Logitech’s Zone Vibe 100 reviewed: comfy cans

A pair of decent-sounding headphones for phone and computer that won’t break the bank? The Logitech Zone Vibe 100 make it happen. What’s the catch?

We tend to love headphones more than most people, and can go into lengths explaining all the technology that makes them tick, but most people don’t care.

When it comes to buying a pair of headphones, most people want something that sounds great and delivers that great sound on a budget they can be happy with.

For some, that budget can be past the $500 mark, particularly if they’re searching for a pair of noise cancelling headphones designed to be the best of the best of the best. Others are more than happy to spend below that, and when you’re talking about keeping your budget happy due to rising costs elsewhere, we totally get it.

Typically, a low cost doesn’t go together with great sound. While you can find some great value earphones out there, solid all-round sound doesn’t always have an all-round solid price attached to them.

But that’s not always the case. In fact, with a pair from peripheral maker Logitech, you just might find an all-round sound that your wallet can find friendly, too.

Design and features

Sporting a design more like a pair of gaming headphones complete with a boom mic on a hinge, the Logitech Vibe 100 may not be the typical pair you imagine when you walk around town. And yet, they can certainly be used for that.

While gamer headphones normally come with bright neon colours — ahem, Razer, we’re talking mostly about your headphones — the Zone Vibe 100 offers a different look.

Our dark model delivered a grey plastic casing for the headphone sides and band material, while the pads and band were covered with a knitted fabric that looked like denim caught in a thunderstorm on a cloudy day. It’s definitely not what we’re used to seeing from headphones, and a welcome change.

The pads are also very large, delivering an around-the-ear circumaural design that is quite spacious and comfortable, and they’re light, too, though you don’t have a lot of hardware underneath clogging it all up.

These are just headphones with a boom mic on a hinge hidden on the left pad. You can’t move that mic to the right side (or backwards and wear the headphones backwards), and while these are wireless using the Bluetooth standard, there aren’t really any extras. No noise cancellation either for the mic or what you hear, no water resistance, and really little in the way of customisation.

About the one creative feature is the boom mic switching to mute when you hide it, something the headphones announce from inside the headphones. Neat.

You do have an app, though, which is more than some other headphones, though “Logi Tune” doesn’t give you a whole lot to work with. There’s a handful of equaliser settings plus a way for you to make your own, but that is largely it beyond naming the device, voice prompts, and how many minutes of unused time until the headphones go to sleep.

Sending your headphones off to sleepy times isn’t likely what you’ll be doing, because you’ll want to wear them. Don them, and you’ll find that design can really stand out.

In-use

Let’s start with the look and feel, because there’s something nice about Logitech’s design of the Vibe 100. While the company has skipped over the traditional leatherette finish you typically find on headphones, it has instead gone with a nice fabric with foam pads, and they are very comfortable.

We wouldn’t recommend walking around with them on a hot summer’s day, as the fabric is just going to absorb any drop of sweat beading from your face and ears, but sitting at home in front of a computer or chilling somewhere with a moderate or air conditioned temperature, and you’ll find the pads truly comfortable.

The Bose QuietComfort headphone range has long held the position of the comfiest headphones around, and with active noise cancellation on-board, they’re still the more premium option bathing in comfort, but the Logitech Zone Vibe 100 aren’t far off on those comfort levels. These are truly comfy cans.

You could spend ages in them and barely feel a thing. We even need a break wearing the Apple AirPods Max, but these you can keep on wearing without any qualms or complaints from the ears on the side of your head.

That said, you still might need to take the Vibe 100 off to remember where the buttons are: they’re on the back of each can side, and not as intuitive as other headphone controls.

Performance

You can remember where they are, though, and typically controls aren’t the major factor that matters most. Rather, it’s the sound, and to test these headphones, we’re using the Pickr Sound Test, which you can use with your headphones and speakers for yourself.

For us, that starts with the electronic of Tycho and Daft Punk, delivering a nice sound overall with a decent smattering of bass. The overall impact read as a little shallow on the mids and lows, but there’s still bass enough to matter, and to many ears, these headphones will sound perfectly fine.

In the pop of Carly Rae Jepsen and Charlie Puth, it’s a relatively well-rounded sound that comes off bright and boomy, while Maroon 5 keeps the well-rounded shape up. Circles and ovals for everyone, it seems, as well as terrible dad jokes from this reviewer.

The lack of depth in the bass does become more consistent as you push into music that hasn’t been overly engineered. The rock of Rage Against The Machine should deliver a heavy push into bass, but it comes off a touch shallow, and the same is true with the softer sound of The Beatles and The Who.

Our feeling overall listening to the Logitech Zone Vibe 100 is that they’ll make good work of amped up sounds, such as when the bass has been pushed up in modern tracks and video games, but in soundtracks where the audio has been largely left to its own sound, it won’t quite deliver the same impact.

That’s not to say the Vibe 100 are bad at all; these are perfectly good headphones for most listeners. But there are certainly better headphones out there for all types of music.

Battery

While the performance is decent all-round, the battery life is on the low side. Sure, it’ll be fine near a computer for a few days, and thankfully there’s a Type C charge port, but other headphones can do much better. Easily.

Logitech touts around 18 to 20 hours for the Vibe 100, and our testing showed that’s roughly possible. Listen more rather than speak and you might hit the 20 hour mark, but we found 17 or 18 was the comfortable level where we’d need to charge, and that’s of constant use.

You may find the battery starts warning you after a few days of 5 or 6 hour stints in the headphones, particularly if you live in your headphones as you work or play, given these cans are meant for both.

Value

Priced at $179 in Australia, Logitech’s Zone Vibe 100 is acceptable value, though edging into a territory where noise cancelling headphones start to hit, particularly the ones that offer stunning value. We can think of at least one, with Soundcore’s Space Q45 really hitting that mark, but it’s a good $50 more, and in fairness to Logitech, the street price of the Vibe 100 is much, much more accomodating.

Look around a little and you’ll find the Zone Vibe 100 for under $150, which is excellent value.

Overall, Logitech’s play for a decent pair of headphones for both the phone and computer work well in the Zone Vibe 100, delivering a good looking pair that sounds nice, too. Between the all-round generally good sound and the solid comfort level, if you can find the Vibe 100 for below the $179 RRP, you’ll be laughing.

What needs work?

And short of the lack of noise cancellation, they work a treat.

While the bottom end of the sound can need a little work, the biggest issue for some may be the lack of a headset jack. We can forgive the omission of noise cancellation — these are sub-$200 headphones made for PC with phones secondary, so cancelling the world won’t be a big issue here — but skipping on a headphone jack is a surprise, and here’s why: students who need the headset jack won’t find these quite so accommodating.

The USB Type C port on the bottom won’t help you there, either. Plugging it directly into a computer only put the headphones into charging, as the Zone Vibe 100 are wireless headphones only.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing, and we’re pretty sure there are folks who won’t mind that. Just not the folks who need a headphone jack for school, or who maybe prefer the lack of any perceivable audio lag for gaming sessions.

Final thoughts (TLDR)

Those niggles might not matter to someone who wants to save money and yet still have something versatile enough for work, for play, and ultimately be comfortable enough to keep wearing for hours on end.

Armed with a great set of earpads and a relatively well-rounded sound, the Logitech Zone Vibe 100 are a pair you can sit in comfortably with no problems. These are definitely comfy cans. You may not want to leave.

There are clearly features we’d add and improve upon, but for the price Logitech is asking, the Zone Vibe 100 aren’t a bad deal at all, and worth taking a look at.