With remote work, work-from-home setups and long-distance collaborations at offices being a big thing nowadays, it makes sense for people to invest in better equipment meant for this purpose.
The Poly Voyager Surround 80 UC is a professional-grade, high-end headset that offers a plethora of features that is meant to elevate the experience in the work environment. And it’s pretty serious on what it can offer.
The question is, is it worth spending a premium on such a device? Better read on to find out.
If you’re not familiar yet, Poly used to be known as the brand Plantronics. Here in the Philippines, that brand may already be synonymous with the call center industry, holding an esteemed reputation while also being the most widely used headset brand in the industry.
Design and build quality
The Poly Voyager Surround 80 UC is a high-end headset and it certainly shows on its build quality. Each part feels premium having soft touch materials in its construction. A big part of that is PU leather material on the head band that is generously padded reaching until the earcups. This provides decent comfort even for extended wear.
The outer portion of the earcups are also finished with soft rubberized material making tap and swipe gestures for skipping tracks and adjusting volume feel satisfying. Even just adjusting the fit of the headband feels very rigid, inspiring confidence as far as wearing it over your head.
Practically nothing on this device would make one say that this isn't top-grade quality.
Without telling the price, I even asked our lifestyle editor if she thinks the headset I was wearing was expensive and I got a resounding yes.
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| Carbon Fiber Headband - Poly Voyager Surround 80 UC |
These are designed for use in a workplace so getting this wet in the rain or with sweat during exercise might not be a good idea. Poly does include a light but structured fiber case for the headphones for safekeeping in your bag for transport. This is probably their way to compensate for the headphones not being fully collapsible for travel, which I would have preferred more.
Sound quality
Of course, there’s no point in buying high-end headphones if they don’t sound good, and the Voyager Surround 80 UC also delivers on this aspect.
Pumping out the sound from the Surround 80 UC, are 40mm audio drivers that bring off terrific sound quality for most genres of music. Rich, clear and detailed would probably be the best words I’d choose to describe it. If you’re the type who likes to hear separate details of a musical arrangement, this will give you exactly that.
It sounds fairly natural, which is how I personally prefer my headphones to sound. This isn’t a pair to recommend for bass heads though. It’s somewhat tame on the bass and not too top heavy as well. There's definitely an observable presence on the low-end, but nothing that would overpower the other frequencies.
Although, its volume seems a bit on the weaker side as it sometimes ends up being set on a higher mark.
I have used this for editing audio on our YouTube videos and, yes, it did that wonderfully, too. My audio editing isn’t really what I would call professional quality, but there’s no question that you can rely on this to be used as a reference point to get editing tasks done.
The Surround 80 UC uses the Poly Lens app which allows customization and settings adjustments. It’s a pretty standard app for wireless headsets, nothing really special. Sadly though, there aren't any manual EQ adjustment options available for those who like to tweak the sound profile.
Active Noise Cancellation
One of the selling points this model really pushes for, is its ANC. With our experience, it does a pretty decent job of canceling a big portion of the environment. I wouldn’t consider the ANC on this to be better than others to a great extent, but I would say it plays around the league of the best ones.
It will cancel out the most noticeable noise for sure, but don’t expect to hear a totally silent environment even at not so noisy places. There will still be an observable amount of white noise leaking even at its highest settings.
An interesting setting on this though, is the one where it enhances spoken word from what it can capture within its vicinity. I’m guessing it captures the sound from its microphones and processes it for the user to hear it clearly. It really does make dialog sound clearer making this handy in an office setting. A likely use case is when we have co-workers talking to us on collaborative work.
Microphone quality
Microphone and call quality is a main focus of the Surround 80 UC, this features a boomless microphone setup with multiple microphones and it’s placed around different areas of the ear cup. In actual use, the sound is pretty straight forward without any noticeable coloration. It provides a clear audio quality just how a professional-grade headset should.
Connectivity
Poly offers a variety of options to connect the headphones to your source. This includes a Bluetooth dongle, a 3.5mm headphone jack and a USB-C to USB-C cable. But one key feature of the Surround 80 UC is its multi-point connectivity where you can connect two devices simultaneously with the headphones. When paired with multiple devices, the headphones would automatically choose its source based on whichever device is playing.
For people who like focusing on one device at a time, this may be a nifty feature to have as users won’t need to manually pair every time.
In my case though, I often find myself glancing on Facebook on my phone while having something playing from my laptop. And since both are paired to the headphones, I get confused whenever I expect to hear playback coming from my phone but then end up hearing what was playing on my laptop. In the end, I would just manually connect and disconnect like I would on any other bluetooth headphone.
On the plus side, the Poly Voyager Surround 80 UC maintains a very strong connection from its source. Normally, when doing chores around our home wearing any bluetooth listening device, playback would often get cut off when I reach a certain distance away. The Surround 80 UC allowed me to continue listening wherever I was in our condo unit without any dropouts.
The Surround 80 UC also offers seamless connectivity with a range of devices through its USB-A and USB-C connections. It’s also certified for use with platforms such as Microsoft Teams and Zoom.
Battery life
This device charges via USB-C just like any modern gadget nowadays and it doesn't need much time to get fully juiced up. Charging takes normally around an hour while battery life would usually take me about two days of use. That is when I mostly forget to turn it off when I’m not using it but surely, powering it off from time to time, it would last a lot longer.
Conclusion
Having spent a considerable time with this device, I can say I am thoroughly impressed by its sound quality, noise cancellation, and microphone quality. It’s also hard to miss out on the fine build quality and solid connectivity. Retailing for $449 USD (PhP 25,272), I still do find it hard to justify the premium price that this is being offered at.
Comparing it to other high-end consumer headphones, there are just a number of options which also offer a great listening experience while also being a great companion when we're out and about. Most of which have a collapsible design.
But in the end, this is still marketed as a work headset. So if you're really up for great microphone quality and you're always to be found on online calls or you happen to take collaborative work in the office seriously, then the Poly Voyager Surround 80 UC will still be a sensible investment for you.