iClever BTH20 review – Keeping things quiet for the kids

Headphones made specifically for kids is a niche that works. The little critters, as anyone who has kids will tell you, don’t always make choices in their best interests. Plonking something like the iClever BHT20 cans onto their heads means you won’t add hearing damage to the litany of injuries they seem determined to acquire at any given moment.

Like their light-wielding counterparts, the BHT20 over-ears (if you’re a little ‘un) are limited to a specific decibel level. Unlike the BHT18s, they include an additional feature — noise cancelling. That’s not bad for R1,500, though you’ll have to venture over to Amazon (the American one) to snag a pair.

A case of the blues

There’s no cause for complaint if you happen to stick a pair of iClever’s clever headphones into your basket. On the build front, they compare very well to the typical run of kids’ headphones you’ll find cluttering up your local Spar or Checkers. The padded cups are generously plastered with foam encased in something approaching leather (likely synthetic). The plastic build is high enough quality that you don’t feel cheated by the price tag. And the headband is also padded.

Finally, the BTH20s are also large enough to (only just) fit an adult head. That’s why these are rated up to about age fifteen or sixteen, though by that point the mostly sedate blue-and-green design will probably be replaced by something branded.

The physical controls adorning the right ear cup suit the price point. Expect volume and power options, with wire port and USB-C for charging. The controls take a touch more pressure than we’d like and any button presses are also very audible inside the cups. The centre of the right cup hosts the noise-cancellation button.

Quiet quality

We’ll get to the unique feature in a moment. First, a word on the audio quality. Like their sibling, we were pleasantly surprised at how detailed the audio reproduction was here. This might be partly laid at the door of the 80dB volume limitation which prevents anyone from overloading the drivers but there was plenty of depth and clarity in the tunes we used to test these. If they were (physically) a little larger, we’d have serious second thoughts about handing these over to the kiddo to use on a permanent basis.

Since there’s no way (that we can find) to swap between various decibel limitations, the BTH20s sit at their sonic sweet spot all the time. Having them cranked to maximum volume presents plenty of musical detail, while the generous cups offer serious passive noise cancellation with minimal leakage. But there’s also active on offer.

Youth activity

There are three levels of ANC in the BTH20s. When office conversation is audible, provided you’re not blaring novelty German power metal as loud as it’ll go, noise cancellation steps up to about midway at its first ‘on’ level and goes to ‘full’ on its second. iClever reckons its headphones damp down about 40dB of noise when ANC is active and that’s something we can believe.

They don’t entirely cut down the noise of other humans (this makes sense since the human voice will register at around 55dB) but they mute surrounding sounds effectively. Even better, the BTH20s don’t overdo the cancellation to the point where the wearer experiences discomfort. Just blissful… less noise. Little Jimmy or Janey will still know if you’re talking to them. Again, if they’re not cranking something aurally powerful. Or perhaps they’re just ignoring you.

iClever BTH20 verdict

Would we recommend the iClever BTH20 heads to parents looking to mute the sound of whatever repetitive thing their kids are listening to this week? Absolutely. Their ears, particularly at this early stage of development, can do without the 120dB music festival sonic assault for a while. They’ve also got the added benefit of noise cancelling, Which, honestly, we’ve seen done better elsewhere but it’s enough of a rarity in kids’ headphones that we’re impressed it works at all. Combined with an audio track of some kind, the BTH20s will effectively block out the entire world. Whether that’s a good thing or not depends on you.