Noble FoKus Artemis review: this feels (and sounds) to me like the future of wireless ANC headphones

The Noble FoKus Artemis has already attracted quite a bit of attention in audiophile circles. It features a unique triple-driver structure, with separate drivers in each earcup handling mids, treble and bass, and houses it in a real aluminium frame that looks and feels much more premium than its mostly all-plastic rivals. It's sound could fit right in with the best of the wired audiophile headphones, let alone the Bluetooth variety.

• Buy the Noble FoKus Artemis from Apos for $899

Add in ANC, wired and wireless listening and a generous battery that’s user-replaceable and you’ve got quite the tasty package for the discerning enjoyer of the best wireless ANC headphones – albeit one that comes at a significantly higher price than most of its key rivals.

Big promise. Big price. The Noble FoKus Artemis arrives with a lot to prove – let’s take a listen and see how it stacks up.

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Sound profile

The secret sauce of the Noble FoKus Artemis is that unique three-driver architecture. In each earcup, a dynamic driver handles the bass, giving the lower frequencies a little physical oomph without sacrificing tonality. A planar magnetic driver handles the midrange, giving some extra articulation and definition to these tones, and a balanced armature super tweeter takes care of the high end.

Listening to the headphone straight out of the box, with no app-fiddling or EQ tuning, I was impressed. There’s a lot of space in the sound, with vocals in particular sitting apart from the mix in a way that makes them satisfyingly crisp and clear. Doing my Mercury Prize homework and listening to Dove Ellis’s Blizzard, I found that in the midrange, vocals had an engaging presence and immediacy, surrounded by clear, precisely delineated instruments. You could call it dry, but I personally appreciated all that space to pick out the discrete elements of each track. Drums in particular have a brilliant taut attack to them.

Trebles are an engaging presence – sharp, precise and bright. Too forward? They skirt the line for sure; I’ve been revisiting The Smiths’ Meat is Murder due to the recent conduct of the British Prime Minister, and that jangling tambourine in ‘Rusholme Ruffians’ was ever-so-slightly threatening to become too insistent. In general I was fine, but a listener more sensitive to higher frequencies than me might want to get hold of the EQ and roll them back a touch.

Bass presence in the default tuning is pleasing. It feels like there’s room for it to come forward some more in this quite treble-focused headphone, and will likely be another candidate for EQ, but even without any fiddling of any kind, the Noble FoKus Artemis made a good account of itself in The Chain Test (the test where you listen to ‘The Chain’). John McVie’s showstopping moment didn’t have quite the impact it has had when I’ve tested other headphones, but the sound was rich, warm and well-defined. I tried a few other bass-centric tracks – ‘Killing in the Name’, ‘Blood Sugar Sex Magik’ – and came every time to the same conclusion. It sounds great and I love the definition – but I could see a scenario where I’d want to punch it up a little.

Features

Noble has a longstanding partnership with audio personalisation software company Audiodo, and as such, loading up the Noble FoKus app gives you the opportunity to create your own unique sound profile, which can then be applied to other Noble products should you own any. As is usual for this sort of thing, it plays a selection of tones at different frequencies, and you tap according to whether or not you can hear them.

I’ve been lukewarm on these kinds of features in the past – they have tended to overcompensate for my apparent hearing deficiencies in ways I didn’t like, producing over-jangly trebles. But I quite liked my resulting profile from the Noble app – it produced a sound that was rich and warm, and felt fuller than the default when I toggled between them.

Still, if you prefer to take control of these things yourself, having a ten-band EQ at your fingertips allows you to easily iron out any niggles you might have experienced with the sound. Constructing my own ‘bass boost’ preset was the work of moments, and you better believe that ‘Killing in the Name’ sounded as completely sick as the good lord intended.

ANC and the Ambient mode can be toggled on and off via a button on the headphone, and if you delve into the app, you also have the option to set ANC level to ‘Strong’, ‘Medium’ or ‘Weak’. Dialled up to the fullest, the ANC acquits itself well – I subjected it to my usual test of listening while a loud Zoom call was happening on the other side of the table, and I was able to sink into my tunes peacefully. It’s not on the effectiveness level of the Sony WH-1000XM6, and the ‘Ambient’ (transparency) mode doesn’t offer the same 20-level customisability, but it’s good enough for commuting, offices, gyms and journeys.

And finally, I praised this feature to the hills when it showed up in the Sennheiser Momentum 5, so it’s only fair I do so here too – the 600mAh battery is user-replaceable! You have to use Noble’s proprietary batteries, but if you reach a point where you’re no longer getting the advertised (quite generous) numbers of 35 hours with ANC or 55 hours without, you can simply send off for a fresh battery. As I said when I reviewed the Sennheiser, this is a great feature that improves the longevity of the headphone and actually engages with the way that most consumers want to use their tech – i.e. for a long time, as opposed to pointlessly replacing it every few years. Good stuff.

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Value

Now here’s a sticking point. The gladiatorial arena of the premium headphone market, where the likes of Bose and Sennheiser and Sony are busily tearing strips off one another, is a daunting place. Entering said arena with a headphone costing $899 / £799 is ambitious, to say the least.

Does it justify it? Tricky question. The amazing sense of space and tonal separation created by that triple-driver architecture was really like nothing I’d heard before – and I’ve had a lot of premium headphones over my ears. The replaceable battery helps sell the headphone as a long-term investment, and the aluminium build gives it the feel of a premium product.

All the same… that’s a big chunk of change, and there are a lot of really great headphones out there asking for less.

Comfort & build

With its bones built from real aluminium, the Noble FoKus Artemis feels like a premium product. Its headband is fabric-covered, and the earcups freely rotate for a natural fit. The design is non-folding, but the headphone comes with a fabric-covered clamshell case that helps with transportation. There’s a slightly textured aluminium patterning on the outside of the earcups, and physical control buttons for power, ANC, playback and volume. Wired listening is also possible via USB-C or 3.5mm, with cables supplied in the box.

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I’ve seen the Noble FoKus Artemis praised highly for its comfort – but honestly, while the clamping force was fine, I found the slightly snug earcups to cause me a mild ache after prolonged listening sessions. Nothing serious, but enough to warrant the relief of a short break. Headphone comfort is super-subjective, and my experience may not match yours, but all the same, I’d be happier wearing, say, the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Gen 2 for an extended listening session.

However, one feature I do want to shout out is that the Noble FoKus Artemis has an IP52 weatherproof rating – meaning it’s partially dust-resistant and can handle a light shower of rain. While this may not sound particularly impressive, I do appreciate the specificity of it – many manufacturers just gesture an arm vaguely towards the idea of weather resistance without providing hard-number ratings.

Should you buy?

How badly do you want to be on the cutting edge? I can honestly see a scenario where the triple-driver architecture of this headphone becomes the standard – to my mind, it’s a triumph, delivering a sound with so much space to it, particularly around vocals. I certainly think that user-replaceable batteries too are on their way to becoming the new normal. Longevity, engaging clarity, and a sound that can be tuned to your precise tastes – that’s a winning combo. It feels like the future.

But it’s coming at a good $300-400 more than its closest competitors, and those competitors really are very good indeed. The Sennheiser HDB 630 offers stunning sound (and PEQ), the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Gen 2 offers pillow-like comfort, the Sony WH-1000XM6 offers preternatural ANC, and all of them are cheaper than this.