[pbnjeh]

Their ear pads are terrible. I was extremely careful with mine, keeping them in my home office and carefully setting them down with the ear pads uncompressed when not in use. Nonetheless, the ear pad leather came apart in about a year.

Same with the pair I gave my father.

German friend visited with some 700's. (I think that's the model number; the sleek but uncomfortable redesign of a couple of years ago.) When he visited again the following year, their ear pads where likewise blown out.

In contrast, I have multiple models of inexpensive Chinese ANC headphones whose ear pads have survived significantly longer.

And, the official Bose ear pad replacements are $40 on Amazon (if they're even real...).

I don't buy Bose, anymore.

[JohnBooty]

There are scads of third-party replacement pads on eBay for ~$10-15.

I've found them indistinguishable from the OEM ear pads.

[pbnjeh]

> I've found them indistinguishable from the OEM ear pads.

Thank you. I was doubtful about the third-party replacements; I'll give them a try.

I still think it's scandalous that Bose ships them with such a crap failure rate.

(If they're expected to fail like this, then at least ship them with a few replacement pairs included. At least that would be honest, and at the price they charge, probably still profitable. /s )

[JohnBooty]

I agree 100%.

I've kind of standardized on Bose headphones because even though I hate crap like that, they're so popular that there's a big ecosystem of replacement parts, batteries, etc.

It helps that the earpads have been unchanged across multiple generations: QC25/35/45 and I think their new ones as well. Everything but the Ultra and NC700. So I expect replacements should be available more or less indefinitely.