Pioneer DJ HDJ-CUE1BT Wireless Headphones Review

The Pioneer HDJ-CUE1BT are closed-back, on-ear headphones designed for DJs. They're made mostly of plastic with swiveling earcups and hinges to fold. The Bluetooth or analog headphones' look is a mixture of angular and exaggerated lines, like the prominent—almost overbuilt-looking—plastic housing surrounding the connection port for the audio cable. The result appears very reminiscent of designs from the 2000s inspired by vintage equipment, complete with a coiled cable. You have your pick of three colors: 'Black,' 'Red,' and 'White.' You can also purchase a separate set of accessories ('HC-CP08-M') for colorful ear pads and audio cable if you want to customize your pair's look.

The Pioneer DJ HDJ-CUE1BT feel good to wear. Their ear pads are amply padded and comfy. The entire headband is covered with padding, unlike the thin, unpadded headband of the AIAIAI TMA-2 DJ. The headband also fits various head sizes, particularly if you've got a larger head. They're fairly lightweight. The clamping pressure isn't very high, but on-ears tend to cause fatigue after a while. If you have big and wavy hair, you might find it getting caught in the headphones' various hinges and joints, although they're not the worst example of that issue. There's also some difficulty seating these in the right spot; more on that in Frequency Response Consistency.

The controls for the Pioneer HDJ-CUE1BT are adequate. You get three intuitive buttons on the left earcup. These control Bluetooth pairing, power, calls, and audio playback. They emit audio cues for each stage of the pairing process, powering off, and they chime when the volume is maxed out or set to minimum. The buttons feel a bit mushy and aren't very clicky. Their volume is controlled by a strip of dedicated volume up and down buttons, which have a singular function. You can't remap the controls because there's no companion app. They work as follows:

Multi-function button:

• Press and hold: Power on/off.
• Press and hold from powered off: Turn on and initiate Bluetooth pairing.
• One press: Pause/play, Answer call/end call/cancel outgoing call.
• Two presses:Skip to next track.
• Three presses:Skip to previous track.

Volume buttons:

• One press:Raises or lowers volume once.
• Press-and-hold:Raises or lowers volume continuously.

Their portability isn't bad. The headphones have hinges to help make their frame smaller, and the ear cups can turn to fit in your bag as needed. You can also lay them flat, depending on how you prefer to store them and if you choose to buy a case. Spoiler alert: there's no case.

Their build quality is good. They're plasticky but feel pretty solid overall, with good padding along the headband and cushy faux leather ear pads. Over time, the already slightly loose notched headband for sizing, along with the hinges, may loosen more because of their plastic build.

The Pioneer HDJ-CUE1BT are decently stable. Due to their on-ear design, they rely on clamping force to stay put. They don't move when tilting your head in any direction, like bending over a controller while DJing, but they can need adjustments if you nod along to your tunes. Because of their relatively light clamping force, there's also a good chance they'll slide off if you start headbanging.

• Pioneer DJ HDJ-CUE1BT headphones
• Coiled 1/8" to 1/16" TRRS cable
• USB-A to micro-USB charging cable
• Manuals

The Pioneer HDJ-CUE1BT have a bass-heavy and warm tuning. They exaggerate the entire bass region significantly, leading to a lot of rumbles from the deepest sub-bass synth lines and boom from kick drums. Their midrange reproduces lead instruments well and fairly evenly. However, the bass range can make it harder to hear those parts with perfect intelligibility, depending on how busy the song's instrumentation is. Meanwhile, trebly parts like vocal and cymbal harmonics sound darker due to their lower amplitude than the bass. You won't catch all of the details in the highs or airiness of a track with these.

Because these headphones are aimed at DJs, our unit was tested over an analog connection, but their Bluetooth frequency response is virtually the same. You can check out their tuning comparison over Bluetooth and via analog connection. If you're a fan of bass-heavy tunings like those found on earlier Beats headphones (for example, the Beats Solo3 2018 Wireless), these sound a bit similar. However, the Pioneer DJ sound less muddy with a darker top end.

Their frequency response consistency is sub-par. Two factors derail their consistency between wears and wearers, and one of them is if you have a lot of thick hair, this significantly impacts how well they can deliver bass frequencies to your ears. The other issue is that they have a lot of padding around the drivers, and as a result, there's a narrow margin of error in getting the positioning right for optimal bass and treble delivery.

Because the ear cups rotate, you don't need to completely take them off to hear the room when DJing, which reduces inconsistencies in audio delivery. You still have to hold the ear cup, unlike the articulating arm of the Sennheiser HD 25 that pivots forward or backward, letting you go hands-free.

Their bass accuracy is okay. The bass is fairly consistently elevated throughout the range, except where it dips and transitions to the mids. This means that in songs like Penny Girl by Cola Boyy, the kick and grooving bassline sound pretty balanced relative to each other. Still, they're thumpy and significantly more dominant in the overall mix than other lead instruments. Depending on your taste, that works for beatmatching, but this amount of bass also sounds very punchy.

Their mid accuracy is superb. They reproduce lead instruments like keys and guitar well, with only a slight underemphasis in the high-mid, which can weaken vocals a tiny bit. With real content, the intelligibility of the mids is negatively impacted by the exaggerated bass, which overwhelms the range.

