Moondrop Edge: Budget ANC Headphones are Getting GOOD

The EDGE is Moondrop's first wireless ANC headphone that Listener thinks people should be paying much closer attention to. Join them as they discuss why!

Moondrop Edge: Budget ANC Headphones are Getting GOOD

The Moondrop EDGE is the latest in Moondrop’s lineup of wireless over-ear ANC headphones that began with the Singer, which had a V-shaped tonality and came in at a surprisingly reasonable price of $80 USD. However, it didn’t make much of a splash due to Moondrop’s reputation for wireless products having significant software issues, as well as third-party measurements looking less than stellar.

The Moondrop EDGE is, by contrast, the first wireless headphone they’ve released that I really think people should pay closer attention to. It’s a notable step forward for a market of products—over-ear wireless ANC headphones—that have typically had enough sonic flaws that we’ve always had to compromise sound for convenience.

The Moondrop EDGE doesn’t compromise sound quality as much as most other wireless ANC headphones, and it also does certain non-sound aspects better than its competition, even offerings from larger brands. Let’s talk about why.

Moondrop Edge Wireless ANC Headphones

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What we like

  • Extremely affordable
  • Warm, inoffensive frequency response tuning (with an asterisk)
  • Very large & comfortable earpads that are removable + will eventually be replaceable

What we don’t like

  • Engaging ANC cuts too much mid-bass for Balanced mode; need to use Extra Bass EQ to offset this
  • Headband is finicky and not as comfortable as I’d like
  • Software implementation still leaves functionality to be desired

Build, Comfort, Design, and Accessories

Starting with accessories, there’s really not much of note in the box. Just the headphones, necessary charging cables, and a leatherette pouch that frankly I kinda hate. I’d never put any headphone in a thin strapless bag like this for transport, and would much rather a hard case that takes advantage of the fact that Moondrop EDGE has a decently collapsible/transportable design.

In terms of the visual design, I actually quite like the look. It reminds me of a slightly more rectangular/hard-edged take on the design language from more expensive brands like Bang & Olufson or Bowers & Wilkins. The fact that it comes in monotone grey as well as a more bright white & gold colorway is a nice touch that I frankly wish was more present on audiophile headphones. More color/aesthetic choices please!

Moving onto the build, while this does feel like a headphone that is under $100, that doesn’t necessarily mean it won’t hold up over time. It’s a very light (good) but slightly noisy (bad) design that has a bit of ricketiness and lacks minor refinement to the feeling in hand. The edges are just a bit less rounded off in certain places than I’d like, but overall it feels well enough put together for the price and it has survived being thrown into my backpack a few times without the bag.

Unfortunately the headband is a pain point regarding build, as it’s responsible for most of what I perceive as “cheapness” here. There aren’t well-defined notches for adjustment, only a soft “lock” notch of sorts at the bottom of the adjustment range and then no defined notches I can feel after that. For those who are a bit Type-A about making sure the headphone’s arms are extended symmetrically, this may prove annoying—it did for me.

On the bright side, the cups do swivel enough to lay the headphone flat on a desk or table, which does make me hate putting down the headphone on a desk or couch much less than designs where this isn’t able to be done.

Onward to comfort, the earpads are lovely and I wish more over-ear headphones took this approach to earpad design, both in size and shape. The overall comfort of this headphone kind of reminds me of the Austrian Audio Hi-x60, which people who’ve followed my reviews for a while will remember is the only good thing about that headphone. The Moondrop EDGE’s pads fit completely around my ear and leave enough room for my ear to only lightly graze the generously padded baffle.

This is different from most other headphones of its price and class that often have pads that are much too small to fit my ears inside completely, as well as much too shallow for my ear to rest in the earpad comfortably, so Moondrop deserves some points here.

In fact, they get even more points because the pads are easily removable, and ShenzhenAudio has made it clear that they intend to make replacements available. This is a big step towards ANC products like this being less “disposable,” especially so for such inexpensive headphones, so big thumbs up to Moondrop for this.

