Edifier ES850NB Review ANC Headphones
Wednesday, October 21, 2026
We put the Edifier ES850NB straight onto our bench scale, and it weighs exactly 265 grams. In the real world, this light build means you can wear them for a three-hour train ride without feeling like a heavy clamp is crushing your skull. It is slightly heavier than the featherweight W820NB and W820NB Plus which come in at 232 grams, but it sits lighter on the neck than the premium WH950NB at 295 grams. A lot of budget headphones use cheap, thin plastic sliders that snap the first time you toss them into a bag. In fact, Edifier's older W820NB featured an all-plastic construction with zero metal reinforcement in the slider track. For the ES850NB, Edifier put a real, solid steel strip inside the headband adjuster instead. You can bend and twist the frame, and it springs right back with a sturdy, confident grip.
Looking inside the ear cups, the opening for your ears measures exactly 6cm high, 4cm wide, and 2cm deep. This space feels remarkably similar to the WH700NB internal cavity which measures 6cm high by 3cm wide, but it provides a narrower, deeper fit than the sprawling 6.5cm by 4cm openings on the WH950NB. To adjust the size, the metal bands slide out by up to 3cm on each side, clicking into solid notches that stay locked in place when you walk.
The downside to this faux leather is that it does not breathe at all. Because air cannot flow through the solid material, your ears will trap body heat and feel sweaty if you are sitting in a warm office or walking fast on a sunny trail. It shares this trait with the entire family tree, from the WH700NB to the W820NB Plus, meaning you will still want to wipe them down after a long walk to keep the skin from cracking over time.
The fabric layer covering the inside speaker driver is very thin and has no extra foam padding. If your ears stick out a bit, they could potentially rub against the hard plastic edge of the 40mm titanium-coated speaker driver. To explain what that means, the "driver" is the actual speaker cone that vibrates to make sound. Edifier coated the thin plastic speaker cone with a super-fine layer of titanium metal to make it extra stiff. This stiffness stops the speaker cone from bending or warping when you crank up the volume, preventing the sound from getting fuzzy or muddy. In regular use, it delivers crisp, clear vocals and very sharp high notes. The top headband uses the same faux leather padding to spread the weight evenly across the top of your head to prevent a sore crown spot.
The controls on the bottom rim of the ear cup completely skip frustrating touch touchpads that stop working when your fingers are cold or wet. Instead, you get real, physical rubber buttons that are easy to find by feel. The main control is a long rubber strip that houses three buttons joined together to control power, adjust your volume steps, and skip tracks. Right next to it sits a smaller, separate rubber button used to pair the headphones to your phone or laptop over Bluetooth. All four buttons are raised high and give a loud, sharp click when you press them. This explicit click makes it simple to change settings even if you are wearing heavy winter gloves on an outdoor walk. Next to the buttons, there is a small LED light pipe and the main plug port.
For plugging into audio gear, the ES850NB is a purely digital headphone system, meaning it has no traditional 3.5mm round headphone jack. This will be a major deal-breaker if you want to plug into older audio equipment, DJ mixers, or in-flight entertainment screens on old airplanes. It matches the restrictive port rules of the budget WH700NB and the W820NB Plus which also ditch the legacy jack. If you want a headphone that can fall back to an old-school auxiliary cord when the battery dies, you would have to step up to the WH950NB which bundles a dedicated 3.5mm cable in the box. However, Edifier lets you listen through a wire by using the charging port instead. The box includes a high-quality 1.1-meter long USB-A to USB-C cable. This single wire handles two jobs at once: it charges the internal battery and sends crisp digital audio from your laptop for zero-delay listening while editing video or watching clips.
To block out background noise, the internal chip uses an upgraded -45dB Hybrid Active Noise Cancelling system. The word "Hybrid" means the headphones hide small microphones on both the outside and the inside of the ear cups. The outer mics listen to the world around you to catch high sounds like chatty coworkers or car horns. The inner mics listen to the space right next to your ear to check for deep, rumbling noises that slip past the cushions, like bus engines or train hums. This matches the -45dB cancellation ceiling of the premium WH950NB and beats the older W820NB setup which lets vocal frequencies bleed through more easily.
