The Master & Dynamic MW75 Neuro Adds Brain Tracking To Great Headphones
The world of wireless audio gear is always expanding, yet it’s a rare treat to find something truly surprising. The MW75 Neuro, a collaboration between Master & Dynamic and Neurable, is that rare pair of headphones. It’s a high-end, audiophile-tier pair of wireless headphones with an integrated brainwave monitor – you read that right. Through its AI tech and a dozen Dry Fabric EEG sensors, these headphones monitor your focus during work and gaming and suggest breaks before you even know you need one; the goal is to keep your focus and productivity at their peak for longer without wearing yourself out. The headphones don’t come cheap and you’ll need to wear them as much as possible to benefit the most, but they sound great and feel like a genuine peek into the future of wearable tech.
Master & Dynamic MW75 Neuro – Design and Features
The MW75 Neuro is a premium pair of wireless headphones retailing for $700. That puts them $100 more than the original, but if you’re already in the market for headphones like these, the extra hundred probably won’t be a dealbreaker. In light of the added technology inside of them, that it’s only $100 more expensive is actually pretty surprising. But make no mistake, this is a luxury product and isn’t trying to compete with the likes of Soundcore, JBL, or even Bose.
What we have is a niche within a niche. First, you’ll need to be the kind of user that’s willing to spend $700 on a pair of headphones. You’ll also need to be someone who’s willing to spend $100 extra for features that could improve your productivity and focus. To find the most value in that, you’ll need to be someone who’s able to wear headphones regularly throughout the day – or someone who was planning on buying the MW75 anyway and thinks its brain monitoring feature is neat enough to pay for.
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If you find yourself in a position to be considering such expensive headphones, the MW75 Neuro is certainly worthy of your consideration. It’s a damn fine pair of headphones that offer great sound, decent ANC, and a comfortable fit that doesn’t leave your head sore or ears sweaty. It’s important to note that, at least for now, you’ll need an iPhone to use the Neurable app and take advantage of its focus tracking features, so Android users should hold off for now.
Starting with the headphones, they’re very similar to the original MW75, which is completely to their benefit in build quality. The MW75 is well-known for its craftsmanship and premium materials. Instead of using plastic and faux leather like many headphones, it uses CNC-milled aluminum for its earcups and yokes. It’s colored using anodization, which is much more durable than paint and should last many years with proper care. The headband is trimmed in genuine lambskin – whether that’s a pro or a con is up to you but it is soft.
I’m an especially big fan of the earcups’ design, which are oval-shaped and have circular faceplates with the Master & Dynamic logo on them. Instead of being metal all around, each faceplate is made of tempered glass. Yes, it’s a fingerprint magnet but it looks great. The right faceplate is even touch sensitive so you can directly interact with the Neurable app without having to open it on your iPhone. The other controls, which consist of volume and track controls on the right and power and ANC on the left, are all positioned along the outer ring and are easy to learn and use.
The MW75 Neuro is available in four different colors: navy, silver, black, and olive. Two of these, navy and olive, look unique to the Neuro, while black and silver look almost indistinguishable from the original MW75.
The biggest difference between the two models is the ear cushions. The original featured cushions trimmed in lambskin while the Neuro’s are made of black fabric with gray stripes surrounding the ring. These, it appears, are part of the Dry Fabric EEG monitoring system. The cushions are still held on by magnets, so we may see swappable alternatives available in the future, but for now, the included set is it. I actually prefer their fabric to most leather ear pads I’ve tried, so these are perfectly fine.
Inside the earcups, we have the same drivers as the MW75. There are no big acoustic changes here which is again to the headphones’ benefit. The drivers are typical in size at 40mm but are coated in beryllium to enhance their speed and responsiveness. Metallic coatings aren’t unusual among audiophile headphones but they’re not common in the wireless world due to their increased cost. By using such a coating, the diaphragm of both drivers becomes more rigid while remaining lightweight. When implemented correctly as done here, it offers improved clarity and extension in the high and low registers.
