Beyerdynamic Aventho Y review: I want to love these headphones, but poor sound dulls their shine

Beyerdynamic Aventho Y: Two-minute review

The tagline for Beyerdynamic’s latest consumer-grade, ANC-equipped wireless headphones is “What is your why?” — and, unfortunately, “Why?” was the first question on my lips when I first listened to them. A lacklustre sonic profile is accompanied by a lack of convincing dynamics, at least when listening actively in a quiet room.

My “why?” was answered in part by the Aventho Y’s own “why”: they are clearly designed to be used outdoors, to compete with a constant thrum of traffic and people and cut through accordingly. And this they do, quite commendably. The ANC is impactful, which is more than you can say for most headphones in this price range; there’s also a Transparency mode which is similarly effective outside. The long battery life is a genuine boon, as is the fact you can replace that battery with ease whenever it does eventually lose its edge. 

A shoo-in for our best noise-cancelling headphones guide then? Not so fast. Better as the Aventho Y’s performance is when on the move, it’s not saved wholly from its shortcomings. It’s necessary to visit the Beyerdynamic app to reintroduce some low end, and there’s still a sense that you’re not hearing songs as they ought to be heard.

Well-designed and well-priced though these headphones are — and excellent as that ANC is for its price — I can’t love the Beyerdynamic Aventho Y as much as I’d like to, purely for how poorly the sound is handled. Curmudgeonly as this review may at some points seem, I am no stranger to whimsy; I did really enjoy my time with these headphones. They shine in loud environments. Anywhere else, though, that shine is predestined to dull.

Beyerdynamic Aventho Y review: Price & release date

• Released on September 3, 2026
• Priced $149.99 / £129 / AU$280

Beyerdynamic is one of the pre-eminent names when it comes to matters of professional audio. The German brand’s reputation precedes itself, thanks to a near-faultless gallery of clean, clear and natural-sounding monitor headphones beloved by audio engineers and pro producers innumerable — and to say nothing of its microphones, too. 

Beyerdynamic’s reputation in the wider consumer-audio world is less well-tested, though still hugely positive. The brand’s had its hands in MP3 player-era in-ears, gaming headphones and wireless earbuds over the last two decades, in the middle of which the word ‘Aventho’ first appeared. Most of these consumer-friendly audio interventions trucked in the same professional elegance as the brand’s pro-level interventions, with sharp lines or important-looking negative spaces; a stern-ness of design which makes this latest intervention all the more interesting.

The Beyerdynamic Aventho Y are a pair of wireless, ANC-toting over-ear headphones, and a clear signal of fairly naked ambition by the brand to appeal to a new generation of listeners. Some semblances of the Beyerdynamic signature remain, but they’re overtaken by a quartet of somewhat-bold color options and a somewhat-bolder, somewhat-existential marketing push to accompany them: “What is your why?”

In terms of succession, the Aventho Y is a young, hip relative of the Beyerdynamic Aventho 300 — which, specs- and price-wise, still appears to be the adult in the room. The Y, then, is a much more expressive and accessible piece of consumer listening gear, taking the long battery and solid audio philosophies of its late-Millennial Dad, cramming them into a pastel-colored knapsack and promptly running for the Reels.

At $149.99 / £129 / AU$280, the Aventho Y hurls itself right into the middle of an already-stacked field of affordable wireless headphones. So, is the Aventho Y’s “why” compelling enough to beat them?

Beyerdynamic Aventho Y review: Specs

Beyerdynamic Aventho Y review: Features

• Active Noise Cancelling and Transparency modes
• 90-hour battery life (60 with ANC engaged)
• Bluetooth 6.0 with Multipoint

The Beyerdynamic Aventho Y are an affordable set of wireless over-ear headphones, with active noise cancelling and a prodigious battery life to fuel it. More specifically, the Aventho Y boast 90 hours of non-stop listening, or 60 with ANC engaged — that’s easily a month of morning-commute listening, at least. And in the unlikely event that you burn through your Aventho Y’s juice prematurely, you’ll still have the rest of the day’s listening back in no time at all; a five-minute quick charge yields six hours of listening life.

Humongous reservoir of power aside, the Aventho Y sport a pair of 45mm dynamic drivers, serviced by a Bluetooth 6.0 receiver capable of Multipoint connectivity, and of decoding SBC and AAC codecs. On the face of things, it’s a real shame not to see some lossless aptX or LDAC support here, but practically speaking, AAC is fidelity aplenty for day-to-day listening. 

That Bluetooth is, of course, two-way too; there’s a microphone on board for wireless phone calls, and some well-sized control buttons for playing, pausing and skipping songs without pulling your phone out. It’s also the means by which the Aventho Y connects to Beyerdynamic’s smartphone app, which allows control of ANC and user-preset EQ modes, amongst other things. As for physical I/O, there’s a USB-C port that supports both charging and wired listening, and a 3.5mm output for an add-on boom microphone (more details of which are yet to surface).

A big win for me on the features front — which you’ll hear more about later on — is the easily-removable, magnetically-attached ear-pads; behind them, you’ll find a replaceable battery and a tellingly-shaped hole for a USB-C dongle. The dongle is also yet to surface, but will reportedly enable low-latency Bluetooth connectivity to other devices, in tandem with better-quality audio from the aforementioned and as-yet-unreleased boom mic.

• Features score: 4.5 / 5

Beyerdynamic Aventho Y review: Sound quality

• Lacklustre, telephonic bass profile
• Performs better when competing with outside noise
• Smartphone-app EQ-ing essential

To be completely honest, my first impression of the Aventho Y’s performance was not a positive one. On connecting to my laptop and streaming some music from Qobuz, the out-of-the-box sound profile threw me for a loop; being accustomed to Beyerdynamic’s flat-response monitor headphones, I wasn’t expecting a near-telephonic treatment of high mids and voices from this consumer-focused entry.

Queens Of The Stone Age’s Everybody Knows That You’re Insane, taken from expansive 2005 slow-cooker Lullabies To Paralyse should be an urgent, propulsive assault of information from bright guitars to thudding bass and kicks, but the Aventho Y presents it as a peaky mess of honky leads and vocals. Why? Or should I say, “Y”? (Sorry.)

Some artists get a little bit of a better break than others. Interpol’s Turn On The Bright Lights demonstrated a clarity with respect to monophonic lead guitars, but at the expense of clarity in other areas. The snare in Untitled sounded boxed-up, restrained — as did the bass, which should swell and envelope but instead seemed stuck behind everything else, revving up in hopes of getting past. It’s a peculiar sensation, really. It feels like these headphones can’t fully handle the music they’re receiving, whether it’s through a lack of headroom, or a lack of vacancy for low end to thrive.

It occurred to me, then, that I wasn’t testing the Aventho Y in the environment they were designed for. Marketing copy, express-yourself colorways and aesthetic ads of headphone-clad models dancing in public all point to the Aventho Y being expressly created for soundtracking your life outside. So that’s where I went.

And the experience was much, much different. Everything I’ve said about the default sound profile stands, but matters much less in public. Contending with the everyday noises of urban traffic means that honky high-mids turn, somewhat, into tactile presence. LA Priest’s latest LP Into The Sky is a gratuitously texture-rich compendium of electronic love songs, and had exactly the bite I was looking for while I waited for the bus.

Against the noise of the outside world, It’s less apparent that your music is straining against the limits of the headphones; it’s designed to compensating for a living, breathing world around you. The bass is still a let-down, but, luckily, there’s an app for that.

The Beyerdynamic app gives you control over a few features, including a customisable graphic EQ. Even just some slight adjustments between 60Hz and 200Hz brought back some essential thump and hum; I just don’t understand “Y” (sorry) the Aventho Y shipped with the sound as is. 

I will also say, to the Aventho Y’s credit, that its ANC is frightfully effective — much more so than more expensive headphones I’ve tried before, and to an almost discomforting degree. It does introduce a hissy noise floor, so you aren’t getting a pristine listening environment with it engaged; still, it’s better than cranking the volume over the roar of a bus (or, indeed, the interminable TV-borne whinings of Tempting Fortune’s contemptible contestants while you’re trying desperately to finish a review about some wireless headphones. I mean, honestly).

The Aventho Y also sport a Transparency mode, which pipes a little more of your surroundings into your cans. It’s less effective than the ANC is indoors, but incredibly effective outdoors — albeit with that same underlying hiss.

Sound-wise, the Aventho Y are hard to score. They sound, frankly, quite bad out of the box and in a quiet listening space; they’re clearly not for active listening, or pairing with pricey hi-fi systems. But out and about, they deliver quite well, and especially so when it comes to more practical interventions like ANC and transparency mode. But they wouldn’t sound anywhere near as good as they could without app-based EQ intervention. It’s a mess of “buts”, and all a bit of a shame, really.

