Would love to hear your opinion thoughts performance in comparison to the Zulu

Me too!

I love my Zulu but a guinea pig to do a side by side comparison would be great!

I tried them on the other day but didn't use them. They were lighter than the Z2s and the ear cups didn't come down as far, as they sit on the ear and not over. I tend to get fatigued by the ear cups hitting the back of my jaw on other full coverage sets so these might be more comfy.
THE drawback IMO is the enormous size of the control box. It's huge! Takes four batteries and is very heavy. Supposedly it comes with some accessories that allow it to be mounted semi permanently.
I bought a set of the Sierras for my wife but if she doesn't like them I may return them and get these.

I tried them on and didn't like the way they fit - I ended up going with Sierra's and like them very much.

I just got my lightspeed PFX in the mail the other day, aircraft spruce let me send back the sennheiser S1 (garbage!) I bought at Oshkosh last year.
Haven't flown with the PFX yet but the earcups are considerably bigger than the Zulu, they seem more comfortable but I only had them on long enough to figure out the Bluetooth and stuff.

AC spruce was Excelent to deal with by the way, unlike sennheiser Canada! It you are thinking about the S1 digital forget it get a lightspeed or bose.

River rat wrote:but the earcups are considerably bigger than the Zulu, .

Hmm I thought they were a bit smaller. Aren't they supposed to go on the ears, like the new DCs?

I'm gonna go ahead and plug the DC pro-x's again. I took the ol lady flying today for the second time ever. (She actually asked me to take her this time! I'm wondering if she smoked some of that good Colorado shit today.....)
Any headset that puts pressure behind her ear makes her sick. So I got stuck with my old Sierras. All I can say is that after today's flight, I love the Pro-x's that much more. The noise canceling is far superior in the DC's and the way they sit on the ear and not over is so much more comfortable. Plus they are lighter.

The DCs look very nice but no BT, right? Gotta have tunes and phone. Can you plug in a phone?

BTW sorry to highjack

The DC Prox are ANR and have Bluetooth. The DC Pro are passive with no BT.

I use the DC Pro-X at work. They do have Bluetooth, and it works very well. You need to get the $637 version, though. I believe they have a cheaper one with no ANR/BT. This is a great headset. ANR works well enough for the 180, much to my surprise.

I bought a set of Lightspeed PFXs at Oshkosh and flew with them almost all the way back to the west coast in my 180 (17-ish hours).

The good:
Very comfortable
Fantastic cables (never gave cables a second thought, but these are awesome)
Very quiet
Good Bluetooth
Cool iPhone app

The bad:
Giant control box, though it fits perfectly in the sidewall pouch of the 180.

Horrendous battery life. