Cowin SE7 Wireless HEADPHONES REVIEW

The Cowin SE7 have a more polished and high-end look than the Cowin E7 and E7 Pro. The cups have a matte coating and don’t have the same glossy finish and cheap plastic feel as the older models. They are also less bulky and don’t have the same circular design. They have a small metal circle for style on each cup, but other than that they are fairly low-profile. It seems Cowin went for a design that resembles the Bose Quiet Comfort 35 II a bit. The SE7 come in different colors to suit your style: black, gold, purple, or dark green.

The new Cowin SE7 design is more comfortable than previous models like the E7. The cups and headband are well-padded and soft. These headphones are lightweight and don’t put too much pressure on your head, but still feel stable. However, the ear cups might be a bit small and uncomfortable for some people, especially if you have bigger ears. Nevertheless, most users should be able to wear these for a while before feeling ear soreness.

The control scheme of the SE7 is decent, but it has certain flaws. The physical buttons are very clicky and offer good feedback, but they aren’t the easiest to use. You get common functionalities like calling, music, and volume control, which is expected. You can also skip tracks, but the controls are inverted from what you usually see on headphones, meaning that holding volume down will skip tracks forward instead of backward. Also, you’ll have to hold their power button for several seconds to power them on. On the upside, you have a separate switch for enabling and disabling ANC. However, you’ll need to remember to switch both the ANC and the headphones off, or it will drain your battery.

Like most closed-back over-ears, the Cowin SE7 aren’t very breathable by design. They trap a decent amount of heat under the cups, which will make a noticeable difference in the ear temperature over time. Also, there is a warning in the manual that reminds you to take these off every 1-2 hrs in the summer heat. These headphones will make you sweat more than usual and won’t be ideal for working out.

Like most over-ears, the SE7 are not very portable headphones. They have a bulky design, but thankfully the cups swivel to lay flat, which makes them easier to slide in a bag. They also fold into a more compact format, and you can put these in their soft case, which doesn’t add too much bulk.

The Cowin SE7 come with a soft case. This will protect the headphones from minor water exposure and scratches but won’t do much against significant impacts. It is slightly disappointing when compared to the E7 Pro hard case, but it is better than the original E7’s case.

The Cowin SE7 have a better build quality than other Cowin headphones. They don’t have the same glossy finish and flimsy plastic design that of the E7. The SE7 cups feel dense and solid enough to survive a few accidental drops without too much damage. The headband is reinforced with a thin metal sheet and is still flexible enough.

These over-ears are decently stable. They fit nicely on your head and apply enough pressure to stay in place, even when shaking your head. Their lightweight design doesn’t make them slide off when tilting your head forward or backward and should be stable enough for running. They are also wireless, which means you don’t have to worry about the headphones getting yanked off because the cable got hooked on something.

The frequency response of the SE7 is decently consistent. In the bass range, the maximum deviation measured across our five human subjects is about 3dB, which is subtle but noticeable. In the treble range, up to 10kHz, the maximum deviation measured across five re-seats was about 12dB, but mostly in a narrow range around 5kHz.

The Cowin SE7 have okay bass performance. The low-frequency extension (LFE) of 48Hz and the 5dB underemphasis in low-bass indicates that these headphones will be light on the thump and rumble that is common to bass-heavy genres like EDM and hip-hop. Mid-bass, responsible for the body of bass guitars and the punch of kick drums, is within 1dB of our neutral target. However, high-bass, responsible for warmth, is over our neutral target by 7dB, which adds excess muddiness to the overall sound. We also noticed a significant drop in bass when using the ANC feature.

The mid-range of the Cowin SE7 is sub-par. Low-mid is overemphasized by more than 8dB. This is the continuation of the high-bass bump and makes vocals and lead instruments sound thick and cluttered. Mid-mid is also overemphasized by about 5dB, which brings the vocals forward in the mix. High-mid is also overemphasized, but slightly less. The 8dB tilt through the mid-range is going to favor the lower frequencies.

