Wear and tear
The reason you need to wear them is because first impressions are probably not accurate. Looking at Parrot’s cans in their box, you get the idea that all that metal and the weird headband configuration is going to result in an uncomfortable experience at best but nothing could be further from the truth. The padded section of the headband and the padding over the cups is the softest we’ve felt in a long time. SteelSeries’ Siberia Elite might have softer ear-cups but you’re basically strapping two pillows to your melon when wearing those fluffy things. Here, you’ve got comfort without the fluff and all that metal? It doesn’t weigh a whole lot at all.
Looking a little closer at the design, there doesn’t seem to be much going on at all. There an input for a charging cable (provided) and a jack for turning the Parrot Zik into a wired set of cans but there’s little else. A couple of vents at the base of the ear cups and the on/off button is about all you get in the way of visible controls and additions.
Swipe like a ninja
Not that you need to use the last method all that often. The Zik is fairly intelligent in that regard. Removing the headphones will pause your music for a time but put them back in place and you’ll just have the tunes resume where they left off. That alone almost sold us on these headphones. Handy, yes?
As for the sound itself, these headphones are remarkably clear at lower volumes, with bass through to mid-range being extremely clear throughout a track. Bass is distinct without being overwhelming and we got the sense that our music almost liked being at this volume, where we could actually hear all of its individual elements.
We did run into a slight problem at higher volumes (right around the time that we discovered the volume controls). Crank the sound too much and the Zik will distort, with the bass taking over and wiping out everything else in hearing distance. This may be a problem with the review unit itself however, as it seemed localised in the left cup and turning the volume up even further resulted in a bit of speaker pop in that ear. Might only be a loose connection but you’ve been warned.
And all is silence…
If you’re in a fairly noisy environment, like Stuff Towers on a quiet day, then Parrot’s headphones are a blessing. You’ll be hard-pressed to hear anything spoken at a normal conversational level and might even be tempted to go play in traffic to see how the noise of passing cars does against the noise-cancelling. The answer: You’ll hear the car but not until it’s pretty close. Or unless it’s a Harley Davidson going full-bore.
Verdict
Parrot’s Zik headphones are very nearly the perfect cans. Comfortable, solid without being a brick on your head and they deliver some fantastic sound while cancelling the noise around you. The Bluetooth connection to devices is wonderfully fast, there’s an app if you want to dive deeper into the settings and they’ve got some of the best volume and media controls we’ve ever seen in a set of headphone. They can even be used as a standard set of cans with a wired connection once the power dies, though sound quality suffers somewhat. If not for the high-volume distortion, Parrot’s headphones would be among the very best we’ve tested.