The headphone computer combines these two microphone feeds and plays a silent, inverted soundwave to cancel out the outside noise up to -45dB. While the physical ear cup buttons only let you click the ANC on or off, unlocking the Edifier Connect mobile app lets you fine-tune these digital features. Inside the app interface, you can manually swap the hybrid chip between High ANC and Medium ANC to match how loud your room is. There is also a dedicated Wind Reduction Mode which tells the outside microphones to ignore direct air currents, stopping that annoying wind-whistling noise when walking outside on breezy days. The app also gives you direct access to the internal audio engine. You can toggle between pre-tuned audio curves like Classic, Heavy Bass, or Rock, or switch into a low-latency Game Mode to perfectly sync game sound with your phone screen. If you like custom sound tweaks, the custom equalizer tab lets you manually input hyper-specific values for Frequency and Gain to boost your bass lines or clean up vocals exactly how you want them.
The internal battery is massive, giving you a verified 92 hours of music with the noise-cancelling turned off, or 53 hours of battery life with noise-cancelling turned on. This leaves the WH950NB (53 hours ANC off) and the WH700NB (65 hours ANC off) far behind in total endurance tracking.
For carrying your gear, the bundled zipper storage case is a massive standout. The hard case measures exactly 22cm long, 17cm wide, and 6cm deep, covered in a tough gray fabric. These are the exact structural case dimensions we measured on the WH950NB travel vault. Including this hardshell case is a major upgrade for the tier, especially since budget models like the W820NB, W820NB Plus, and WH700NB ship with absolutely no case or pouch included at all. To keep your headphones safe from bad weather, the case uses a reverse-coil zipper. This design turns the zipper teeth inside out so the fabric flaps slide tight against each other, creating a wall that blocks water drops and fine trail dust from getting inside the teeth.
The inside of the case has molded slots that fit the headphones perfectly once you fold the plastic hinges up and turn the metal ear cup swivels flat. The solid metal swivels let the ear cups turn 90 degrees flat to lay neatly on a desk, and they tilt up and down by 15 degrees to align comfortably with your jawline. This structural flat-folding hinge setup is far more advanced than the basic W820NB family frames, which can tilt but feature non-folding ear cups that take up too much room in a pack. Two separate mesh pockets hold your 1.1m cables flat so they do not scratch the headphones, and the outside of the case has a 10cm long fabric loop lanyard so you can carry it with a finger or clip it straight to a backpack.
You can buy the Edifier ES850NB headphones straight from online shops like Amazon. The clean black design pairs perfectly with the small Edifier R20BT desktop speakers on your desk or the lightweight, packable protection of your Graphene-X Phantom Hoodie when travelling.
Selling Points
- A tough 22x17x6cm storage box with a hidden-tooth zipper that keeps water drops and dust out, beating the caseless W820NB and WH700NB setups.
- Raised rubber controls that give an explicit, physical click so you know you pressed them without looking.
- Offers days of continuous wireless playback on a single charge, outlasting the WH950NB and WH700NB by a massive margin.
- 40mm metal-coated speaker cones that do not bend while playing, keeping the audio clean and clear.
- Uses internal and external mics to actively erase up to -45dB of deep background drone.
- Uses a real metal internal frame inside the headband tracker to stop the plastic from cracking under twist loads.
- Deep memory foam wrapped in synthetic leather to seal out background noise and boost the bass.
- Available in pink, ivory, brown and black
Potential Deal Breakers
- There is no standard round auxiliary audio port, meaning you can only connect via Bluetooth or a digital USB-C cord.
- The tight synthetic ear pads trap body heat, which can make your ears feel warm and sweaty during long sessions.
- The 6x4cm inner cup has a very thin fabric lining; if your ears stick out far, they might press against the hard speaker housing.
