Introduction

Focal is one of the largest audio brands in the world today, with over 40 years of experience. The French brand is most popular for its speakers and car audio systems, with in-house developed speaker drivers that have been used in flagship audio setups that cost more than most houses do. It took a while for the company to enter the personal audio space with headphones, the Focal Spirit Professional closed-back studio set was released in 2014 and then another closed-back set in the form of the Listen Professional in 2016. However those were quickly overshadowed by the launch of the Focal Utopia—an open-back set using the world's smallest speaker drivers and pure beryllium diaphragms, to where the Head-fi community was never the same again. I will have more to talk about the Utopia in a separate article, although the subject of today's review has more to share with the wireless version of the Listen Professional. Dubbed simply the Listen Wireless, Focal's first foray into Bluetooth headphones had the same mediocre impact as its very first headphones. Would the new iteration mimic the Utopia's success? Today we take a look at the brand new Focal Bathys Bluetooth ANC headphones to find out.


I had heard about the Bathys earlier this year when someone poked through FCC registration documents to see that Focal was working on a new wireless set. I had also just got done attending CanJam London where I went through the entire active Focal headphone lineup and realized this was a big gap in my own headphones experience. In the absence of a Focal representative who could help with review samples, and also because I was in the market for a personal set of travel headphones anyway, I decided to fork out my own money to purchase the Bathys upon launch. The press release we published had drummed up my interest further, especially when I saw that the drivers used were made in France at the Focal assembly line, and the Bathys was sharing a lot of DNA with the Celestee/Radiance closed-back sets that I had previously listened to and thought they certainly had good potential. With more premium construction and the promise of the Bathys being true audiophile-grade Bluetooth ANC headphones, I placed the order and am now ready to talk more about them after over a month of testing. We begin this review with a look at the product specifications in the table below.

Specifications

Packaging and Accessories

The Focal Bathys ships in a clean white cardboard box with the company logo and product name on the front along with a simplified render of the headphones from the side to trigger your trypophobia. Salient marketing features, including compatibility with smart assistants rounds off the front, whereas a more complete render of the actual product along with the carry case greets us on the back. Focal has more branding and features listed on the sides in multiple languages and here we also find a side flap keeping the contents in place during transit.


Open the box to reveal two QR codes on the inner lining, with the first taking you to a very handy video tutorial page covering the functionality of the Bathys and much more. I recommend going through the relevant sections here since most people are unlikely to read a detailed user manual which, incidentally, Focal has made available online. The second QR code has more to do with the mobile app which we will get to over the course of this review. A quick start guide and a pamphlet going over the Focal product lines serve as paperwork here, then we can move on to the really nice carry/storage case included with the Bathys. It's a semi-rigid case that measures in at 24x21x7 cm and is plenty easy to carry inside a backpack or cabin bag when traveling, with a hanging tag to further clip the case on the outside via a carabiner as needed. The exterior gets a durable fabric layer with the Focal flame logo applique on the front. More branding comes courtesy the Focal print on the zipper tags, whereby a self-sealing zipper also helps with dust and spill resistance. The case can easily lie flat owing to its form factor, and opens up to reveal the headphones themselves packed flat in their own compartment. There are more compartments to neatly store the accessories and Focal provides enough room to throw in a small DAP or charger too.


We get two cables with the Focal Bathys and both come in handy for its operating modes. Both cables are 4' (1.2 m) in length with portability in mind, with the first cable having two 3.5 mm single-ended TRS jacks on either side and the second going from USB Type-C to Type-C. The USB cable gets Focal branding on the connector housing, whereas the analog cable gets an angled connector to help with easier routing on the headphones. The Type-C cable also comes in handy for charging the internal battery in the headphones, whereby Focal have already tested compatibility with chargers able to provide 2 A or more of current on the 5 VDC rail.