I’ve just about made my mind up to upgrade to a pair of these after looking at/reading all the reviews I can get my hands on, they tick all the boxes for me, but I’m waiting on John Darko to give them a report.
In the meantime, has anybody hereabouts bought a pair? From what did you upgrade? How big an improvement were they?
I’d love to read any responses. 
My offspring did a long demo with these as we researched possible 21st birthday presents. That’s long as in 2 hours swapping these with some other options. The conclusion was clear and there was no purchase.
They’re brutal with poor recordings far too often. The controls will annoy the heck out of you and the noise cancelling is no more than average. The Sony WMH are vastly superior on that front.
They also found the app glitchy, the bass all over the place and we both noted a fair bit of sound leakage. Bizarrely they become unusable if the battery runs out.
We came away shaking our heads wondering why/how they could get away with charging that much for something so obviously not up to scratch.
Your mileage may vary but you’re almost certainly going to encounter most of these issues so if you’re dead set on them then it’s a case of weighing how much each of these things matter.
If ever I believed in the importance of burn-in, it is with the Bathys (not MG - never heard them). I didn’t care for the sound at first, but it kept improving (or maybe I adjusted, but I think it was the phones), to the point that with some mild EQ I find the sound enjoyable and superior to any other Bluetooth phones I’ve tried. The sound is further improved (although you lose the EQ control) when you connect vis USB.
I agree on the step volume. Definitely worth checking if the MG has more refined steps. And the Noise Cancellation comes nowhere near the competition. Not much better than a pair of closed backs with a good fit.
Yeah. The
FOCAL BATHYS MG
is what I’m interested in.
The only thing that concerns me in your review is your comment about the bass.
They have two presentation settings: Focal and “Harman”. The Harman is toggled by switching to the “Dynamic” setting, which reviews do say makes the bass punchier.
Did you try the “Dynamic” setting? Also, did you set it for your ears with the test function? Both these would affect SQ.
The offspring is 20. The extent to which you trust my interpretation of the views of a 20 year old is an open question.
They started by working through set up for their head and worked their way through as many things as they could in 2 hours because they’re a fiddler and know what they want. They play guitar, bass and drums and so have a reasonable handle on what good ought to sound like. I’d alerted them to comments about issues on places like a certain well know headphone site but let them make their own mind up. I’m being polite here. They ignored all my comments but came to near identical conclusions independent of that.
The default settings using DSP were dreadful. Boomy like £30 headphones.
Switching to Dynamic improved things hugely but arguably at the expense of mid clarity. Bass became much clearer and punched through mixes. It wasn’t especially deep though and lacked the texture of real bass. On the couple of occasions I listened I absolutely couldn’t stand them. For me it was producing a version of bass but not one that sounded like actual bass.
There are lots of comments about using the EQ to then fine tune. That’s where much of the second hour went. My perspective is that when you’re into EQ you’re almost guaranteeing track by track inconsistency.
Highlight was playing the mixes of their bands first EP coming out later this year. At that point they were ditched after an exclamation that they knew what their bass and drums sounded like and it was nothing like that.
They could not get consistent bass across more than three consecutive tracks at any time. A quick review of reviews on the internet suggests it’s very much a well recorded issue.
Hmm. Looks like you’re right. So now, I’m looking at the Solitaire T …
I was considering these. I’d like something with noise cancelling, blue tooth etc these seemed to fit the bill.
What other suggestions are there?
At this level, there’s four Bluetooth ANC:
Focal Bathys MG, Mark Levinson 5909, T+A Solitaire T and maybe Dali IO-12.
Did you try them with the USB cable?
Yeah they did. Big leap in resolution. No improvement in consistency. Some well documented problems with inconsistency in volume changes. Had to rip them off at one point as one increment increase was fine whilst the next seemed to treble the volume.
The problem with that was that it was unpredictable so it led you to believe you’d got a grip and that some subtlety of movement would address it and then it blew your ears off anyway.
I guess if you want it you want it but it struck me as a half arsed unfinished product and fairly disgraceful for the price in just far too many respects. Felt very much like being taken for a mug. I really dint expect a feel of “will this do?” for that price.
Ah ha. So the usb cable clears up the bass/mid issue, that’s OK because I intend to use that configuration anyway.
It seems though, that this setup will produce the inconsistencies you mention if using the headphones volume adjust.
The way round this is to use the smartphone volume control when in this configuration. I suppose that the “non-passive” functionality when using the cable could also be seen as a problem, but it doesn’t bother me.
I don’t think these are significant problems and they’re minor enough for me to still buy these 'phones given all the other boxes that they tick for me.
Enclosed screenshot of the AI response to the question.
Swings and roundabouts, Innit? 
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