sporcanm

I owned a Bose X headset for about half a year. When I began flying regularly with other people, I picked up a Lightspeed Zulu headset. I found that the only advantage the Bose has over the Lightspeed is that the clamping force is MARGINALLY lower with the Bose. This has not created a problem for me or my passengers, at all.

I have now sold my Bose X, and picked up another Lightspeed for my passengers to use. It is by far the superior headset, for MANY reasons. Let’s review!

- NOISE ATTENUATION: Bose X is just not as good as Lightspeed Zulu at this. If you are flying behind a high-revving engine such as a Rotax 912ULS, you will find that the Zulu is just as good at 5500 as it is at 2000 – which is to say, quite good, and better than Bose. This is quite a big deal by itself, and more than enough to get my attention and my future business, but Lightspeed didn’t stop there.

- MUSIC: For $850 (formerly $1000), you would assume that Bose could afford to spend ten bucks (or less) integrating a simple 1/8″ jack into the control box so that you could pipe in some music. For some strange reason, Bose elected not to do this. Not only has Lightspeed given you a 1/8″ jack for music, but they have also put a really nice DSP into the control box that lets you turn a sort of surround sound mode called Front Row Center on and off. It also has a mode where it will cut out the music if someone calls you up on the radio, although I have not been able to get that to work particularly well, so I leave that feature turned off. The sound quality is very good for an aviation headset. If your airplane is already wired for music, or you don’t mind wearing earbuds (which I tried with the Bose and found painful, as the Bose pressed them into my ear canal), this may not be a big deal to you. If you are a student pilot and have enough to worry about without music, this may not be a big deal to you RIGHT NOW, but once you’ve got a hundred or two hundred hours and you have enough free attention to enjoy some tunes, it WILL matter to you. The 1/8″ jack supports normal stereo input as well as two-way cell phone plugs.

- BLUETOOTH: You may not care about this, but isn’t it telling that Lightspeed – for $850, at a time when Bose X still cost fully $1,000 – was able to integrate a Bluetooth transciever? This is useful for picking up an IFR clearance on the ground, closing a flight plan, letting your SO know you’re taking off or on the ground without having to shut down the airplane first, etc.

- SERVICE: You’ll be paying well north of a hundred dollars to get your Bose X fixed out-of-warranty. Lightspeed routinely goodwills repairs outside of the warranty period. I have sent two different headsets (an OEM verison of their XC, as well as my older Zulus) in for service. The XCs were YEARS out of warranty, and I had lost my receipt for the Zulus. Both were repaired, FREE OF CHARGE, and shipped back to me. The only thing I had to pay for on either of these was the shipping costs to get the headsets to them – Lightspeed covered the shipping back to me. Now, which is better – paying $150 + shipping, or paying $0 + shipping? I’ll let you do the math on that one.

Bose just does not have it together on the X. It doesn’t do as good a job at attenuating noise as the Lightspeed Zulu. It doesn’t have an audio in port, which is ridiculous on a headset of this price range. It doesn’t have Bluetooth, which you may or may not care about, but which is nice to have. And – the final nail in the coffin – the service is nowhere as good.

Lightspeed, you have done a fantastic job on this headset, and because of it, you have earned a repeat customer. Keep up the good work!