The Pioneer HDJ-CUE1BT's treble accuracy is decent. Through the low treble, they sound even, which gives a good amount of presence to vocals, although the dip that follows dulls their clarity. A peak in the mid-treble adds a little brightness to cymbal harmonics in an otherwise darker treble range.

Their peaks and dips performance is satisfactory. The response doesn't exhibit many significant dips and a few peaks, but they control their own sound profile decently well. Their bass range is mostly one big peak. However, the dip in the transition from high bass into the mids carves out some muddiness. The bass itself is overwhelming, which makes lead instruments less forward-sounding. The prominent peaks in the treble add a bit of presence and piercing shrillness to sibilants (S and T sounds). Meanwhile, the dip in the treble dulls the clarity of vocals and cymbals, keeping the overall tuning bassy and warm.

Their imaging is overall great. Our unit has tight bass and transparent treble, with group delay well below the audibility threshold. There's a minor phase mismatch with our unit, shifting the stereo center and volume more to the right side in the mids. However, it's not noticeable when you listen to music and is only truly noticeable during frequency response sweeps. These have good ergonomics, and this is the first pair we've tested by the manufacturer, so it's an encouraging sign of their quality control. Of course, imaging varies between units, so these results are only valid with our unit.

The Pioneer HDJ-CUE1BT have a poor passive soundstage. This isn't unusual for closed-back and on-ear headphones, which don't interact with your environment. The effect sounds like your audio comes from inside your head rather than feeling immersive and spaced out within a room.

The weighted harmonic distortion is great. They don't add a lot of unwanted distortion to your music at all. Your music sounds mostly clean. While at lower volumes, they elevate distortion somewhat in the highs and low bass; overall, it isn't too bad.

These are the settings used to test these headphones. Our results are only valid when used in this configuration.

Their isolation performance is disappointing. Like most passive isolating headphones, these leave low-pitched noises like the rumble of bus engines unaffected, so you'll hear those. They block a bit of mid-range noise, like the ambient din of traffic outside or chatter, but not terribly much. However, they significantly reduce high-pitched noises like clinking glasses and shrill brakes on a subway.

These have impressive leakage control. What escapes is fairly full-sounding audio, but it's quiet. Passersby will only be disturbed by your guilty pleasure songs if you're in a silent room with your volume cranked.

The microphone system in the ear cups only works when you connect the headphones over Bluetooth. You can't use the mic when you use the headphones passively.

The microphone performs decently. You can only use it when you connect the headphones over Bluetooth. Speech is intelligible, although the audio quality is mediocre. Your voice lacks a bit of detail, with a somewhat sibilant tone emphasizing S and T sounds.

The microphone's noise handling is unremarkable. Continuous background noise remains alongside your speech, which loses clarity even though your voice stays louder. So, you can use these headphones in a location with a constant din, which isn't ideal, but they perform okay.

The mic struggles more with handling loud and sudden environmental noises and can filter out your voice altogether. If other people are in the space, they will be audible for the person on the call with you, which is distracting.

The Pioneer HDJ-CUE1BT have a very good battery performance. They advertise 30 hours of battery life, and in our testing, they reach just shy of 47 hours of continuous playback. Battery life varies based on use, but that ought to last many commutes, workdays, and walks. When the battery drains, you can use them passively and expect the same sound, which is handy if you have a device with a headphone jack. You don't get any power-saving measures like a timer to keep them charged if you set them down and forget to turn them off, though. Annoyingly, they use the older micro-USB standard for charging, which isn't bad, but that's possibly an extra cable for you to keep tabs on.

The Pioneer DJ HDJ-CUE1BT have superb wired connectivity. That's important, given that most DJs prefer the low latency of analog connections, and some gear only has analog outputs. The detachable coiled cable means you can replace it if it breaks without buying another set of headphones. The coiled cable prevents some tangling and stretches up to 5.9 feet (1.8m). It uses a more unusual 1/16" TRRS connection to the ear cup that locks into the housing with a turn, and the other end terminates as a standard 1/8" headphone jack. You'll need to supply your own adapter for 1/4" outputs.

Their Bluetooth connectivity is decent. The implementation is basic, without multi-device pairing or quick pairing, and only AAC and SBC codec support. Their latency is high enough that you'll notice sync issues with audio and video, but if you only listen to music, that's not a problem. Because the headphones don't have a companion app, you can't enable any 'low latency' or 'gaming' modes to reduce lagging audio with video. Latency depends on many factors, so your experience may vary. Since these are meant as DJ headphones, their Bluetooth compatibility is more of an extra feature than the primary reason to pick them up.

You can use the Pioneer HDJ-CUE1BT wired or wirelessly over Bluetooth with your computer. The microphone only works when you connect using Bluetooth. If you plug in the audio cable, you can only receive audio.

Their PlayStation compatibility is limited to audio only. You'll plug the cable into the controller to listen, but the microphone won't work. That works fine for solo games, but you'll need a different set of cans for your friends to hear you or a standalone mic.

With an Xbox, you can only receive audio. The headphones' mic doesn't work in passive mode, so your friends won't hear you. If you mainly enjoy single-player games, this won't pose an issue.