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AI-generated summary
The Dali io-4 is the brand’s first wireless headphone; the Dali io-6 sets itself apart by including active noise cancellation.
To keep it short for those who don’t want to read the rest: this is the headphone I was most disappointed by. To be honest, I tried it for a few hours after it arrived, then sent it back. The return went very smoothly, I should say — thanks to Cobra (a nice change from Amazon).
Let me take you through a tour of the io-4. For context, I was a long-time user of the Bose QC35 and the Sony WH-1000XM3 , so I’ll be drawing on that experience to compare the Dali.
First, why did I buy this headphone? For a while now, I’d been looking for a complement to my AirPods for listening to music. When I say listening, I mean attentive listening without doing anything else at the same time.
To that end, I’d tried both open-back and closed-back hi-fi headphones. When the Dali came out, I thought it was surely the best of both worlds: a portable hi-fi headphone that’s also wireless. I compared the Dali in wired mode against an Audio Technica MSR7b to help me decide.
From the very first minutes of listening, I was very disappointed ☹️ — a flat sound that’s really lacking in detail. Very little dynamics; where the Sony or the Bose will blow you away in their own way, the Dali is flat. A flat or neutral sound isn’t necessarily uninteresting, especially when it’s rich in detail.
For example, the Bose QC35 is capable of pulling out far more micro-details than this Dali.
I can’t call this headphone musical — the lack of life when listening is deeply unsettling to me.
As for the rest: the build quality is nice, and it’s a pleasure to handle compared to the Sony or Bose. The controls are proper physical buttons, which I prefer, and they’re probably more durable in the long run. The Dali doesn’t have multipoint connection, but a single button press is all it takes to switch between sources — much faster than the Sony …
The Dali io-4 doesn’t come with a hard carry case, unlike its older sibling the io-6, which costs €100 more.
The passive isolation is really good; I imagine the io-6 with active noise cancellation holds up pretty well too. But up against the competition in this space, the only criterion that could have set it apart is audio quality — and that’s where it fails 😒.
There are very few reviews of this headphone that actually tell you the truth about its audio qualities. Most reviews spend more time talking about noise cancellation, comfort, and pairing ease — but surely the main criterion is the audio, isn’t it?
So honestly, no — this headphone 🎧 falls short on every front, except perhaps the build quality, but that’s not the number-one criterion for an audio headphone. 👎
