Successor to Bose’s wildly popular QC35 headphones leaks early

Bose appears to be on the cusp of releasing a successor to its much loved QuietComfort 35 noise-cancelling wireless headphones, judging by the appearance of an FCC filing for a QuietComfort 45 model, WinFuture reports.

It’ll be a significant release for Bose, which launched the QC35s five years ago in 2016, and since then have only released a minor update with the addition of a Google Assistant button the following year. It’s been so long that the QC35s still ship with a micro USB port rather than USB-C, which WinFuture notes looks set to change with the new headphones. In the intervening years, Bose has released the more expensive Noise Cancelling Headphones 700, but it’s kept the QC35s around as a more affordable alternative.

Otherwise, the pictures included with the FCC filing suggest Bose has stuck pretty close to its existing design for the upcoming headphones. That’s fine by us — the feathery light and comfortable, if slightly conservative, design of the QC35s doesn’t need fixing — since it’s the internals of Bose’s headphones that could use a refresh.