Final Audio celebrated its fifteenth anniversary in 2022 and the Japanese manufacturer shows no signs of slowing down at all. The brand was established by former Sony Professional Sound and Molex employees and whilst the first three years were spent as an OEM manufacturer of headphones and IEMs for other brands, the decision to make their own branded products has made them a rather well-regarded manufacturer in Asia and Europe.
Everything is made in their factory in Japan and they offer a wide variety of products ranging from $50 (E3000) earphones to $4,200 (D8000) over-ear headphones.
We recently reviewed the Final Audio ZE3000 True Wireless Earbuds ($149) and felt they offered solid performance for the money. The Japanese manufacturer has followed that up with the ZE2000 ($139.99) and the step-up ZE8000 ($199) that offer a number of features that are missing from their other TWS earphones.
Wireless headphones are a recent addition to the line. At $149 USD, the UX3000 over-ear wireless noise cancelling (ANC) headphones offer an interesting mix of features at a much lower price than some of its competitors.
Unboxing UX3000
The packaging is well done and don’t be surprised to see these for sale in your local airport at some point in the near future. Inside the box, you will find the headphones, USB Type-C charging cable, 3.5mm auxiliary cable, a carry bag and product manual.
Build Quality
The headphones are manufactured almost entirely from polymer with a Shibo mottled finish.
Nissan uses a Shibo finish on the interior components in the 370Z and Skyline and many other electronic manufacturers use similar finishes on cameras, headphones, and other electronics that are sold in the Japanese market.
The headband is padded memory foam and wrapped in vegetable leather with a metal internal band for strength. Likewise, the hinges are also metal lined to give additional strength to the stress points.
The overall weight is kept to a minimum. When folded, the headphones take up very little space inside a knapsack or laptop bag and they proved to be rather durable on the road. Not even some strong shocks from other bags caused any damage to the headphones.
The cups feature 90° of rotation to the front and roughly 15° to the rear on the vertical axis and about the same 15° outward (at the top of the cup) on the horizontal.
The clamping force is fairly high and pads are vegetable leather to help prevent leakage and aid in passive isolation. Even those with larger than average heads should find these comfortable.
The controls are on the rear of the cups with the left cup having only the USB Type-C charge point at the bottom, and the ANC control slight above and to the rear.
The right cup has a 3.5mm jack at bottom and then volume down/back, volume up/forward, and power/pairing buttons along the rear edge.
The mic placement is on the right ear cup slightly forward of the 3.5mm jack. The position of these controls is important as there is no companion app. Any changes need to be made by the listener using the controls on the headphones.
Features
Internally, the UX300 features a 40mm driver (Final does not provide specifications but it is manufactured from its patented diaphragm material), a DSP chip for ANC, and 700mAh battery.
Bluetooth 5.0 support includes aptX, aptX LL (Low Latency) and AAC. Both Apple and Android users are both covered, along with those who may wish to stream from their PC.
The UX3000 supports Bluetooth multi-point as well, so connecting to a DAP for music listening and your phone for calls is supported and switching between the sources is straight forward when a call arrives.
The internal microphones help cancel outside noises with both music and phone calls; our testing demonstrated that callers on the other end did not pick-up wind noise in our call environment.
According to Final, the 700mAh battery provides up to 25 hours of listening time with ANC engaged, and 35 hours with it turned off.
We ran the test over a period of ten days, and those numbers proved to be somewhat optimistic on the part of the manufacturer. Our average was 22 hours with ANC engaged and 31 hours with it turned off.
The discrepancy can be explained from the perspective that it really depends on how your source device is connected to the headphones and the volume levels.
The louder you listen — the faster one drains the battery,
And specific codecs will impact the power management; we used aptX for the majority of the review and we think most users will experience a similar level of performance.
The DSP is used for what Final calls “Hybrid Active Noise Cancelling.” The company points out in their documentation that most noise-cancelling methods degrade sound quality and require heavy equalization to compensate. This in turn leads to fatigue and potentially shorter listening sessions.
Rather than go with off-the-shelf ANC options, Final Audio decided to design its own to cancel out ambient noise even when there is no music playing; the application of it in real world scenarios proved to be rather surprising.
We turned on the dishwasher, air conditioner and a number of other appliances to gauge the effectiveness of the ANC; with the exception of the alarm when the microwave finished cooking and two of our children speaking — the overall reduction in noise was rather significant.
It may not be as effective overall as the Sony XM5‘s category leading performance, but it comes rather close and does an excellent job of eliminating as much noise as possible to make music the focus.
The UX3000 also did a good job of maintaining sound quality with ANC engaged; the most noticeable change was some roll-off in the bass range but the rest of the music remained very clear and detailed.
Listening
The UX3000 offer a ‘V’ tuning with some additional emphasis in the treble range and that’s become rather common for headphones coming out of Japan.
If you are looking for a neutral sounding pair of headphones — the UX3000 are probably not for you.
The bass range has rather strong definition and impact and there is certainly more emphasis as you move up into the mid bass; that decision by Final gives the UX3000 a warmer sounding tonal balance in the low end.
Kick drums have relatively strong impact and although there is the aforementioned warmth in the mid bass, it remains relatively clean sounding. The additional presence begins to level off as you move into the lower midrange.
With the ANC enabled, there is some noticeable roll-off in the extreme low end but it doesn’t impact the mid bass or upper bass range in any audible way.
The transition from the upper bass into the lower midrange is rather clean sounding giving male vocals excellent clarity and tonal weight, but slightly recessed sounding in the mix.
Guitar has good growl and rasp as the sound moves into the upper midrange and lower treble range.
This also gives strings some additional presence and sets female vocals a bit more forward in the mix than their male counterparts. .
I’ve come to expect poor treble performance from ANC headphones as most sound artificial as they attempt to both tone down external noise and highlight the treble in the music.
The UX3000 actually fares better than most in the $150 to $250 category in the treble range; there is no compression and percussion does not sound metallic or chalky. The treble does begin to roll off around 12kHz, but the overall range delivers enough detail without sounding closed in or fatiguing.
One of the inherent issues of ANC is that in the pursuit of isolation, soundstage width and depth become casualties of that process. Whilst the UX3000 doesn’t deliver an overly large soundstage, it does manage to reproduce enough depth and width to create a level of spaciousness inside the closed ear cups.
Instrument separation is good and layering is better than expected which keeps things from feeling cramped on its small stage.
Final Thoughts
With so much competition in the wireless headphone category, Final’s UX3000 had to offer something genuinely different to really stand out.
The brand has not built a huge following around the globe by accident; their focus on value, strong sonic performance, and not sticking every last feature in the world into every product has made them a success. They know what their customers want and they work hard to make sure each product ticks off every box.
There is no control application or equalizer and if those functions matter to you — the UX3000 are not for you.
What should matter is how well these wireless headphones isolate you from external noise, their durability, comfort level, and how they reproduce music.
If you are looking for a sturdy pair of lightweight wireless headphones for a commute or student studying in a rather noisy dorm — there is a lot to like here.
For $149 USD, the UX3000 do a rather good job with all of these and it is hard to deny the surprising ANC performance that compared favorably to one of the best in the entire wireless category.
Are these one of the best $150 wireless ANC headphones currently available?
Quite possibly.
Where to buy: $149 at Amazon
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