Master & Dynamic MW09 ANC Earbuds Review: A Private Audio Oasis

If there’s one thing repeatedly brought up in our M&D reviews, it’s how stunning their products are. You do feel like you’re paying for something premium. The MW09, like the models that came before it, proves that M&D isn’t just about aesthetics. The buds sound as good as they look.

M&D MW09 ANC Earphones Design

They’re so beautiful it hurts.

The sapphire glass and aluminum earbud body is well-crafted and robust, offering excellent attention to detail. I wasn’t crazy about the stainless steel charging case for the MW08 since it was a fingerprint magnet. In the MW08 Sport, the company was mindful enough to give us a Kevlar fiber charging case instead, which fixed our fingerprint issue. This time, it has given us a choice between Kevlar fiber and aluminum.

Out of the six color variants the MW09 is available in, you get an aluminum case for three of them and Kevlar fiber for the other three, with the Kevlar ones costing $50 more than the aluminum ones. I was sent one of the aluminum ones, and it didn’t catch a single fingerprint after around ten days of usage.

The MW09 offers two pairs of foam tips and five silicone ear tip pairs of varying sizes. There is a lot of variety in sizes, and the different materials are also highly appreciated.

Both materials have their advantages. Foam isolates sound better than silicone, but silicone is more comfortable, durable, and easily cleanable. It also doesn’t heat up as easily and as much as foam does. The foam ones suited me better comfort and fit-wise, and I liked the degree of noise isolation they provided.

M&D MW09 ANC Earphones Controls and Fit

I like big buttons, and I cannot lie.

And that’s exactly what the MW09 offers. You get a big volume rocker on the left bud and a multi-function button on the right that does everything from playback to calls. I miss the buttons’ click and feel in an era of touch interfaces. Especially when they’re as intuitively designed as the ones on these buds are, with just two buttons controlling everything you need to control.

I will add that I said this in my review of the MW08, too. The buttons might be too small for folks with bigger hands than mine — which, I’m afraid, might be the majority. I would love M&D to consider offering both touch and physical controls, even if the touch controls offer just playback and not full functionality.

Just featuring buttons might be limiting and exclude a number of hand sizes. It’s such a missed opportunity, especially because the huge body of the earbud could have provided an extra good canvas for the company to program with touch controls, as opposed to most other modern earbuds with smaller, more streamlined bodies.

This reminds me that testing the MW09 out made me wonder if we’ll ever get sleeker, slimmer, and more streamlined bodies from M&D. If you’ve been keeping up with the company’s products, you probably know that all their earbuds look the same. A big, chunky earpiece stuffed with expensive (and weighty) materials, either sapphire glass and aluminum or ceramic. And while they all look stunning, are we supposed to ignore how heavy they are?

The MW09 buds weigh a whopping 8.1g — for context, Apple’s AirPods are 4g. The MW08 Sport that came right before these were 8.6g, and the ones that came before that, the MW08, were 9g. But I wonder how many iterations we’d have to wait for to get M&D buds that weigh roughly as much as the industry standard.

M&D MW09 ANC Earphones Sound and ANC

Sounds even better than the models that precede it.

The MW08 lacked a bit of bass, and the company worked on that in the MW09. If I were to choose, the sound on these buds is more bass-heavy than treble. The bass is punchy and packs power and the treble isn’t non-existent, but it doesn’t come at you like the bass. It sounds as if the sound profile has been widened to include more detail.

The ANC on these buds works well for my daily Subway commute. The loud sound of the engine and the hum of people chit-chatting were all successfully muted. My colleagues chatting right next to me at my workplace were utterly silenced. The ambient mode sounded a bit overdone to me, though. It gave my ambient noise a stereo effect, making it stand out. That was particularly annoying on the street when every single horn and siren was excessively exaggerated. At one point, instead of turning the ambient mode on, I found myself just switching between ANC on or off.

I also found the time it took for the buds to cycle between modes a bit too long. They took around four seconds to switch modes, and I don’t know if I’m just impatient, but that was too slow for me.

M&D MW09 ANC Earphones Battery and Mic

A whopping 48-hour battery life.

M&D considerably bumped up the battery life on these buds. We saw 42 hours on the last two models and an impressive 48 hours on these. Similar to the previous models, these buds fulfilled their battery life claims. I have been using these buds daily for over a week, and they still have a lot of juice left in them.

These are the kind of buds that you get if you have a long commute, travel a lot, or hate being tethered to a socket. For around three to four hours of usage daily, which is pretty standard for most of us, you can easily charge these once every two weeks. I think that’s pretty incredible. You also get wireless charging (yay), which wasn’t offered in the MW08.

I wasn’t a huge fan of the mic on these. I mean, the people I called to test it out weren’t. M&D has been touting its ‘6-microphone with proprietary wind reduction microphone array’ in its past earbuds for a couple of years. This one came with all of the above but, of course, enhanced with AI this time. Sadly, I didn’t hear much of a difference. Especially considering how big of a deal they’ve made in this one. If anything, my voice sounded not as sharp, clear, and crisp as it does with the earbuds I use otherwise, Cleer’s Arc II.

Should You Buy the M&D MW09 ANC Earphones

For sure, unless having a great mic is your priority.

M&D almost always does everything right. Its pricing may not cater to everyone, but it ensures they’re making its products worth the price tag. The MW09 is stunning, sports simple controls, and has tons of fit options.

There’s also an excellent sound profile, powerful noise cancellation, and a battery that doesn’t give up on you. The mic is the only thing on these buds that didn’t measure up. They’re okay for everyday calls but not ideal for professional meetings. You might want to look elsewhere if you use these buds for serious business. But otherwise, these check all the boxes you can think of for a killer pair of earbuds.