design is a bit unusual. The earbuds use a shallow insertion with a soft stabilising seal that sits in the outer ear rather than sealing deeply in the canal. It’s comfortable enough and never painful, but it does feel a bit odd at first, like the earbuds aren’t fully “locked in.” I suspect most people would get used to it over time. Passive noise isolation is fairly minimal because of this design, so you’re relying heavily on the active noise cancellation to do the work.

Indoors, things are mostly positive. Sound quality is good, with the familiar Bose tuning: balanced, smooth, and easy to listen to for long stretches. Podcasts are clear, music sounds full, and noise cancellation does a decent job with background hums and office noise. Unfortunately, step outside and the experience falls apart. Even in a gentle breeze, wind noise becomes extremely loud, to the point where calls are near unusable. In Wellington conditions, this is a deal breaker. For headphones marketed with premium ANC and call performance, outdoor wind handling is surprisingly poor.

Controls are another major frustration. The touch interface is overly sensitive and not customisable. During Teams calls, a single accidental tap or even adjusting the earbud can instantly hang up the call. There’s no way to disable or remap these actions, which makes them unsuitable to use for work calls. The charging case is also larger than expected, bulky in a pocket, and can only lie flat rather than standing upright, which feels like a small but annoying design oversight.

To Bose’s credit, customer support was solid. The website return process didn’t work as advertised, which meant a 30 minute phone call instead of a quick online return, but they did cover return shipping and offer a very generous 90-day return window. That policy is ultimately what saved this purchase.

In the end, while the Bose QuietComfort In-Ear earbuds sound good indoors and are comfortable enough, they’re completely unsuitable for my main use case. If you regularly take work calls outdoors, especially in windy environments, these are not the headphones for you. For me, they were effectively useless for Teams calls outside, which makes it hard to recommend them despite Bose’s strong brand and solid indoor performance.

I purchased these headphones from the Bose store, intending to keep them, but ended up returning them as they were not suitable.