As a flagship pair of headphones, it also comes with the usual other features you would expect at this price. It uses four beamforming microphones to deliver active noise cancellation, transparency mode, and voice isolation in calls. It also offers multipoint connectivity to connect with two devices at once and can even act as a DAC/amp (external soundcard) for your computer when connected over USB Type-C.
Battery life is good but EEG monitoring drains it much faster. It’s rated for 32 hours of listening without ANC and 28 hours with. Constant brainwave tracking drops that all the way to ten hours and if you use ANC at the same time, it’s even less. If you plan on tracking your focus consistently, you’ll need to plug them in every night so they’re ready to go for the next day.
Master & Dynamic MW75 Neuro – Brainwave Tracking and App Support
You’ll consider the MW75 for their sound quality first, but the Neuro’s appeal lies in its ability to monitor your brainwaves in real time. Neurable has developed a system where the built-in EEG monitors can pull data from around the ear region and recognize patterns associated with focus and attention. Using an algorithm assisted by AI, it’s able to amplify these signals to an actionable degree and relay that to you through its companion app.
The big question is why. As the company’s founder, CEO, and active-in-research neuroscientist, Dr. Ramses Alcaide, explained to me in a briefing, the brain doesn’t have pain receptors. While you’re working or gaming, by the time you feel like you need a break, your brain has already been strained for some time. By monitoring your brainwaves, the headphones and companion app are said to be able to accurately track levels of focus and recommend breaks before you realize you need them. This, in theory, can keep you more productive and energized throughout the day and help prevent burn out.
Neurable’s brainwave monitoring technology is impressive, and it became a practical tool for my own productivity.
I admit, I was skeptical. How could a pair of headphones with sensors around your ears replace real EEG sensors which are positioned directly over the areas physicians need to monitor? As Dr. Alcaide explained, the region of your brain most activated when focusing on a task is actually toward the front, around your forehead. But because the entire brain is electrically active (or resonant, if you will), the signals that reach the regions around your ears are quieter but present.
To see the concept in action, he showed me a stripped down version of the monitoring occuring in the app that graphed his focus in real time. From focusing on a series of numbers, to conversing, to reading a chat message where I asked a random question and considering his answer, I watched the graph rise and fall in real time.
As of this writing, you’ll need an iPhone to use the app and without it, you may as well pick up the standard MW75. Inside, it gamifies your focus and productivity tracking, awarding you points for engaging in regular focus tracking sessions, maintaining high focus, and keeping consistent with its tracking to build a robust data set. It gives you motivational messages on the home page and insights into when you focus best and how long your best attention span was.
The more interesting aspects are the insights it gives you into your focus and productivity. After every session, it presents a graph of your focus throughout that period which is then stored in an archive you can access on another tab.
It became more interesting to track and monitor when I started thinking about how different types of music affect my focus and productivity, the impact of sound in the background, and whether or not I focus better on different types of tasks than others. On a practical level, it helps you to min-max your own productivity.
The MW75 Neuro is the company’s maiden voyage into the mainstream with this technology, but it’s surprisingly effective as it is applied in the MW75 Neuro and it’s clear that Neurable is onto something. It made a difference for me and provided some surprising insights that I’ll discuss in the next section.
Master & Dynamic MW75 Neuro – Sound Quality and Performance
Ultimately, headphones need to deliver on sound quality and the MW75 is a great pair of wireless headphones for listening to music. They have a V-shaped tuning with elevated bass and treble and slightly recessed midrange vocals. This results in a sound that is both powerful and rich in detail. It’s a great listening experience straight out of the box.
V-shaped tunings are notoriously popular, so you don’t need to be an audiophile to enjoy it. It excels particularly in genres like pop and hip-hop. The kick drum in Eminen’s Somebody Save Me has punch and the song feels wide and well filled out. Simultaneously, acoustic tracks like Pink Skies by Zach Bryan offered a crispness and sparkle to the acoustic guitar that made it sound extra vibrant and engaging.
