Master & Dynamic’s MW75 Neuro Headphones Track Brain Activity at a Great Price

New York-based Master & Dynamic is well known for its premium audio and great portfolio of audio peripherals. The price tags on their products also prove how expensive they are. In fact, if there’s anything we’ve had in our headphones, it’s usually been the price. With its cheap headphones priced at $450, M&D makes it clear that they’re not for budget shoppers. It tends to remain exclusive to professionals or “real audiophiles.”

Recently, M&D gave its flagship headphones, the $600 MW75, a refresh. It embedded headphones with EEG (Electroencephalography) sensors and rebranded them as the MW75 Neuro for $700. The sensors work like a standard EEG test that tracks and records the electrical activity in your brain. Besides, instead of wearing a cap with a bunch of wires tied to the computer, you can achieve the same results with an amazing pair of wireless headphones. Aside from the ribbed earcups that indicate the presence of EEG electrodes inside, the MW75 Neuro looks exactly like the regular MW75, which is great since those 2022 headphones were real headphones.

The MW75 Neuro is designed to help you focus better. EEG sensors read your brain activity and work with a BCI (Brain-Computer Interface) to record and present the results on Neurable, a smartphone-compatible app. These results include your total hours of focus and attention span, as well as push notifications when it’s time to take a break. The headphones also reward you for your concentration, with 100 points being the daily goal.

MW75 Neuro: Bad

This is a complete list of everything MW75 Neuro can do at the moment: exchange your focus minutes for reward points, congratulate you for getting 100 points in a day, save a lane if you are consistent, and reveal a few details. This information includes your best concentration time (morning, afternoon, evening, night), your best attention span in minutes, and the activity you are most focused on (work, study, other, etc.). It also generates a chart for each session, showing the time you spent at high, medium, and low concentration, as well as the number and length of breaks you took.

As you can tell, the MW75 Neuro is best for people with deficits, although M&D adds that they will soon add more brain conditions that the headphones can help with. For now, though, all that data is certainly not worth $700. It’s not enough. I called a friend who has ADHD and asked for his opinion on the product after explaining all its features in detail. He said he would never buy a product, no matter the price, with the kind of data the MW75 Neuro currently provides. He went so far as to say that he might not download its app. His reasoning was that he already had such a high level of awareness of his focus patterns that he would find navigating through headphones and their app unnecessary.

I have a friend on this. The MW75 Neuro is the kind of gadget that you find extremely novel at first simply because it’s a new concept, but tire of it after just a few weeks, as I did with my review unit. I found that I had no “real” reason to keep pursuing my focus. And, let’s be honest: none of us have time to check a graph of your focus patterns after completing each task. And maybe someone who doesn’t have deficiency issues would find it completely unnecessary.

More importantly, let’s not forget that this isn’t some sensor attached to your skin tracking you throughout the day. It’s a heavy 378g device on your noggin, which quickly starts to feel like a burden. For context, Sony’s headphones, the WH-1000XM5, are considered light at 250g, while Apple’s AirPods Max are criticized for their heavy 385g body. Wearing headphones even when you’re not listening to anything is an annoying way to track.

Since the sensors require the earcups to touch your skin at all times, you must adjust your hair, glasses, and earrings so that the headphones stay in place. These are just a few of the things I have experienced. I would imagine that caps or bandanas are a problem, too. Will I have to break out my beanie to work with these in a few months when it starts to get cold?

What doesn’t really help the MW75 Neuro’s unsuitability as all-day headphones is its relatively short battery life of eight to nine hours with both ANC and EEG enabled. I used to find them coming out of the sweater when I picked them up during my time with them. The only way to use these things regularly with ANC and EEG is to charge them every day. It’s unlikely, but the average consumer will probably find it a bit of an effort, especially if they don’t see much value in what they’re getting.

Closely related to the point above is the fact that this device is marketed as a way to reach conclusions about how various activities (yoga, coffee, etc.) affect your focus time. But I can’t wear a 378g device with eight to nine hours of battery life on my head long enough to see these patterns. For that, I’m going to need a more abstract technology.

To make the whole experience even more annoying, the accompanying app was very distracting in terms of communication. It didn’t recognize my headphones on the first try when I tapped “Start focus session” (which means I’ll let it start recording my brain activity when I start the task). Even though they’ll connect as soon as I turn them on, and the Bluetooth page in my Settings will attest to that, the Neurable app keeps telling me to connect the headphones first. I would have to switch to the Settings app, do nothing there, and then back to Neurable. I tried just waiting on the Neurable app, but that didn’t work.

Most days, it simply refuses to recognize the Bluetooth connection. I’ve tried waiting, restarting the app, and switching to Settings. There was nothing, so I finally gave up on those days. I hope the connection issues are caused by the fact that the app is in beta mode and will be resolved upon launch.

Honestly, I couldn’t use the Neuro a few times when I wanted to simply because it was out of battery, I couldn’t see the Bluetooth connection, or I failed to activate all of its sensors even though I made sure my hair was completely pushed back again. my head and ears were fully connected. Yes, I could charge them once or twice a day, but that doesn’t make sense to me and most people, and I would have done that for review purposes only. I purposely kept my usage pattern real and natural.

Since these failed to be my all-day headphones for a few reasons, I didn’t trust their results too well. He told me that I concentrate more in the evening. But I think that’s because I used them in parallel in the evening more often, as I had time to charge them and deal with their connection problems.

MW75 Neuro: Good

Regardless of how useful or not tracking is at the moment, it is very accurate. It shows your stats very accurately, and I have to give them that. Any dip or spike in your attention is immediately noticed and presented as soon as you finish the session. I’ve found that attention span metrics have helped me to shy away from finally focusing. Seeing “Your best attention span was four minutes” after completing a one-hour session was very embarrassing.

Closely related to the above point is that you tend to behave when you know that your brain activity is being recorded. A large part of my experience with the MW75 Neuro was simply based on the desire to have a complete chart with many blue bars (minutes of high concentration) and a small number of yellow bars (low concentration). So, I guess I can say that it pushed me to be better focused most days. Has it completely changed the way I work, though? No. I was hoping that its point system would motivate me to focus more. It did, but I wish it was a little softer than it was. I can quickly reach 100 points, and there will be no more incentive.

Let’s not forget that for $700, you still get great headphones that I can’t stop recommending: excellent ANC and brilliant sound. You don’t always need to use the brain features on the MW75 Neuro; if they are disabled, you still have a great pair of headphones. I really like M&D’s decision to include physical buttons on all of their products. Navigating through these headphones was a breeze.

The decision

The MW75 Neuro is no doubt off to a good start but needs more use to be worth its price. IM&D says it will soon offer ChatGPT functionality, which will allow you to use head gestures to reply to messages on your phone. There’s also Spotify integration coming, which will let you know what kind of music works best for your focus. The company sounds optimistic about adding more brain states to the headphones, too.

While I’m looking forward to all these reviews, I can’t justify buying the MW75 Neuro today based on the promises for the future. We’ve been seeing unfinished gadget trends with Humane’s AI Pin and Rabbit R1. The iPhone 16 has just joined that list, which is not yet technically complete but is being marketed with a yet-to-be-released feature—Apple Intelligence. I believe in buying a gadget for what it is today, not what it is it can be until tomorrow.

I like the basic design of the MW75 Neuro. It’s nice to have a gadget that enables focus, but it needs to do more and make fewer mistakes for it to be something I want to reach for every day. I am very excited to see how this product evolves in the future.