The treble performance of the SE7 is average. The whole range is noticeably underemphasized, especially around 6KHz. This will have a negative effect on the detail and brightness of sibilances (S and T sounds). This will be most noticeable on vocals, lead instruments, and cymbals.

The imaging is great. The weighted group delay is at 0.21, which is very low. The GD graph also shows the group delay response is almost entirely below the audibility threshold, suggesting a tight bass reproduction and a transparent treble. The jumps in group delay in low-bass won’t be very audible since they fall below the LFE of the headphones. Additionally, the L/R drivers of our test unit were well-matched in amplitude, frequency, and phase response, which is important for the accurate placement and localization of objects (voices, instruments, video game effects) in the stereo image. However, these results are only valid for our test unit, and yours may perform differently.

The soundstage of the Cowin SE7 is sub-par. The graph suggests good pinna interaction/activation, but mediocre in distance and accuracy. So the soundstage may be perceived as unnatural and located inside the listener's head. Also, due to the closed-back design and active noise cancelation, their soundstage won't feel as open and spacious as open-back headphones.

The Cowin SE7 have a sub-par isolation performance, which is disappointing for ANC headphones. In the bass range, where the rumble of airplane and bus engines sits, they isolate by about 8dB, which is average. In the mid-range, important for blocking out speech, they achieved about 11dB of isolation, which is also average. In the treble range, occupied by sharp sounds like S and Ts, they reduce outside noise by about 32dB, which is good.

The leakage performance of the Cowin SE7 is good. The significant portion of leakage sits between 1kHz and 6kHz, which is a relatively narrow range. This results in a leakage that sounds fuller and more comprehensible than the leakage of in-ears and earbuds, but not as much as open-back headphones. However, the overall level of leakage is not too loud. With the music at 100dB SPL, the leakage at 1 foot away averages at 33dB SPL and peaks at 47dB SPL, which is just under the noise floor of most offices.

The integrated microphone of the SE7 has a sub-par performance. LFE (low-frequency extension) is at 220Hz, indicating that speech recorded/transmitted with this mic will sound relatively thin. The HFE (high-frequency extension) of 3kHz results in speech that's noticeably muffled and lacking in detail. However, the recorded/transmitted speech would still be reasonably comprehensible in quiet environments, since that is mostly dependent on the 500Hz-3kHz range.

The noise handling of the SE7's mic is sub-par. In our noise handling test, they achieved a speech-to-noise ratio of 9dB, which means they will mostly be suitable for quiet environments and will struggle to separate speech from background noise even in moderately loud environments.

We’ve measured a 15-hour battery life, which is considerably lower than the advertised 22 hours (there is also mention of a 30-hour battery life, but we couldn’t figure out which number was the ‘real’ advertised battery life). According to the specs sheet, they can last up to 720h when they enter in their standby mode. Also, you can use them with the included audio cable, even if the battery is dead. You can also use the ANC feature when wired if there’s battery left.

These headphones don’t have an app with customization options.

These headphones support Bluetooth version 5.0, so you might get better wireless range and connection stability than what we’ve measured since our test bench only supports Bluetooth 4.2 for now. We do plan to upgrade this in the future. Unfortunately, they can’t connect to multiple devices simultaneously and don’t have NFC for quick pairing. However, their pairing procedure is simple, and we didn’t experience any issues.

The latency of the SE7 is better than most Bluetooth headphones that usually average around 200-220ms of delay. This means some people may not notice the delay as much. Also, they support aptX, which gives you even lower latency if your source supports it. This should still be too high for gaming, but you might not notice the delay as much when watching video content, especially that some devices and apps offer some sort of compensation.

These headphones come with a 1/8” TRS cable that you can use to play audio on other devices such as consoles and PCs. You can use them wired even if the battery is dead.

The SE7 don’t have a base or a dock. If you’re interested in versatile headphones with one, we suggest looking at the SteelSeries Arctis 7.