Shure AONIC 50 Wireless Headphones Review

The Shure AONIC 50 are premium-looking wireless headphones that resemble the Bowers & Wilkins PX7 Wireless, with similar swept-back hinges but larger ear cups made of dense, high-grade plastic. The padding around their ear cups is removable and comes in either black or brown faux leather. All told, these headphones should look right at home in a wide variety of environments.

The Shure AONIC 50 are quite comfortable. Their headband is wide, generously cushioned, and distributes the headphones’ weight pretty evenly while their ear cup padding is shallow but plush. They shouldn’t be too fatiguing to wear even during really long listening sessions. However, compared to the Bowers & Wilkins PX7 Wireless, their ear cups don’t have the same range of motion.

The Shure AONIC 50 have a pretty intuitive control scheme. All major functions are enabled through physical buttons and toggles, which is handy in colder environments where touch-sensitive controls are less reliable. Track-skipping and volume control can be accessed through buttons on the right ear cup with audio feedback. Those functions are adjacent to a sliding toggle that turns on ANC or talk-through.

The Shure AONIC 50 aren’t very portable. Their ear cups do fold flat, which is helpful, but they don’t fold inward. The headphones are also quite large overall, which makes it a little hard to carry them around in a separate bag.

These headphones come with a nice textured hard case that should do a good job of protecting them from bumps, scratches, and minor water exposure. That said, the case itself is a little big, and might be a hassle to carry around with you.

The Shure AONIC 50 feel very well-built. Their plastic construction feels dense and should take a couple of drops without much in the way of damage. Their cups are removable and swappable, which adds to their durability, although they're padded in faux leather. Their hinges feel sturdy, but it's unclear if they're made of especially high-grade plastic or aluminum.

These headphones should do a decent job of staying on your head. Their wireless design negates any potential snagging hazard while their reasonably high clamping force should keep them from moving during casual listening sessions. Anything more intense, however, might cause them to slip around.

• Shure AONIC 50 headphones
• USB-C charging cable
• 1/8" TRS cable
• Hard carrying case
• Manuals

These headphones have a somewhat accurate default sound profile. Bass isn't especially neutral, with a slight dip in the lowest frequencies flattening punchier tracks, while a large spike in the high-bass range causes some boominess. The mids are very well-balanced, which ensures clear and present vocals. Their treble is slightly overemphasized but not too uneven, which is good for emphasizing detail without being overly piercing or bright. That said, this can be adjusted in depth via a parametric EQ in their dedicated companion app.

The Shure AONIC 50 have good frequency response consistency. Mids are consistent regardless of the headphones’ fit and positioning, and treble doesn’t vary too much. Unfortunately, there is some significant deviation in the lowest frequencies, which means that sounds in the bass range might be heard quite differently on separate listening sessions.

The Shure AONIC 50 have okay bass accuracy. Sounds in the lowest frequencies are a little underemphasized, which might disappoint fans of bass-heavy genres like EDM and hip-hop. A sharp rise in the high-bass range is responsible for some boominess. However, the bass accuracy of these headphones is heavily influenced by their positioning and fit, so your own listening experience may vary significantly.

The mid accuracy of the Shure AONIC 50 is very good. Vocals, lead instruments, and dialogue should sound clear and present, though a slight bump in the low mid-range might slightly clutter the mix.

These headphones have acceptable treble accuracy. It’s overemphasized across the range but doesn’t have too many sharp spikes, though some may hear S and T sibilants as being a little bright and piercing. That said, treble is heavily dependent on the headphones' positioning and fit, so your own experience may vary.

The peaks and dips performance of the Shure AONIC 50 is decent. A large spike in the high-bass range muddies and clutters some tracks while the uneven treble makes some higher frequencies sound a tad sharp and piercing.

The stereo imaging performance of these headphones is excellent. The weighted group delay shows some minute bumps in the low and high-bass ranges, but they aren’t very noticeable, with no other frequencies rising above the audibility threshold. The L/R drivers are exceptionally well-matched in regards to amplitude and frequency, while the weighted phase mismatch is similarly low, which is important for the accurate placement and localization of objects (voices, instruments, video game effects) in the stereo image. It should be said that our results are only valid for our test unit, and your own may perform very differently.

The Shure AONIC 50 have a poor passive soundstage, which is pretty normal for closed-back headphones. Sound will be perceived as being accurate and natural, but not especially spacious or open.

These headphones don't have any virtual soundstage features.