The comfort downside is that the headband isn’t quite well-padded or “wide” enough to avoid a top-of-head hotspot for me, even though this design has a considerably tight-feeling clamp force.

While clamp is often a downside for many designs, here I think it serves a function, and it actually works well: unlike many ANC headphones, I actually get a seal around the bottom of my ear/back of my jaw. I tend to be fairly clamp-tolerant since my head is on the narrower/smaller side, so while this may be a bit uncomfortable for those with larger/wider heads, this is one of the better feeling wireless ANC designs for me.

The Bottom Line

Overall, for $80 it’s pretty hard for me to be mad at this package. While yes its not perfect, feeling a little cheap and lacking a satisfying headband, the “ear comfort” is better for me than even expensive offerings like the AirPods Max and Bose QuietComfort lineup, so I’m inclined to give an overall positive marks for the non-sound factors here because I’d much rather wear EDGE for a few hours than most of the other expensive designs, and way more than other cheap designs you’d find on Amazon’s best-seller list.

Features

Battery Life

The battery life was one of the biggest surprises when it came to my testing of the Moondrop EDGE; I think I got to the 45th hour before I had to charge it for the first time, and that was only by the time I’d basically finished my listening for this review. So battery life on the Moondrop EDGE is incredibly good for the price, much better than my main wireless device (AirPods Pro 2). This was such a nice surprise for something I wasn’t expecting great battery life from, and because I really hate devices with short battery lives, I’m inclined to tout this as a feature for consumers because it makes the product less of a headache to use.

Buttons

Listeners get a pretty typical set of buttons—volume up, power/pairing, volume down, and ANC/transparency—and they work as you’d expect & with a decent amount of quickness such that I don’t feel there’s any major lag or missed entries when I’m using them. Additionally the ANC button can be programmed to exclude options, eg. if you only want to switch between ANC On and Transparency, you can have it exclude the ANC Off mode.

However, their design and layout of the buttons isn’t exactly intuitive. For one, I’d prefer the volume up and down buttons were swapped, because intuitively I feel like the button on top should be the volume up button, but EDGE has it swapped for some reason.

Another downside in use is that these buttons don’t have distinct protrusions on them that let you know which button you’re touching even if you can’t see it. Instead they have indentations that are meant to signal by feel which button you’re pressing… but unfortunately they actually make it harder to tell which button you’re touching, and at times I couldn’t even tell if my finger was in the center or edge of a button because the indentation feels enough like the space between the buttons that it gets confusing.

These issues meant that most times I thought I was holding down the power button to turn the unit on or off, I was actually holding the volume up button. When it comes to products that are going to target a wide consumer market like the wireless ANC headphones market, extra care should be taken to make sure that the user interface and experience (UI/UX) is as intuitive as possible, but I feel the buttons are one area where EDGE is a bit annoying to navigate and use.

I’m not sure where else to mention this so I’ll put it here: the anime girl in my ears indicating whether I’m using ANC On (“sheeeeee”), Transparency (“Hey!”), or ANC Off (“Huh?”), Pairing mode or the headset powering on/off is both annoying and cringe.

Moondrop’s insistence on catering to the market of anime fans with “features” like this meaningfully limits who I can recommend this product to, and I think will likely be the thing that stops Moondrop from achieving mass market success if they keep clinging to this aspect of their design/marketing.

While I have many nice things to say about this headphone, this is an issue that would absolutely stop me from buying a pair for my mom, brother, or many of my friends. Please—at minimum—make versions of your products without the weeb stuff, Moondrop.

Connectivity/App

Let’s talk about the app first. Moondrop has garnered criticism for their software before, and I still think there’s a few things left to be desired here, but it seems they’ve addressed at least one of my concerns & brought the app to the Apple App Store. This meant installing on my iPhone was both possible and very painless.

