$120 is an awesome price, so I hope you really enjoy them. On their own, I would say they are excellent sounding headphones, and very durably made (except the pads, ha ha!) I've dropped mine numerous times (sadly), but they keep working fine. But as Bluetooth headphones, there's nothing better. Soundwise, the B&O H8 sounded better, but what to expect at 5 times the price?! And the H8 were extremely delicate. I imagine one drop, and they're toast. Plus, the H8 constantly dropped the Bluetooth signal, even with the phone in my pocket, a meter away! I went online and found out that it's a common problem. The Backbeats never drop the signal, even when I go outside or in another room 50ft. away. The AKG Bluetooth's also sounded better (the best of them all, IMO, but I love AKGs), but the features on that model were nonexistent. Sound + features + durability + EQing + price = Backbeats hands down, no competition.
The only glitch is the headphone sensor thing: the feature that supposedly turns them off when you take them off your head, then turns them back on when you put them on your head. It tends to work the opposite, actually. My friend has the Pro 2, and it works the opposite for him too. So I turned them off fairly quickly after I bought them. It's all good to me, because the large center button on the left earcup pauses/restarts the music, allowing you to just do it manually.
It also has a great feature where, even if connected to a Bluetooth device, if you put them down for a while they will go into standby mode to protect the battery. All you do when you put them back on, is hit the center button on the right earcup. Then it will instantly reconnect, and you can push the left button to restart your tunes. Nice! That way you don't have to turn them on/off with the switch if you're using them all day, but have to take them off to do things.
Finally, that you can't replace the battery worries me. But so far, no issues. I charge them once a week, usually, and I use them every day and all day on weekends if I'm home. Not bad! I use them with noise cancellation on, as it sounds better than with them off, amazingly, (as most cans it's the opposite). And the noise cancellation works extremely well. So well, that when I pause the music, I often just leave the headphones on as I live in a small apartment so I can concentrate better on what I'm doing.
And don't forget, that you can attach a wire too (comes with it) if you need to. Though I have the same problems you do. I have some awesome headphones for the gym, but they're wired. The cable tends to stick to me when I exercise, of course, and is such an extreme hassle. But they play loud music at the gym, and my headphones are the best in the world for noise isolation. Haven't found anything that can replace them.
Well, it is bulky; but I wonder if "less bulky" means "less durable." That would not be good. Mine are built like a tank, which is good. As for the bass, they are really sensitive to EQ settings on your player. I use Poweramp with Android, which has a 10-band EQ that is really excellent. I drop the #2 slider way down and the headphones sound perfect.
Vesper wrote me today, and yes, those pads sound heavenly. But I have to do some kind of DIY gluing the pads to the base ring of the old pads. Sounds easy, I know, but I am simply hopeless at these things. Not really excited about that. Again, when I'm desperate I'll go to my shoe repair dude and see what he can do, if anything. For now, Scotch Tape sounds pretty good, ha ha ha!
