I've been using the Bose 700 for the last 28 days now so thought it's a good time to share my views on it.
Before buying the headset I spent quite a long time in reviewing it online. Two significant negatives that I gleaned from my hours of reviewing it online were: a) Compulsory to enable GPS Location in phone to use the headset, b) Bose Music app faces connectivity issues with the headset.
Now that I have used it for a month let me clear up these two first. Bose 700 uses a Bluetooth standard that most recent phones support called Low-Energy Bluetooth. In simple words, Android developers have made it mandatory to have GPS Location enabled for external apps (like Bose Music) to connect to devices using Low-Energy Bluetooth. This is why during first setup of Bose Music app with the Bose 700, and any other future instances where you need the Bose Music app to change any settings on the Bose 700, you need GPS Location to be turned on for this to happen. Bose Music app is terribly buggy in this connectivity aspect as sometimes even if location and bluetooth is on and the phone is successfully connected to the headset, Bose Music app fails to recognise it. You may need to do one or two connects and disconnects before the Bose Music app successfully recognises it. This is the only major flaw in the headset I've noticed (that is, connectivity with the Bose Music app). Now to the good part, you do not need to enable Location to use the headset once initial pairing is done and you have set your desired Noise-Cancellation levels and Assistant settings through the Bose Music app. I prefer to keep location off to save battery and I have used the headset with location off (and some days Bose Music app uninstalled as well) for the past 20 days. No issues at all. Calls, music, noise cancellation, etc work excellent.
I use the Bose 700 for two hours of calls everyday, including calling from noisy trams, train stations, etc. The call quality is so good, the person on the other end of the line never knows where I am. It's so good that even if I am in a train station I can claim that I am at home.
Coming to music quality, the biggest con that everyone mentions is that there is no inbuilt equaliser in the Bose Music app. I agree it's a miss and probably a feature Bose is working on, but for the time being I find the equaliser in my music app (I use YouTube Music) to be equally effective. Most popular music apps have their own equaliser so I don't see a need for complaint there.
Music quality is awesome too. I usually listen at Noise Cancellation level 5 (out of 10). Most irritating noises are blocked out as long as music is playing. I can still hear some of the sounds around me even at Noise Cancellation level 10, the highest level, if music volume is low. I think Bose allows this purposely as (think about it) they are able to block 100% of these noises during phone calls from reaching the person on the other end.
And about the thing that took me a while to figure out, turning the device on/off/connecting/disconnecting bluetooth is just one tap on the button marked with the Bluetooth symbol on right earcup.
If you buy this device buy it for call quality and comfort, as compared to the Bose 700's big-size, bluetooth earbuds will give you equally good music quality and small-size advantage so easy to carry, but call quality on any bluetooth earbuds is always bad.
Also it helps that Amazon allows no-questions asked 30-days return which is what encouraged me to buy this in the first place.
Edited on 5th Feb 2020
Have been using the latest version of Bose Music android app from the past few weeks and I have to say it's fixed the connectivity issues. The app works very well now. Good job Bose!
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