The app itself is fairly barebones, giving you the option to switch between the 5 included EQ presets, as well as toggle between the three types of noise suppression—ANC Off, ANC On, and Transparency mode. One cool thing I wasn’t expecting from the EDGE was some level of multi-source pairing. You’ll notice I didn’t say it outright has multi-source pairing, because it kind of doesn’t.

I did try to get multi-source pairing between my Macbook and iPhone, and it worked in one direction: starting with it paired to the Macbook, playing music, then pairing to the phone did keep music playing from the Macbook. Then, playing music on the iPhone did swap the output of the headphone to play to the iPhone. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get it to switch back by playing music on the Macbook.

The most consistent extent to which I was able to get this to work—which was still very useful—was that you can pair it to both a phone as well as another device you’re listening to audio from (eg. my Macbook), which means you can use the phone to control the ANC/EQ while you listen to another source.

Now, this isn’t well-integrated, true multi-source pairing that intelligently switches between sources based on which is playing audio, it’s also less than $100, so I don’t expect premium features like this to work quite as well as something like the AirPods Max would.

This isn’t a typical use case, but the fact I didn’t have to re-pair the headphone to my phone every time I wanted to change the ANC mode or EQ preset for taking measurements was still very unexpected, but appreciated.

Outside of multi-source pairing, I found the normal connection/disconnection process very painless and easy to do across all of my devices. When I powered on the EDGE it would automatically connect almost immediately to the device I was using as long as I had Bluetooth enabled, which was convenient.

Active Noise Cancellation/Transparency

I don’t have the proper equipment to record reliable data regarding the quality of Active Noise Cancelling, so in order to give some inkling as to the ANC’s quality here: it’s good enough, but not really all that great. It does enough to significantly reduce the low frequencies of periodic noises like engines or washing machines, but doesn’t do much when it comes to frequencies above 500 Hz or so.

When it comes to the transparency mode, I found it to be competent at doing what I needed it to do (make voices and environmental sounds around me more intelligible) while also having a bit too much of a “sheen” to it, making incoming sounds seem a bit plasticine or overly clacky for percussive sounds in the real world.

This is again, to be expected based on the price. While it’s nowhere near as effective at cancelling noise or transmitting external noise as my AirPods Pro 2, I’m not expecting it to compete on that front. Apple has some of the best tech and research in the world, and Moondrop is probably just using the ANC/transparency capability that’s built into the system on the chip they use. But it works without issue, so I’m happy to say it qualifies as a valid choice for people who need ANC or Transparency mode but don’t want to spend a ton. Just don’t expect it to compete with Apple or Bose’s implementations of this tech.

EQ Presets

This is where I have to be a little blunt: most of the EQ profiles here are absolutely atrocious, and they legitimately would’ve been better left out. Bad is an understatement, most of these are so bad that they are worse than the worst headphones I have ever heard. So do yourself a favor if you are thinking about buying these: only use the Balanced or Extra Bass presets, as the others are essentially useless.

While it’s nice that they’ve attempted to accommodate different preferences… I don’t think there’s anything to support the idea that people would, on average, prefer the frequency responses shown above.

One upside here is that whatever EQ you choose to enable is saved to the headphone itself, so you can pair the EDGE to a different device than the phone you’re using to set the EQ preset and that preset will remain loaded.

However, having that capability really just makes me wish this headset had parametric EQ onboard. If it had that, it might be one of the best wireless headphones period. Unfortunately though, there’s also one other problem that we should probably talk about regarding the EQ profiles and ANC implementation here.

Why Does the Sound Change Between ANC Off and ANC On?

I wanted to make sure I included a bit about this here because one of the first impressions I had of the Moondrop EDGE was that the stock tone was very solid in Balanced mode with ANC Off, but as soon as I turned ANC On it got incredibly thin, seemingly losing a ton of bass. And then I realized this hasn’t been explained to many people who would like to know why this happens.

This is something that can happen with ANC headphones, because when you engage ANC, the acoustic conditions—specifically the acoustic impedance—of the air chamber your ear is sitting in (inside the earpad, in front of the driver) is changed. Because the frequency response you receive at your eardrum is the result of the acoustic conditions of this space, the frequency response resulting from the acoustic condition changes too.

