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Today's smartphones are loaded with sensors. Soon, your headphones will be too.
These wireless, noise-canceling headphones from Parrot (yes, the same people who brought you the quad-copter you control with your iPhone) are packed with multiple sensors: capacitive surfaces, different types of microphones and an NFC chip.
The design is smart, too – they're crafted from high-quality materials that provide a comfortable fit, they're well-suited for travel, and they exhibit a quality of sound that's competitive with other higher-end noise-canceling models.
Parrot's Zik headphones aren't cheap ($400, available in July), but they are positively futuristic, and all the technology crammed into these cans make them far more interesting than your average pair of wireless over-the-ear headphones.
Control the headphones using touch gestures: swipe a finger up and down to adjust the volume, or swipe from side-to-side to go back and forth between songs.The feature that makes the biggest immediate impression is the touch-sensitive panel covering the entire outer surface of the right earcup. You can control the headphones using touch gestures: swipe a finger up and down to adjust the volume, or swipe from side-to-side to go back and forth between songs. A tap pauses the music, another starts it back up again. A tap is also used to answer an incoming call or to hang up.
There's an accelerometer – slide the headphones off, and your music stops automatically. Lift them back onto your ears, and the music starts up again. This works about 95 percent of the time. In my tests, the music sometimes didn't pause when I slid the headphones around my neck, though it always started up again when I put them back on.
An NFC chip in the left cup eases Bluetooth pairing. Tap an NFC-capable smartphone against the earcup (I used a Galaxy Nexus) and you'll get an on-screen prompt to pair the devices.
Two big microphones, one on the outside of each earcup, are used for noise-canceling. There are three other smaller mics on the undersides of the cups for talking on the phone, but they also aid in noise-canceling when you're on a call. Finally, there's a bone-conducting mic sewn into one of the earpads. It lines up with your jaw, detecting vibrations so the headphones can interpret what's your voice and what's not, further aiding the noise-canceling.
Yes, there's lots of cool stuff on the outside. But these are headphones. So what's inside?
The guts are actually fairly standard: a pair of 40-millimeter Neodymium drivers rated at 32 ohms. They're plenty loud and punchy, but the Zik's aren't as lively or vibrant as many of the audiophile headphones I've tried – even pairs that cost hundreds less, like the B&W P5s ($300), or my trusty ATH-M50s ($140). Granted, the Ziks are wireless, noise-canceling Bluetooth headphones, so they can't be expected to deliver the goods as crisply and cleanly as their tethered brethren. But bass grew muddy at higher volumes, and the noise-canceling feature generated a tad too much hiss for my taste.