Poly Voyager Free 60+ UC Review: You've Never Seen Wireless Earbuds Like These

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These $330 noise-canceling wireless earbuds have a touchscreen display for music control that's built right into their charging case.

The Poly (formerly Plantronics) Voyager Free 60+ UC were arguably the most exciting wireless earbuds announced at CES this year — and as of April, they're finally available. At $330, they are seriously premium noise-canceling wireless earbuds that pack a pretty premium price. That said, they're also way more feature-packed than your average wireless earbuds.

Without a doubt, the most interesting thing about the Poly Voyager Free 60+ UC is its charging case. It's integrated with a detachable USB Bluetooth transmitter that you can plug into your computer to establish a more reliable wireless connection. The case doubles as a Bluetooth dongle, so that when used with the included USB-C-to-3.5mm cable, you can use the wireless earbuds with an in-flight entertainment system. And most significantly, the charging case has a built-in touchscreen that can be used for various things including playback and volume controls.

The touchscreen is exciting because 1) this is a very rare feature for wireless earbuds (and I had previously never tested any wireless earbuds with such a feature) and 2) it's rumored that the next AirPods could have a built-in touchscreen display as well. So these wireless earbuds could offer a glimpse into Apple's next-gen buds.

The Poly Voyager Free 60+ UC are excellent. These feature-packed noise-canceling wireless earbuds fit for this hybrid working world; they do just as well for streaming music as they do for video conferencing. Their standout feature is a touchscreen display that's built right into the charging case, which allows you to change songs, adjust volume and toggle between noise-canceling and transparency modes without having to touch your smartphone. It's a neat, convenient feature; however, it's not the game-changer it could've been. If you could see more on the display and search for tracks (instead of just skip around), it would've given even more reasons to not have to look at your smartphone.

Ultimately, the Poly Voyager Free 60+ UC are rather expensive wireless earbuds with good (but not great) active noise-cancellation. If you're not drawn by its futuristic touchscreen display and unique abilities (more on those below), you can get wireless earbuds with better noise-canceling wireless earbuds for less.

The charging case's built-in display is simple, yet useful. It shows a nice visual graphic of the battery life of your charging case and earbuds, which is probably the thing I liked the best about it.

It makes it very easy to toggle between the various active noise-canceling and transparency mode settings — specifically, turning either on or off — without having to touch your smartphone, open an app or touch your actual earbuds and risk disrupting their fit. You can also play/pause, skip tracks and adjust the volume of your music. And the display's interphase is refreshingly snappy, and takes about five seconds to master.

The Poly Voyager Free 60+ UC are wireless earbuds that are optimized for the hybrid working world. They can used to stream music from your smartphone like any other wireless earbuds — and, thanks to an integrated USB Bluetooth transmitter which you can plug into your computer, you can use them for video conference calls for work.

The reason why you'd want to use the USB Bluetooth transmitter instead of Bluetooth multipoint — which the Poly Voyager Free 60+ UC support — is that, yes, in my opinion it offers a more straight-to-the-point way of connecting the wireless earbuds to your computer. But the USB Bluetooth transmitter also provides a more stable connection and allows you to control various call settings directly from the charging case. Specifically, you can mute and unmute yourself directly from its touchscreen, which is a nice feature for larger group calls.

Additionally, the Poly Voyager Free 60+ UC work seamlessly with most of the major video conferencing apps, including Microsoft Teams, Zoom and Google Meet.

As I previously mentioned, the built-in touchscreen of the charging case is simple, easy to use and actually quite snappy — but I feel like it could've been so much more. One of the things that's most exciting about the rumored next-gen AirPods with a built-in display is that it'll effectively function like an iPad nano and AirPods all rolled up into one. With the Poly Voyager Free 60+ UC, however, its charging case doesn't actually show you what song or podcast is playing — which is really limiting as you can only skip tracks blindly — and you can search or scroll. If you want to pick out a specific song, playlist or artist, you're going to have to whip out your smartphone.

Also, the charging case has no built-in storage so you cannot download music to it and leave your smartphone at home, like you can with a lot of smartwatches these days. You can leave the charging case at home and still have the wireless earbuds connected directly to your smartphone, which is good but also means that you might not use its touchscreen as much as you might think.

The mic quality of most wireless earbuds isn't the greatest. It typically sounds tinny and flat, and not at all like a conversation you'd have when talking to somebody face to face. But the Poly Voyager Free 60+ UC bucks this trend as mics are definitely better than most. Each earbud has a three-microphone array and built-in technology to isolate your voice and eliminate the sound around you. Your voice sounds clearer, fuller and more natural than most other wireless earbuds I've tested.

The Poly Voyager Free 60+ UC are priced as premium noise-canceling wireless earbuds, but don't expect their active noise-canceling abilities to be on par as the likes of the Bose QuietComfort Earbuds II ($299), Sony WF-1000XM4 ($278) or even Apple's newest AirPods Pro ($249).

They do an effective job at blocking out a lot of the midrange, such as voices and rumblings for my TV and people around me (in the rare instances that I didn't work from home), but it wasn't the near-absolute silence that I got with other high-end wireless earbuds.

One of the standout and most unique features of the Poly Voyager Free 60+ UC is that its charging case doubles as a Bluetooth transmitter and can be connected, via an included USB-C to 3.5mm cable, to a device that has a headphone jack but doesn't support Bluetooth. In this day and age not many devices don't support Bluetooth, but one of them continues to be an in-flight entertainment system. This means that the Poly Voyager Free 60+ UC are one of the few wireless earbuds that you can use with an analog source.

There are a few other premium wireless earbuds that have a similar feature. The Bowers & Wilkins PI7 S2, for example, also have a charging case that doubles as a Bluetooth receiver so you can use it with non-Bluetooth devices. The kicker, however, is that Bowers & Wilkins PI7 S2's charging case can be used to stream higher-resolution audio when functioning as a Bluetooth receiver. The Poly Voyager Free 60+ UC's charging case doesn't have that same ability.

The Poly Voyager Free 60+ UC ($330) are actually one of three wireless earbuds in Poly's Voyager Free 60 series. There's also the Voyager Free 60 UC ($280) and Voyager Free 60 ($230), which are the exact same wireless earbuds but lack the higher-end features. Neither of the cheaper models have a charging case with built-in touchscreen or work as a Bluetooth transmitter (so they can't be connected to an in-flight entertainment system). The most entry-level option, the Voyager Free 60, also lacks a USB-C Bluetooth adapter and thus can't as easily connect to your computer; it also isn't certified to work with video conferencing apps, like Microsoft Teams and Zoom.

However, if you don't need those extra features, those more affordable options in the Voyager Free 60 series still offer the same sound quality, noise-canceling and transparency abilities, and battery life as the more expensive Poly Voyager Free 60+ UC.

Note: The Poly Voyager Free 60+ UC are available now on Poly.com and will be available in May from most other third-party sellers.