We see this in IEMs: when we measure the bass of an IEM in a small, well-sealed, and stiff air volume like that of an IEC 60318-4 Coupler (high acoustic impedance), and then measure again in lower acoustic impedance environment—like the B&K 5128’s slightly larger ear canal—bass gets reduced because it’s harder for the driver to produce the same level of bass when the air isn’t as stiff.

Shown below is an excerpt from The Effect of Active Noise Cancellation on the Acoustic Impedance of Headphones (2019) from Schlieper et al., and it shows—except for the first graph, as well as those labeled SC2 and CC5—the difference in acoustic impedance between closed back ANC headphones with ANC Off (diamonds) and ANC On (squares).

In this group of measurements we see that across the board, activating ANC reduces acoustic impedance under 200 Hz. Where the reduction of acoustic impedance occurs is the same area of the frequency response we see change dramatically with ANC On and ANC Off with the Moondrop EDGE below. So as the acoustic impedance is lowered—air gets less stiff—bass becomes harder to produce, and SPL is reduced.

One of the benefits of more “premium” devices like the Apple AirPods Max is that it tries to compensate for this change as best as possible, loading a different EQ for when ANC is enabled so the frequency response with ANC on and off is close to identical. However, this is not the case with the EDGE, where engaging ANC does have a marked effect on the lower half of the frequency response with no attempt to automatically compensate for the change.

I was initially a bit worried about this, because if a wireless headphone doesn’t sound good with Active Noise Cancelling enabled, it meaningfully lessens the appeal to most customers of this kind of product. However, Moondrop has thankfully included a preset that brings back a lot of the bass lost to ANC—the “Extra Bass” preset.

While it’s unfortunate that the EDGE was neither made to do this automatically nor more intuitively like much of the competition in higher price tiers, at this price & with the chips Moondrop has available to them, this is probably the best that could reasonably be expected.

So what we end up with is two usable presets that I’d recommend:

  • The Balanced preset that sounds good with ANC Off/Transparency
  • The Extra Bass preset that is moderately warmer and less bassy, for use with ANC mode

Both are balanced enough to be better sounding than most of the competition, even those in the higher price tiers.

Sound

Finally we get to the meat of this review, and why I actually think EDGE deserves discussion: It sounds pretty freakin good. With that being said, before we move forward it’s worth establishing some context for how I judge the sound of headphones like this when I make a claim like that.

My biggest problem with closed back headphones tends to be an overly-hyped, thin sounding midrange. My biggest problem with wireless ANC closed back headphones is that they usually do not manage treble well at all, having many narrow band resonances & an overall treble-boosted signature. Add this to the fact that closed backs—ANC or no—tend to have fairly boomy bass, it all comes together to form a “typical” tuning that I hear as V-shaped, sacrificing things like vocal naturalness and instrument timbre for an “exciting” sound.

Even if it’s not perfect (and it definitely isn’t) the EDGE avoids all of these issues. I’ll be handling most of the review using ANC On with the Extra Bass preset, since for a product like this I assume most people will be using it with ANC enabled.

Starting with how the sound profile of EDGE affects bass instruments, the first thing I noticed was that the headphone definitely leans warm and gives bass guitars a little push to their fundamentals and primary harmonics that can cause them to sound a bit more prominent. Definitely not egregiously so, but there’s definitely a bit of extra meat on the bones.

Kick drums sound large and a bit rounded, and bass guitars sound powerful, if a bit rotund. I’d say the presentation is heavily biased towards sub-bass over mid-bass, so things like kick drums and synth basses sound a bit more rumbly than punchy or bouncy.

Moving upward in frequency, there’s a notable coloration in the lower midrange around 280 Hz that adds an extra sense of warmth to much of the presentation here. Male vocals in particular always have a sense of intimacy and fullness to them that thankfully isn’t overdone and doesn’t serve as an occlusive or overbearing sense of heft.

