“The best wireless headphones for musicians you can buy right now, despite a few flaws”: Yamaha YH-WL500 review

Yamaha YH-WL500: What is it?

Cables are the bane of any musician’s life whether it’s your guitar cables getting tangled around your leg or the coiled cable of headphones getting in the way while you’re recording. I’m always looking for ways to minimize the amount of cables I use, and the Yamaha YH-WL500 promises super low latency wireless performance that’s good enough for musicians to play their instruments wirelessly.

I look for 5-10ms of latency when it comes to nailing a recorded performance. Anything more and you’re going to start getting timing issues. The Yamaha YH-WL500 promises a very impressive wireless performance of less than 4ms, which is intriguing indeed for those musicians who want to lose as many cables as possible. Even if you’re just using wireless for practice, having that ultra-low latency will only help enhance your playing.

The cups are circumaural – which means they go over your ear – and the headphones themselves are all black apart from a shock of white on the top. The padding on the cups is nice and soft, which is a rectangular shape with rounded edges. The padding on the headband isn’t quite as generous and feels a little thin to my hand. Overall, the build is solid, and I can definitely see them putting up with plenty of abuse over time.

My headphones came with some power but I opted to charge them fully before carrying out any testing. Fitting them into the dock is surprisingly easy, despite looking a little unwieldy at first. They slot in nicely and feel solid sitting there in the chassis. They took about an hour or so to get a full charge, and with that done I set about connecting them to my phone to see how easy the process was.

Like any Bluetooth device, it’s a breeze if you know what you’re doing. It did actually take me a few goes to pair, but I’ll put that down to the fact my phone is also connected to my smartwatch, laptop, Positive Grid Spark Mini amp, wireless Bluetooth adapter for my car, and a myriad of other devices. When the initial hookup was done the headphones confirmed it in a hilariously posh English accent, and I had no problem selecting them from the list on my phone and listening quickly thereafter.

It works fantastically well. There was no discernible latency I could hear while playing and no sooner had I confirmed that with a few favorite licks, I was off around the house to see how it performed on the go. Once I’d gotten upstairs to the front bedroom in my two-story house (the dock located at the back of the bottom floor) I began to get crackles as the signal dropped. Of course, this could’ve been down to the Spark Link as much as the headphones.

Ultimately, the YH-WL500s passed their main test with ease. It turns out that latency-free playing with wireless headphones is possible after all. Even with my fastest licks and most syncopated playing I never felt detached from my guitar, the WL500s keeping up their end of the bargain admirably. If you want to practice with wireless headphones, these will do the job much better than any pair of Bluetooth headphones.

The cushions on the cups feel great and there were no issues there, but they did slip forward if I tilted my head. For reference, I wear a large bike helmet and they’re loose on the tightest setting the adjustable band offers, so it’s not unreasonable to think they may slip on others who have a smaller head. I’d love to see a V2 with these issues amended, because there’s an amazing sense of freedom with these headphones, and the low latency performance is fantastic. They’re just not that comfortable for more than an hour or so of playing.