The company Master & Dynamic, based in New York, is known for its exceptional sound and a wonderful range of audio peripherals. The price tags on its products also indicate its distinction. In fact, if there’s anything we have an issue with when it comes to headphones, it’s usually the price. With headphones starting at $450, M&D makes it clear that it’s not intended for budget-conscious consumers. They prefer to remain exclusive to professionals or “true music enthusiasts.”
Recently, M&D updated its latest headphones, the MW75, priced at $600. They integrated the headphones with electroencephalogram (EEG) sensors and rebranded them as the MW75 Neuro for $700. These sensors work like a regular EEG test that tracks and records the electrical activity in your brain. Except instead of wearing a cap with an array of wires attached to a computer, you can achieve the same results with a stunning pair of wireless headphones. Aside from the patterned ear covers indicating the presence of EEG electrodes inside, the MW75 Neuro looks exactly like the regular MW75, which is great considering how eye-catching headphones were in 2022.
The MW75 Neuro is designed to help you focus better. The EEG sensors read your brain activity and work with the Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) to record and present the results on the Neurable app, the accompanying smartphone app. These results include ideal focus hours and attention span periods, as well as push notifications when it’s time to take a break. The headphones also reward you for your focus, with a daily goal of 100 points.
MW75 Neuro: The Bad
Here is a complete list of what the MW75 Neuro can currently do: replace your focus minutes with reward points, congratulate you for achieving 100 points in a day, maintain a streak if you are consistent, and reveal some insights. These insights include the best time for your focus (morning, afternoon, evening, night), the best attention span for you in minutes, and the activity you focus on the most (work, study, other things, etc.). It also generates a chart for each session, revealing the time spent in high, medium, and low focus, as well as the number and duration of breaks taken.
As you can tell, the MW75 Neuro is best suited for individuals struggling with attention deficit issues, although M&D adds that they will soon add more brain conditions that the headphones can assist with. However, at the moment, all this data does not justify the $700 price tag. It’s simply not enough. I reached out to a friend with ADHD and asked for his opinion on the product after explaining all its features in detail. He said he definitely wouldn’t buy a product, regardless of the price, for the type of high-level data that the MW75 Neuro currently provides. He went as far as saying he might not even bother downloading the app. His rationale was that he was already aware of such high-level information about his focus patterns and would find switching between a pair of headphones and an app unnecessary.
I agree with my friend on this matter. The MW75 Neuro is the kind of tool that you find very novel at first just because it’s a new concept, but you quickly get bored of it after a few weeks, as I did with my review unit. I found that I had no real “reason” to continue tracking my focus. And let’s be honest: none of us have the time to check a chart of our focus patterns once each task is done. And perhaps someone without attention deficit issues would find it completely unnecessary.
What doesn’t really help with the impracticality of the MW75 Neuro as all-day headphones is its extremely short battery life, ranging from eight to nine hours with both ANC and EEG enabled. I often found these things running out of juice when I needed them. The only way to use them regularly with ANC and EEG is to recharge them every day. It’s not impossible, but the average consumer is likely to find it too much effort, especially if they don’t see great value in what they’re getting.
Closely tied to the above point is the fact that this device is marketed as a means to draw conclusions about how different activities (yoga, coffee, etc.) affect your focus time. But I can’t wear a 378-gram device with a battery life of eight to nine hours on my head long enough to notice these patterns. So, I’ll need something far less intrusive.
To make matters worse, the app accompanying it had major connection issues. It never recognized my headphones in the first attempt when I clicked “Start Focus Session” (meaning I was allowing it to start recording my brain activity when starting a task). Although it quickly connected once turned on, and the Bluetooth page in my settings confirmed that, the Neurable app always asked me to connect the headphones first. I had to switch to the settings app, not do anything there, and then go back to Neurable. I simply tried waiting on the Neurable app, but that never worked.
For several days, it simply refused to recognize the Bluetooth connection. I tried waiting, restarting the app, going into the settings. Nothing worked, so I eventually gave up on those days. I hope the connection issues were due to the app being in beta and will be resolved upon launch.
Frankly, I was unable to use the Neuro device several times when I wanted to simply because the battery ran out, or it didn’t recognize the Bluetooth connection, or failed to activate all its sensors despite ensuring my hair was fully pushed back and my head and ear covers were in full contact. Yes, I could gather data from them once or twice a day, but that’s not realistic for me and most people, and I would only do that for review purposes. I deliberately kept my real and natural usage pattern.
Since these headphones failed to be the all-day headphones I use for several reasons, I couldn’t really trust their results very much. It told me I focus better in the evenings. But I think the reason for that is that I accidentally used them in the evenings most of the time, where I had time to recharge them and deal with their connectivity issues.
MW75 Neuro: The Good
Regardless of how useful or not the tracking is currently, it is extremely accurate. It charts your stats with extreme precision, and I have to give them that. Any drop or rise in your attention is immediately logged and displayed when the session is over. I found that attention span metrics helped me focus ultimately. Seeing that “your best attention span was four minutes” at the end of a one-hour session was extremely embarrassing.
Closely tied to the point above is that you tend to act differently when you know your brain activity is being recorded. A big part of my experience with the MW75 Neuro simply relied on wanting to have a perfect chart with plenty of blue bars (high focus minutes) and fewer yellow bars (low focus). So, I think I can say that it pushed me to focus better most days. Did it change my work routine entirely? No, I was hoping the points system would incentivize me to focus more. It did, but I wish it was less lenient. I quickly reached 100 points, and there won’t be much incentive after that.
Let’s not forget that for $700, you still get a great pair of headphones that I can’t stop admiring: excellent ANC and great sound. You don’t always have to use the brain features in the MW75 Neuro; if that’s disabled, you still have a great pair of headphones. I particularly admire M&D’s decision to include physical buttons on all their products. Navigating these headphones was easy.
Verdict
It cannot be denied that the MW75 Neuro has started on a good note but needs more utility to justify its price. M&D says they will soon be adding ChatGPT functionality, allowing you to use head gestures to respond to messages on your phone. There is also Spotify integration coming, which will tell you the best type of music for your focus. The company is optimistic about adding more brain conditions to the headphones as well.
While I look forward to all these updates, I can’t justify buying the MW75 Neuro today based on future promises. We’ve seen a trend of incomplete tools with Humane’s AI Pin and Rabbit R1. The recently launched iPhone 16 also joins this list, which isn’t technically complete but is marketed as a feature that is yet to be launched – Apple Intelligence. I believe in purchasing a tool for what it is today, not what it can be tomorrow.
I love the concept of MW75 Neuro’s design. It’s great to have a tool to motivate focus, but it needs to put in much more effort and make far fewer mistakes to become something I truly want to reach for every day. I’m very excited to see how this product evolves in the future.
