There’s a good chance this review almost didn’t happen. A lot of headphones land on our desk to review, and not all of them make it onto the channel, simply because some of them aren’t really worth talking about. That’s not a dig at Skullcandy at all, but when they got in touch about the Crusher ANC 2, the honest response was that they’d get a fair shake, with no guarantee of a full review. They might have ended up as nothing more than a quick clip. Then they arrived, got paired up, and within minutes of fiddling with one particular little dial, everything changed. This pair earned its full review.
Pricing and Specs
The Skullcandy Crusher ANC 2 comes in amzon at $190 and builds on the original Crusher ANC with an updated design and a huge jump in battery life, now rated at 60 hours. Active noise cancelling has also been improved, now running on four microphones. On top of that, you get Skull IQ for hands free voice commands, personalized sound tuning through the Skull IQ app, multi point Bluetooth pairing, preset EQ modes, customizable physical buttons, and built in Tile support if you ever misplace them.
But the real headline feature is a small dial on the ear cup, linked to something Skullcandy calls Adjustable Sensory Bass. It sounds like a gimmick on paper. In practice, it’s genuinely a little unsettling, in the best way.
Sound Performance
Setup happens through the Skullcandy app, which includes a personalized listening profile feature involving a quick series of beeps and tones. It’s hard to say definitively whether it changes much, but straight out of the box, these already sound genuinely good.
This is a first experience with Skullcandy headphones, and it’s clear the brand leans into a big, full sound signature. The mids are noticeably scooped, and the high end is present and forward without tipping into harshness. The overall tuning feels well balanced for what it’s going for. These aren’t audiophile headphones though, and they were never designed to be. They’re built for people who want their music loud, rowdy, noisy, and full of rumble.
That brings us to that dial. At first glance it looks like a volume control, but it’s actually the adjustment for Sensory Bass. Turning it up doesn’t just increase the low end frequency response, it introduces a haptic driven rumble directly into the headphones themselves. It’s tricky to describe without experiencing it firsthand, but the closest comparison is arriving at a live gig where the sound initially feels a little thin, until someone in the mixing booth flicks on the subwoofers. Suddenly there’s that full, powerful thump hitting your chest. These headphones genuinely vibrate around your ears, and the bass they produce is shocking. There’s clearly a sizable driver inside these cans, but it’s the combination of that driver with the haptic vibration that makes the bass feel even bigger than it already is. Despite how intense that sounds, it never feels uncomfortable or damaging, more like these headphones are cleverly working on your senses to make it feel like you’ve strapped two subwoofers to your ears.
There are limits though. This effect won’t suit everyone, and listening fatigue can set in fairly quickly on certain genres, especially dance, electronic, hip hop, and R&B, where bass is already a dominant element. Push the dial too far and things get flabby and distorted fast. Dialed in just right, though, it delivers that live, standing next to the PA feeling. Surprisingly, it even works on more stripped back material, adding a real sense of fullness to something as simple as an Adele vocal over piano, something that simply isn’t there listening on a standard pair of headphones. It’s a genuinely fun feature, the kind that gets an audible laugh out of you the first time you understand what it’s doing.
Movies are another area where this dial really shines. Being able to control that much low end turns big screen moments into something properly epic. Back on the music side though, it is a mixed bag overall. You need to genuinely love bass, and appreciate that thump in the chest gig feeling, to get the most from these. If that sounds like your thing, there’s a good chance you’ll love them. Run something like a recent Metallica album through these and be prepared, the bass is properly intense.
Noise Cancelling
With all that bass on offer, it’s easy to forget these are marketed as noise cancelling headphones too. Unfortunately, this is where things fall apart a little. The active noise cancelling simply isn’t very strong, letting in far too much of the outside world, and it comes with a noticeable hiss. Transparency mode fares no better. For a $229.99 pair of headphones, more is expected here.
Design and Comfort
Thankfully, design and comfort step things up considerably. These are well made headphones overall. The plastics do pick up smudges fairly easily, but the build quality still feels genuinely high. There’s plenty of padding across the headband and ear cups, keeping them comfortable even with all that bass rattling through your head.
The included case carries a neat Skullcandy logo, and Skullcandy have clearly thought about the practical side of things too. It’s sized appropriately, feels tough, and the headphones fold flat in two directions, which keeps the case compact. There are even L and R markers inside the case showing exactly how the headphones should sit. Small details like that genuinely matter, and Skullcandy have nailed them here.
Final Thoughts
This is a tricky one to answer, mainly because this was the first real experience with Skullcandy headphones, and certainly the first experience with anything like Sensory Bass. If you’re already a Skullcandy fan, these were clearly built with you in mind, and outside of that disappointing noise cancelling, there’s a lot to love here. They’re a fantastically built, genuinely wild sounding pair of headphones.
For everyone else, the real question is how you feel about bass, and whether you enjoy that live, gig venue sensation of getting hit in the chest by a kick drum through a big PA system. If that excites you, these are absolutely worth a look. If you’re after a more traditional, balanced headphone experience instead, it might be worth looking elsewhere, with something like the Bose QC45 standing out as one of the best all around options currently available.
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