The Shure AONIC 50’s weighted harmonic distortion performance is alright. There’s a little bit of distortion throughout the mid-range at high volumes as well as a slight spike in the low treble range at moderate volumes, but that shouldn’t be too noticeable with real-life content.

Update 09/24/2020: Due to the fact that these headphones have an adjustable ANC system, we have updated the text in this box to note what preset the ANC was set to in testing.

This is the configuration we used in testing the Shure AONIC 50. The ANC system was set to max for our tests, as this is the way the headphones are set up out-of-the-box. Our results are only valid when using these settings.

The Shure AONIC 50 do an adequate job of blocking out ambient noise. They perform best in the mid and treble range and should do a good job of isolating you from the chatter of a busy office. Even with ANC turned on, they reduce very little noise in the bass range, which might be disappointing if you intend to use these headphones in your daily commute to block out the rumble of bus engines. If you're looking for over-ears with a better noise isolation performance, consider the Shure AONIC 50 Gen 2 Wireless instead.

We originally had concerns that our test results didn't match other reviewers who measured a better ANC performance using the same firmware. As a result, we ran several passes using the headphones' newest firmware update. However, while we couldn't match our results exactly, our passes still closely follow the original curve. You can see the results here, with the original results in blue and our retest passes in green and red.

The Shure AONIC 50’s leakage performance is decent. Most leakage occurs in the low-mid range and most treble frequencies, which produces some pretty thin-sounding escaping audio. That said, all of the leakage falls below the noise floor of an average office.

The Shure AONIC 50 have an integrated microphone.

The Shure AONIC 50’s microphone recording quality is poor. Voices sound thin, muffled, and lacking in detail, so people on the other end might have a hard time understanding you.

The Shure AONIC 50’s microphone does an inadequate job of isolating your voice from ambient noise. Listeners on the other end might have a very hard time understanding you if you make a call in a loud environment.

The battery life of these headphones is good, at just over 17 hours of playback on a single charge with ANC turned on. However, that’s slightly less than the 20 hours that Shure advertises, and somewhat disappointing overall, especially compared to cheaper wireless ANC headphones like the Razer Opus Wireless, which delivered just under 33 hours of continuous playback. They also lack any sort of power-saving features like an auto-off timer, which means you could drain your battery if you aren’t careful. That said, they can be used for passive listening using the included 1/8" TRS or USB-C cables, which is helpful if you’ve run completely out of battery.

Update 09/24/2020: The Shure AONIC 50's companion app only affects media that's played through the in-app audio player. The text in this box has been updated.

These headphones have good app support in the form of the ShurePlus Play companion software. It gives users access to a four-point parametric EQ and audio presets to customize their listening experience, not to mention a built-in audio media player, a slider for ANC intensity, and 10 levels of adjustment for their talk-through feature. The EQ only has an impact on media that's played through the in-app media player.

The Shure AONIC 50 offer a wide range of Bluetooth connectivity options. They’re compatible with SBC, aptX, aptX HD, and aptX-LL, the last of which is a major asset if you intend to stream video while wearing these headphones but does require an aptX-LL-compatible receiver. They also support LDAC, Sony's propriety codec for Hi-Res audio. They support multi-device pairing too, which is handy if you frequently swap between listening to content on your phone and computer. That said, if you're using one device and then you try to play audio from your second device, the headphones will automatically switch audio sources to the secondary device. You can then only control this source. It can be annoying as some other headphones require you to pause your audio content before switching audio sources.

These headphones don't support any non-Bluetooth wireless connections.

Update 06/11/2021: We have changed USB Audio to 'USB Type A' to reflect the source port instead of the headphones' port. When using their USB cable, the USB-A connector can be connected to any device with a USB-A port. The scoring of this box hasn't changed.

These headphones come with both a USB-A to USB-C charging cable as well as a 5.2 ft 1/8” TRS audio cable. Both cables only allow you to receive audio, and you can't use their integrated microphone solely over a wired connection.

These headphones can connect to Bluetooth-enabled PCs with full compatibility. However, if you're connected to your PC using the 1/8" TRS cable or USB cable, you can only receive audio.

The Shure AONIC 50 can only receive audio via their TRS cable when connected to PlayStation consoles, so you won't be able to use their mic. Although you can use the USB cable on PCs to receive audio, this cable doesn't work on these consoles.

Update 09/24/2020: The Shure AONIC 50 come with a 1/8" TRS cable, rather than the previously-stated 1/8" TRRS cable. The text in this box has been updated.

The Shure AONIC 50 only receives audio when you plug their 1/8” TRS cable into an Xbox One controller.

The Shure AONIC 50 don't have a dock.