Headphones — Focal BATHYS

The Bathys arrived in October 2022 as the first wireless headphone from Focal with active noise cancelling. It is a closed-back Bluetooth over-ear design aimed primarily at travel, and it launched in the US at USD 699, a figure later listed as USD 799. Focal offers it in two finishes, Deep Black and Dune, and its 40 mm driver is a patented design of the French company, with an M-shaped dome made from an aluminium and magnesium alloy.

Key specs that matter

Focal specifies a response of 15 Hz to 22 kHz within plus or minus 3 dB, and harmonic distortion stays below 0.2% at 1 kHz. The headphone weighs 350 g. Bluetooth 5.1 with multipoint pairing can reach up to 15 m, and four codecs are available - SBC, AAC, aptX and aptX Adaptive, with a maximum emission power of 2.86 mW. A lithium-ion cell of 1060 mAh gives 30 hours over Bluetooth with noise cancelling engaged, 35 hours when listening through the jack and 42 hours in USB-DAC mode. A full charge takes 1.5 hours, and 15 minutes on the charger adds around 5 hours of listening.

Engineering and use context

Beyond Bluetooth, the Bathys accepts two wired inputs - an analogue 3.5 mm jack and a USB-C port. Over USB-C the headphone acts as its own DAC at up to 24 bit and 192 kHz, although the 176.4 kHz rate is not supported, so a computer or phone can send a digital stream by cable instead of over the air. Noise cancelling has three settings - Silent, Soft and a mode that lets ambient sound through. Eight microphones are fitted, two of them reserved for calls and processed by Clear Voice Capture. Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant and Siri can be called up from the headphone. The Focal and Naim app provides a five-band equaliser with Home and Loudness presets and a Mimi hearing test of roughly two minutes that builds a personal adaptation profile, and changes made there require a Bluetooth link.

Pairing

Phones and tablets that support aptX Adaptive can use that codec, while other devices fall back to AAC or SBC. For desktop listening the USB-C cable connects the headphone straight to a laptop, and the jack cable suits in-flight entertainment systems or players without Bluetooth. The box includes a carrying case of 21 x 24 x 7 cm, a 1.2 m jack cable and a 1.2 m USB-C cable.

Alternatives

The Focal Azurys, introduced in 2024, is a wired closed-back model that shares the driver size of the Bathys but omits Bluetooth and noise cancelling.