• Sound quality score: 3 / 5

Beyerdynamic Aventho Y review: Design

• Cool visual design
• Comfortable for long durations
• Easy to repair and replace elements

The Beyerdynamic Aventho Y are demonstrably nice to look at, courtesy of the smart-and-simple ear cup design and those four tasteful color options. My set are this peachy pastel orange, with tinted cream ear and head cushions — an easy-going Zillennial two-tone, offset by metal-effect silver plastic brackets. That they are plastic is, of course and always, a bit of a shame, but it’s no surprise in a consumer-forward set of wireless over-ears (and even less of one for a pair that ask only for $149 / £129). 

A big win for me is the repairability of the Aventho Y, typified by the magnetically-secured ear pads that pull off with a firm-but-fair tug. Beyerdynamic offer velour-clad pad upgrades, too, for an even comfier experience. 

Removing the left ear pad unearths the enclosure for the Aventho Y’s battery, allowing easy replacement should your battery eventually die on you. This level of replaceability has been historically rare for consumer-grade products in the same camp as the Aventho Y, which makes this a real breath of fresh air — but only so much in the way of props can be delivered Beyerdynamic’s way. 

With the EU now mandating the self-repairability of consumer electronics from 2027, it’s no surprise that new products increasingly bear such customer-friendly design choices, and it’s a shame that, after years of impenetrable products from more unscrupulous brands elsewhere, it’s such a pleasantness to encounter them. Still, I’m allowed to be impressed for now.

While I’m here, I’m also pretty keen on the physical buttons in the ear cups — particularly the literal switch that turns the Aventho Y on and enables Bluetooth pairing. That kind of tactile responsiveness is similarly rare, and hugely welcome.

Finally, I can’t fault the Aventho Y at all on comfort. I could easily wear them for hours (and actually, I have), thanks to some light, comfy ear pads and a fold-up design that lets them sit around your neck without applying undue pressure. How these are put together, and how they interact with you as owner, are easily some of the best things about these cans.

• Design score: 4.5 / 5

Beyerdynamic Aventho Y review: Value

• Excels on all practical fronts…
• …but the sound is hard to get past
• Well-priced for features

At $149.99 / £129 / AU$280, the Beyerdynamic Aventho Y undercut a lot of its large-battery-having, ANC-toting contemporaries as an affordable piece of outdoor-listening kit. There are cheaper headphones, yes, but rarely do headphones as cheap as this offer up to 90 hours of uninterrupted listening and a noise-cancelling algorithm that actually, tangibly makes a difference to your day-to-day. It’s rare also to see a pair of headphones so smoothly designed. The aesthetics and execution are undeniably great. But…

I just can’t get over that initial disappointment I felt listening to them for the first time, at my desk. Beyerdynamic is capable of so much more than this, so it’s difficult to understand “Y” (sorry) they settled on this sound at this price. Without the steady thrum of urban life to contend with, there’s nowhere for the Aventho Y’s sonic shortcomings to hide — and EQ isn’t quite enough to fix them, either.

Again, it’s clear that the Aventho Y’s own “Y” is facilitating some groovy movement in your day-to-day. And they do succeed in that regard, but still need a bit of a helping hand along the way. If you do just want a set of wireless headphones for drowning out the wider world during your commutes, these are excellent value for money. Elsewhere, it’s much harder to truly see what the “why” is with them.

• Value score: 4 / 5

Should I buy the Beyerdynamic Aventho Y?

Buy them if…

Don’t buy them if…

Beyerdynamic Aventho Y review: Also consider

How I tested the Beyerdynamic Aventho Y

• Tested for 4 weeks
• Used both in and out of the home 
• Predominantly tested using music streamed from Qobuz, via Bluetooth-connected laptop or smartphone

The Beyerdynamic Aventho Y spent around 4 weeks with me, in a variety of listening situations both active and passive. They were tested partly at home, connected to my HP Pavilion 15 laptop via Bluetooth and receiving music from the streaming service Qobuz, as well as from my digital audio library. I also took the Aventho Y out and about on my various day-to-day gallivantings, connected to my Samsung S23 FE via Bluetooth and, again, listening to music streamed from Qobuz.

Read more about how we test at TechRadar

• First reviewed: October 2026