I expect the bass to be a bit tighter and more refined at this price, however. It sounds fine, but competing wireless headphones like the Edifier Stax Spirit S5 are flat out better despite costing $200 less. The MW75’s bass isn’t bad but EQ customization would have been a welcome feature to make adjustments and dial in its performance for my taste and it wasn’t available in time for this review. Now that the headphones are released, however, you should be able to configure their sound to match your unique preferences. As with many things in the audiophile hobby, it’s subjective.
It’s a great listening experience straight out of the box.
Active noise canceling was surprisingly good. Master & Dynamic isn’t known for its ANC but the MW75 Neuro blocks out a good amount of noise, even in a home setting. Its focus is primarily on drowning lower frequencies, but it also cancels some mid-range noise as well. Sony and Bose still rule the roost in terms of ANC, but the MW75 gets the job done just fine.
Though it wasn’t ready for my pre-release testing, the headphones should be compatible with Master & Dynamic’s app, which is where EQ adjustments will need to be made. That means you’ll need two apps to access all of the features of these headphones. Neurable’s separate app is purely about focus tracking.
On that front, the headphones have won me over and no one could be more surprised than me by that fact. I went into this review with a healthy dose of skepticism. But, after using them for a couple of weeks, it has actually proven to be quite insightful.
For example, the difference in my focus and productivity at home versus at the office is night and day. At home, I generally spend my time in low focus mode. When writing, everything takes much longer and this explains why. Though I thought I was productive, the sound of my kids playing in the next room and the intermittent interruptions from Discord, social media, and family coming to say hi made it rare for me to achieve a high focus state. At work, on the other hand, I spend most of my time in a high focus state and get articles written noticeably faster.
I’ve also found that, despite being a night owl, I tend to be most productive in the late morning. Likewise, when I listen to music when I work, my focus drops. When I listen to music with vocals, it really drops. Playing Battlefield 2042, I’m pretty well locked in and have longer periods of intense focus. Baldur’s Gate 3, which is much slower paced, I tend to hover around medium focus.
The most interesting quality of this tracking, however, is how it caused me to get introspective. For example, though recommending breaks is a key feature of the app, it rarely happened for me because I now realize extended periods of high focus are difficult for me. My brain naturally takes breaks. And though neither brand makes any claims about being able to diagnose or indicate any health conditions, I find myself curious about if and how professional assessment could impact me. If anything, it made me aware of patterns within myself I had never noticed before.
That, to me, is where this product really shines. Yes, it monitors you and tracks you and gives you goals and points to keep you motivated. But really, it helps you understand yourself better, to notice things and ask questions about and of yourself. And, if you’re a person that has trouble stepping away from work or a game, it can give you early reminders to take short breaks and keep yourself fresh and your performance high.
They’re not great for gaming, though. They’re not intended to be and that becomes all the more apparent the more you try to fit them into that mold. The tuning and sound quality are fine but the soundstage is fairly compact, so they lack the immersive quality of the best gaming headsets. The real killer, though, is that plugging in to connect disconnects from the app, so tracking is disabled.
For this review, I played Battlefield 2042 and Baldur’s Gate 3 over Bluetooth 5.1 and there’s a noticeable delay between what you see on screen and hear in your ears. While some headsets support low latency or gaming modes to keep sound and video in sync, this isn’t one of them, and without 2.4GHz support, fast-paced shooters aren’t recommended. Slower-paced games are less affected but shooters are rough. I wouldn’t ever play an FPS over Bluetooth if I didn’t have to for a review like this.
The microphone quality is fine, but nothing to write home about. People on the other end of the line were able to hear me clearly, though the headphones didn’t filter out as much background noise as my Sony WH-1000XM4s did. My voice did sound more full and natural, however, so it seems that Master & Dynamic opted for clarity over voice isolation.
Despite their lack of gaming prowess in competitive gaming, the MW75 Neuro remains a great pair of headphones that sound great and offer unique features you really can’t find anywhere else at this point.
Purchasing Guide
The MW75 Neuro is available directly from Neurable and through the Master & Dynamic web store. It is available in black, white, silver, navy, and olive colorways and retails for $699.99, $100 more than the original MW75 headphones.
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