Rise of the Enterprise Earbuds

It’s tough for even high-end earbuds to stand out these days, so companies have started diving deeper into niche earbuds. The Poly Voyager Free 60+ may look like standard earbuds, but these have some unique features meant to make your long workday on calls and video chats more pleasant.

Poly is the name of HP’s office brand, formerly known as Plantronics. This should explain the more business-forward focus of the Voyager Free 60+ earbuds, namely the touchscreen on the charging case and the Bluetooth dongle to connect the earbuds to your PC easily.

It’s clear from using the Poly Voyager Free 60+ that they’re great around the office, but will they work for you at home?

Sleek Design and a Super-Charged Case

The look of the Poly Voyager Free 60 earbuds is familiar, similar to Apple’s AirPods Pro, but slightly slimmed down. We’re looking at the Poly Voyager Free 60+ package in black (it’s also available in white), which bundles the headphones with a Bluetooth dongle and the wireless charging case.

This charging case is thicker than normal, mostly thanks to the touchscreen. Of course, as we’ll look at later on, the addition of the touchscreen means you’re more likely to keep the case on your desk than in your pocket, so the extra heft shouldn’t matter too much.

You can also buy the Poly Voyager Free 60 earbuds with a standard charging case, which lowers the price and also delivers a much slimmer package.

Solid Fit and All-Day Comfort

As business-focused earbuds, the expectation is that you’re typically going to be wearing these for hours a day. If that’s the case, comfort is important, but HP sticks with the standard earbud fit kit: small, medium, and large silicone ear tips. I typically use medium tips, and they fit me just fine with the Voyager Free 60 earbuds.

The look of the earbuds has the actual earbud sticking out from the stem more than usual. This looks like it might not be comfortable, but in my case, it was the opposite. I wouldn’t say these are unusually comfortable, but they never felt uncomfortable during my testing.

I’ll point out that the design of the earbuds had me questioning how well they would stay put, but I never had an earbud fall out.

Unique Controls and the Poly Lens App

The Poly Voyager Free 60+ earbuds feature standard Bluetooth 5.3 connectivity. Codec support is fairly deep, with aptX and LC3 included alongside the standard SBC and AAC codecs you’d typically expect to find. That said, LC3 is only possible when using the included dongle for plugging into your PC.

This makes connecting the earbuds to a PC easier than the typical Bluetooth setup, but unfortunately, the connectivity to the dongle is still via Bluetooth. Whereas other earbuds like the Logitech G Fits use a 2.4GHz signal, that option isn’t present here, meaning audio has significant latency. This is fine at the office, but it makes the Voyager Free 60s a no-go for gaming.

A more unique feature is the ability to stream wired audio from 3.5mm audio jacks to your earbuds. All you need is the included USB-C to 3.5mm cable, which plugs into the case, and then streams the audio to your earbuds over Bluetooth. There’s some latency, but the audio quality is great, and this is a useful way to use wireless headphones with wired-only devices (like an airplane’s seatback entertainment system).

Each earbud features a button that you can press at the base of the stem to answer and end calls or hold to trigger your phone’s voice assistant. Each earbud also features swipe controls, which you can customize using the Poly Lens app, available for iPhone and iPad, Android, Windows, and macOS. A beta version for Chrome OS is also available.

Many controls that would usually either require multiple taps or using the Poly Lens app are available right on the case. You can view battery status, control playback, mute yourself on calls, and switch between ANC and Transparent modes all from the touchscreen.

Sound Quality: Voice First, Music Second

The Poly Voyager Free 60+ earbuds are driven by a 10mm dynamic driver within each earbud. These offer the typical 20Hz to 20kHz frequency range, though when in Speech mode, the headphones switch to a narrower, more voice-focused 200Hz to 6.8kHz range.

In general, these headphones are aimed at calls and video chats. Other voice-first mediums like podcasts and audiobooks also work well on the Voyager Free 60, but these hold up fairly well when it comes to music as well.

Listening to “Emotion Sickness” by Queens of the Stone Age, the earbuds highlight the metallic-sounding reverb on the guitars. There’s plenty of power in the low end, though this was partly because I was listening on the default Bass preset. This doesn’t seem to add bass when it isn’t already there but instead delivers on the present bass frequencies.

Turning to Danger Mouse’s “Belize (feat. MF DOOM),” the song sounded much bassier, mostly thanks to the style of the production. The kick drum has plenty of thump, while the bass line rumbles just right. Surprisingly, the sound didn’t change much at all when I switched the EQ to the Flat setting.

Overall, the sound is good for music, but not close to other music-focused earbuds in the same price range.

ANC and Calls: A Mostly Indoor Affair

The Voyager Free 60+ earbuds feature active noise cancellation (ANC) in two modes: adaptive and standard. Adaptive mode is meant for when you’re moving around, adapting to changing conditions, while standard mode works best when you’re on your couch or at the desk, where the environment is relatively unchanging.

The ANC is relatively effective and features sidetone, controllable by the Poly Lens app, to let you hear your own voice to prevent talking too loudly. That said, I noticed some glitchy sounding issues whenever I tried to use Siri while testing the earbuds.

As is the case with many higher-end earbuds, the Voyager Free 60+ also features a decent-sounding Passthrough mode, also known as Transparency mode. This also has two different modes: a Speech mode, tailored toward hearing the voices of those around you, and an Environment mode meant to let you hear your surroundings, like traffic on a busy street.

The earbuds use a three-mic array to accurately capture your voice while reducing background noise. Indoors, this works well, and when I called a friend, he couldn’t hear someone else talking to me standing around six feet away. Voice quality is definitely better than the quality of your laptop’s built-in microphone.

That said, these don’t do a great job of canceling wind noise. Granted, it was a particularly windy day when I recorded the below samples, but if you’re looking for earbuds for outdoor calls, these may not do the trick.

Microphone Audio Sample: Indoors

Microphone Audio Sample: Outdoors

Battery Life for a Full Workday

Poly claims up to eight hours of playback with ANC enabled and another two charges in the case. This means that, along with the case, you can go 24 hours without a charge, and even more if you disable noise cancellation.

Sometimes companies are a little overly optimistic about their battery life, but in this case, it seems that, if anything, Poly is being careful with its estimates for the Voyage Free 60+. I got more than eight hours out of the earbuds with ANC enabled, though part of this time did include using them with ANC but no music playing.

The touchscreen case features Qi wireless charging, making it easy to keep the case charged. Running out of battery in the middle of a busy day could spell disaster, but just five minutes in the case gets you more than an hour of talk time.

Should You Buy the Poly Voyager Free 60+?

There are some features on the Poly Voyager Free 60+ I’d love to see on all higher-end earbuds. The touchscreen may feel a little gimmicky, but give manufacturers some time, and I could see this becoming a key feature in the future. The ability to stream wireless audio to the earbuds from any 3.5mm output is another fantastic feature.

That said, while the audio quality is good, it’s not up to what I’d typically expect of earbuds in this price range. Add in the strange audio glitches when using Siri, and it makes the Voyager Free 60+ feel like a less premium product than they would otherwise.

It’s clear that these are meant for the enterprise market because as cool as the touchscreen case is, these simply aren’t something many people should spend $329.95 on for themselves. That said, if you can talk your company into supplying you with a pair, they’ll do a solid job.