Snare drums have enough fundamental emphasis in the 100-300 Hz band that I never felt like they were overly crackly or chalky, even on recordings where the drummer was hitting very hard. That said, there were some recordings where they were a little more “doof-y” or pillowy than seemed appropriate/normal.

Electric guitars had a noticeable emphasis on fundamentals, but also appropriate representation in the overtones to keep the throatiness, pick attack, and overall texture present. Because of the midrange above 500 Hz being pretty stellar for this class of products, even if the overall tilt is a bit warm, most things are kept from being too muffled sounding.

Speaking of which, the midrange proper is likely the highlight of this headphone’s tuning. While yes there’s a minor dip in the 500 Hz region that seems to make the lower midrange bloom a bit more apparent, the structure of the midrange above that is better than even many passive closed back headphones—let alone other ANC headphones which are often much weirder here.

Despite the slight bloom, vocals sound natural and unproblematic almost as a rule with this headphone, and even if it gets a few other things a bit less correct—pianos sound a little cuppy due to the 500 Hz cut, for example—I can’t help but feel like this alone is a big benefit that this design has over its competition.

Treble is typically where headphones have issues for me, but it’s actually another area where the EDGE makes itself distinct from its competition… because it’s honestly pretty excellent here.

Now, because I tend to be very accommodating of a more relaxed treble presentation, this does mean that EDGE might be too dark for some people. But in my view, the EDGE lacking deal-breaking treble resonances means it’s a very versatile headphone that, even if it’s not exciting, makes very few things sound outright bad.

Vocals don’t have any annoying sibilance or grittiness, ride cymbals sound properly balanced between their knock, clang, and fizz, and hi-hats aren’t annoyingly shrill or tizzy. Snare drums don’t sound over-emphasized in their chains or overly crackly, kick drums don’t sound like plasticky basketballs, and acoustic guitars have enough featheriness and clarity to sound complete without sounding overly metallic or glassy.

What this leaves me with is a warm, perhaps slightly dark tonality that worked quite well for basically any music I threw at it, even more esoteric genres. I do also want to note that even though the frequency response itself looks “lumpy,” it doesn’t really sound as chaotic as it looks. While it may look pretty rocky and uneven, its dips and peaks are seemingly in safe enough spots that I come away from this feeling like EDGE is easily one of the better tunings I’ve heard in the wireless ANC closed back headphone space.

Presentation

While the tuning here certainly has the benefit of nothing sounding outright bad, I think certain colorations do unfortunately contribute to it being a bit of a nothing burger when it comes to most subjective qualities.

For example, the bit of extra bloom in the 200-300 Hz region paired with the relaxed treble does result in a bit of perceived lethargy and pudginess when it comes to dynamics. It has a very rounded, slightly soft approach to transient attack and it’s not what I would call an especially precise or nuanced presentation of swings in volume at the higher or lower end of the volume distribution.

The extra sub-bass does contribute positively to the sense of size and grandeur that certain elements can have, but since a lot of music doesn’t have a ton of sub-bass it’s rare this effect comes up unless you listen to a lot of electronic music or soundtrack music.

In terms of soundstage I find the EDGE to be pretty decent, actually. The fact that it doesn’t have any midrange or treble forwardness to make things sound artificially close means the music itself sounds nicely relaxed and placed at a slight distance from me. Not “in the room” or even “outside of my head,” but definitely not “inside my eyeballs or brain” like many other headphones or IEMs do. I don’t get any prevailing sense of artificial height from the presentation like I do with much brighter headphones, either.

I do notice a minor lack of clarity with regards to imaging, which to my ear sounds like it partially to do with the lower-midrange push as well as the dark mid-treble. It kind of reminds me of the Audeze MM-500 in this regard; it is well tuned and versatile, but the images themselves are a bit blurry and soft-edged.

Thankfully, even if most of the “subjective” aspects of presentation are only okay, the timbre is quite good here thanks to the lack of any errant treble peaks or massive midrange colorations. I don’t get any metallic, plastic, or glassy qualities that color the music in an unappealing way. That said, there’s definitely an omnipresent warmth with this headphone that will either be a love or hate it thing for many listeners.

