Northbeam Atlas II review: the quiet ones finally got comfortable

Northbeam has been making speakers since 1994 and headphones since 2019, and until now you could hear the difference. The first Atlas was an excellent transducer bolted to a headband that seemed to have been designed from a photograph of a head rather than a measurement of one. It won arguments and lost commutes.

The Atlas II keeps the arguments.

31.4dB

Isolation at 100 Hz

Class average: 24.0 dB

38h

Battery, cancellation on

Claimed: 40 h

286g

Weight

Down from 331 g

What the cancellation actually does

Noise cancellation is easy to describe badly. Manufacturers quote a single number — usually the deepest attenuation their system reaches at the one frequency it is best at — and that number tells you almost nothing about a train carriage.

We measure across the band on a fixed head-and-torso rig, three runs, pads reseated between each. The figure that matters for transport is the one at 100 Hz, because that is where engine and rail rumble lives, and it is where cheap systems fall over.

Test	Result	Class average
Isolation, 100 Hz	31.4 dB	24.0 dB
Isolation, 300 Hz	28.9 dB	22.6 dB
Isolation, 1 kHz	26.8 dB	25.1 dB
Isolation, 4 kHz	19.2 dB	21.8 dB
Response shift, ANC on	0.6 dB	2.4 dB

Sealed room, head-and-torso simulator, three runs averaged. The reference column is the mean of eleven cancelling headphones between $250 and $400 measured on the same rig.

The pattern is consistent with what Northbeam publishes, which is worth saying out loud: the company’s own numbers matched ours to within 1.2 dB at every point we measured. That is not universal.

The one place the Atlas II gives ground is high treble, where passive isolation does most of the work and the pad seal matters more than the electronics. If your problem is a colleague two desks away rather than a diesel engine, the gap between this and a cheaper pair narrows considerably.

The tuning

Neutral, with about 2 dB of lift below 80 Hz and a very slight recession around 3 kHz that takes the edge off compressed pop without dulling anything.

This is not exciting. Played against the Drift Pro, which lifts the low bass harder and pushes the presence region forward, the Atlas II sounds flat for about ninety seconds and then sounds correct for the rest of the day. That is the trade Northbeam has always made, and it remains the right one for anything you listen to for hours.

Two specific notes from listening. First, the cancellation does not audibly change the frequency response when switched on — a common failing, and one that makes a headphone useless for critical work. Second, at maximum volume there is no compression or distortion we could hear or measure, which suggests the amplifier has more headroom than the drivers need.

Living with it

The headband is the story. Clamp force is down from 6.1 N to 4.4 N, the pad opening is 8 mm taller, and the weight has dropped by 45 g. In practice that is the difference between taking them off after two hours and forgetting they are on.

The cost is the folding mechanism, which has been deleted. The Atlas II lays flat and that is all. Northbeam’s engineering note says the hinge was the most common warranty claim on the original, which is a defensible reason to remove it, but the supplied case is 24 cm across and will not go into a bag that is already carrying a laptop.

Against the alternatives

Inside the Northbeam catalogue the useful comparison is not the Cadence One — different product, different room — but the original Atlas, still being sold at a discount. Do not buy it. The measurements are close and the wearing experience is not.

Against the Halcyon Drift Pro, the question is form factor before anything else. The Drift Pro isolates about 7 dB less at 100 Hz and sounds livelier; it also fits in a pocket, which the Atlas II emphatically does not.

The verdict

At $349 this is the pair to buy if you want the noise to go away and the music to stay honest. The case is a genuine annoyance and the app is a waste of a download. Neither is a reason to buy something that isolates 7 dB worse.