EPOS IMPACT 1061T ANC Review

Have you been getting bullied in meetings when you’re working from home and clearly have a gaming headset on? Or maybe you’ve been using a cheap headset at work so that when you aren’t muted, everyone can hear the people at the desks around you talking.

I mean, seriously, if you’re not in a meeting room, mute when you’re not talking. This is not a specific criticism of anyone in particular. *looks around nervously*

Well, EPOS plans to take away the pain of hearing background noises as you work, and stop annoying everyone in the meeting, with the new EPOS Impact 1061T ANC wireless headset. Seriously, Brian, just hit mute, man.

Functionality

Now this is where this headset shines. The sound quality of the mic is excellent, and it does an amazing job of drowning out sounds in the background. Whether it’s a busy office or a house with a chaotic 2-year-old having his nappy changed, the amount of solid it manages to remove is insane.

EPOS says it uses snazzy AI to make that work as well as it does. That might be me paraphrasing it a bit. I can’t say for sure what it does because I’m not an AI engineer. What I can say that the effect is incredible mic quality and reduced background noise for people listening to your presentation. Whether that’s a good thing or not, I am sure my colleagues have opinions, but now the annoying sound they are just hearing is my voice.

The sound quality is also excellent. I was listening to everything from conference videos, to YouTube videos, to music. The whole time I was working I was so damn happy. I swear I was working boss. The noise-canceling is incredible, but that is really only limited by the fact that they are on-ear headphones. This means some noise bleeds in from your background, but it’s still damn good, even with that.

Comfort and style

When it comes to comfort, I have always found on-ear headphones less comfortable. Despite that, these are some of the most comfortable ones I have used. They are really nice and soft, and once I was using them, I never felt like it was an issue. If you lean forward, they do slip off, but this is only an issue when you are getting under your desk or if you are wandering around and forget that you have them on.

As for style, well, it is a headset. Some headsets, like the Jabra Evolve2, the mic tucks away nicely so that they look like generic headphones. This is handy when you are out and about listening to Spotify. The Impact 1061T, on the other hand, doesn’t have a function like that. This headset always looks like a headset. But as far as headsets go, it looks damn tidy. The understated, simple matte black style looks super classy all over the headset. As far as office headsets go, they’re really damn nice.

Other functionality

I noted before that you can’t tuck the mic away, and it turns out that’s for good reason. This beauty can swivel in either direction. It doesn’t matter if you prefer your mic on the left or right, because you can just flip it and you’re good to go. This is especially handy if your good side varies, because maybe on Mondays your left cheek looks more glamorous and on Tuesdays it’s all about that right cheek. No matter what day it is, the Impact 1061T will let your best side shine.

When it comes to Bluetooth, this might be one of the best I have used. Previous headsets, like the aforementioned Jabra Evolve2, would cut out if I was in a meeting and I had to open the door. Not these beasties though. I was able to grab that courier item, put the washing in the machine, and so much more without missing a beat in that important meeting. I, of course, didn’t do that; I was totally watching the screen the whole time.

One other slice of awesome is the headset stand. It has a wireless charging stand that you can hang your headset on to charge. Thanks to a notch in the headset and on the stand, placing it on is super simple. The magnet grabs it and boom, it’s charging overnight or when you’re on your lunch break.

Fortunately, if you leave it on your desk, it promises up to 19 hours of charge time. This was tough to test because it has a lot of smarts, so when you take your headset off, it goes into standby mode. So I easily got about a week out of it without charging. Fortunately, that week was less meeting-heavy.  If you set the charging dock up at your desk like I did, then it’s super easy to never come close to running out of charge. And if you place it down on a book right next to the charging stand, like I did, you have some grace period before you need to charge.

If you’re out and about, you can use a USB-C cable to charge it. Fortunately, this means the stand doesn’t hold you back. Annoyingly it can take a while to charge, it usually took at least a couple of hours to fully charge. Honestly though, I really had to mess up for that to become an issue as I should have been putting it on the dock.

Another minor gripe with this is that the charging cable for the dock uses USB-C. While USB-C is pretty common I only had one USB-C to AC adapter and one spare USB-C port in my dock. Over time this is becoming less and less of an issue, but it’s not like USB-A where you have a dozen adapters lying around. So just keep that in mind.

Should you get one?

Let’s be honest, at $540, this headset will not be in everyone’s price range.  If it is in your price range, it is easily worth the price. This is by far the best work headset I have ever used. Between the the noise-canceling, the comfort, and all the nice little functions it offers, this is a damn good headset!