Vs. UGREEN HiTune Max5C

The UGREEN HiTune Max5C has been making waves in a few smaller communities because, like the EDGE, it offers an uncharacteristically solid tuning for the price of only $40. However, there are a few caveats.

The first is that the ergonomic design is quite poor. It does not couple properly with where my ear meets my jaw and causes a pretty big leak, therefore nerfing the bass response significantly. This design flaw may explain the second caveat, which is that for some reason they thought this was a good tuning to give consumers by default when they first open the box:

This is ridiculous, but I admit it’s probably less ridiculous than it looks above when I’m listening to it because of the aforementioned leak. That said, even with that leak its way too muddy and resonant for me to enjoy listening to it. However, this isn’t the tuning people have been praising this headphone for, instead the “Jazz” preset you can load in the app is what people are getting excited about:

And, fair play, this is a solid tune! Definitely not perfect but, similar to the EDGE, much more reasonable than we typically see from wireless ANC headphones. But this raises the question: which is better? UGREEN Max5C, or Moondrop EDGE?

It’s tough, and I think it really depends on what someone is looking for from an ANC device. When it comes to what I want from a wireless ANC headphone, the EDGE absolutely edges (hah) out the UGREEN for a few reasons.

The first is that the EDGE is way more comfortable for me. It’s not really close, the UGREEN’s pads are a little bit smaller and the fact that the cups don’t angle inward enough to actually fit my head/ears means both the sound and the isolation is compromised.

In terms of sound, I think I prefer the EDGE too. When I’m using a wireless ANC headphone, the two things I really really want are enough bass and low-midrange to drown out engine & environmental noise (which the EDGE has more of, on my head at least) and a relaxed treble that won’t make phone calls sound even worse than they already do. For these needs, which I assume are actually pretty typical of consumers of this kind of product, the EDGE is just a stronger all-around product.

However, it must be said that the Max5C’s tuning might be preferable to those who really want their wireless ANC headphone to have more of what they perceive as “detail” or “dynamics”. The latter is specifically where I think the Max5C in Jazz preset is honestly pretty shocking; it sacrifices a little bit of naturalness and versatility to get it, but the Max5C has noticeably vivid contrast when it comes to instrument texture or accurately displaying transient diversity. It also has more of a snappy “punch” to it across the board than the EDGE does.

Max5C also just has more treble overall, so for users who need more treble—either for things to sound timbrally correct, get more “detail,” or both—the Max5C is definitely a brighter headphone.

That said, for me the Max5C is a good sounding product that still fails at important things that the Moondrop EDGE doesn’t, ergonomics being the big one. I do also prefer the sound of the EDGE, but I think it’s likely many people would find both to sound pretty good for this class of product, with the big deciding factor being which headphone’s treble and ergonomics work better for a given user.

Conclusion

The Moondrop EDGE is one of the first audiophile headphones that I think could actually break into the wider consumer market, because it has a lot of the features non-audiophiles are looking for when they buy a headphone.

While these features—wireless, ANC, Transparency mode, multi-point pairing—are handled with varying levels of competence, it must be said that the EDGE is the cheapest over-ear headphone I currently have that I wouldn’t need extra EQ to enjoy. It’s even less expensive than the Porta Pro Wireless, while sounding significantly better.

So, even though there are a few flaws that can (and should) be nitpicked here, I really do think Moondrop has done something special with this one. It has huge replaceable earpads, is lightweight, comfortable, and couples well to my head, has passable ANC, transparency, and wireless functionality, and sounds pretty freaking good too.

It’s not gonna blow anyone’s pants off with mind-bending details or skull-crushing dynamics, but listening to music with it for this review was among the more painless review periods I’ve ever had with a headphone, which at $80 would be impressive even if it didn’t have all of the bells and whistles it has.

I just wish it didn’t have the anime voice.

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