Bang & Olufsen Cisco Bang & Olufsen 950 True Wireless Review

Skip these $600 earbuds. You're paying for Cisco IT features, not great sound. For less money, you can get dramatically better audio from Sony or Bose.

The Cisco Bang & Olufsen 950 are a $600 identity crisis in a charging case. The one thing you need to know is that these are corporate earbuds first, and decent-sounding earbuds a distant second. They're built for IT departments to manage, not for you to love. If you're buying these for yourself, you're paying a massive 'enterprise' tax for features you probably don't need, while getting audio performance that lands squarely in the middle of the pack. The Bang & Olufsen name is here for brand polish, but the actual sound and noise canceling scores in our database tell a different, much more average story.

What surprised us was just how aggressively mediocre the performance is across the board. For $600, you'd expect to blow the doors off the competition. Instead, the ANC sits in the 40th percentile, meaning it's worse than most dedicated noise-canceling buds. The sound quality is in the 47th percentile, so it's fine, but you can get better audio for a third of the price. The only thing that performs at a premium level is the price tag itself.

Not worth it. At all. Unless your company is footing the bill and mandates Cisco gear, there is zero reason for an individual to buy these. You are paying a huge premium for IT management tools and a brand collaboration, not for best-in-class sound or features.

Put this head-to-head with almost any other premium bud and it loses. The Sony WF-1000XM5 destroys it on noise canceling and sound quality for $100 less. The Bose QuietComfort Earbuds are more comfortable and have better ANC. Even the much cheaper Anker Soundcore P31i likely matches its adaptive noise canceling. The only competitor this beats is your budget, because it obliterates it.

If you're looking for the best-sounding or best noise-canceling wireless earbuds, this isn't it. Go get the Sony WF-1000XM5 instead. Also skip if you're not in a corporate IT environment that requires Cisco device management—that's the only reason this product exists.

We can't recommend buying the Cisco B&O 950. It's a niche product masquerading as a premium consumer audio device. For IT managers who need to deploy secure, managed headsets en masse, it's a viable (if expensive) option. For literally anyone else looking for great-sounding wireless earbuds, this is a hard pass. Spend your money on a pair of Sonys, Sennheisers, or even Apple AirPods Pro. You'll get better performance and keep hundreds of dollars in your pocket.