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  1. Home
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  3. Test Bench 2.3

Test Bench 2.3  
Changelog

 1
By Nicholas LimUpdated Jun 23, 2026 at 10:06 am

See the previous 2.2 changelog.

Test Bench 2.3 aims to streamline the review process by removing outdated and less impactful tests.

What's Changed?

We've removed a couple of test groups entirely and tweaked comparisons in others.

Test Group Changes
Virtual Soundstage Removed the Test Group
App Support Virtual Surround changed from Yes/No to Feature Name/No
Bluetooth Connection Removed Line of Sight Range and aptX Latency measurements
Base/Dock Removed the Test Group

Why Are We Making This Change?

As time passes and headphones become more advanced, some of our tests lose relevance; products can shift away from older versions of a feature, improve their performance so that most (if not all) max out our scoring, or expand functionality beyond what the test was intended to evaluate. To better position us for future additions to our testing methodology and release full reviews more efficiently, we've chosen to remove and adjust some of the affected test groups.

Virtual Soundstage and App Support

Virtual Soundstage was conceived when few products came equipped with sound virtualization features. As a result, our evaluation was based on feature support, with scores tied to whether headphones implemented things like Head Tracking or Room Ambiance, rather than how well they actually emulated sound in a three-dimensional space. To better reflect our assessment of the feature, we've removed the test group and any scoring and migrated the useful information to App Support.

Bluetooth Connection

In Bluetooth Connection, improvements between Bluetooth versions have made Line of Sight Range less important to test; most headphones now reach our max distance of 102 m. Of the 130 Bluetooth products we've tested from 2025 to mid-2026, only 38 (~29%) are below the maximum range. Plus, the percentage of products scoring below our maximum range is even lower for more recently reviewed products (~9% from January 2026 to June 2026).

Similarly, as Snapdragon Sound and the aptX codec evolve over time, more products have implemented the more flexible aptX Adaptive, which allows for either lower latency or higher audio quality signaling. Of the products on our previous Test Bench 2.2, only the Devialet Gemini II, Noble FoKus Apollo, and Sennheiser ACCENTUM Wireless have an aptX Latency measurement without an aptX Adaptive measurement.

Both Line of Sight Range and aptX Latency are less relevant for newer products and have been removed to streamline our review process.

Base/Dock

Base/Dock is a bit of an outlier compared to the previous changes. A small number of headphones have a base or dock. However, when they do, it's typically a marquee feature with plenty of functionality. Unfortunately, including the Base/Dock score in our Wireless and Wired Gaming verdicts was disproportionately affecting the scoring of products that used simple wireless dongles with no additional functionality or inputs (which still counted as a Base/Dock under our methodology). While we could have removed the scoring element and retained the test group, we chose to remove it entirely to reduce bloat for the majority of headphone reviews for which the test is not applicable. For affected products, we've relocated Base/Dock information to the written text of appropriate test groups (e.g., Wired Connection and Battery).

What Do You Think?

Our process is iterative, and your feedback is instrumental to our test bench development. If you have comments or questions about the above changes (or anything else), please reach out to us in the comments, in our Discord server, or via email.

190 Headphones Updated

We have retested popular models. The test results for the following models have been converted to the new testing methodology. However, the text might be inconsistent with the new results.

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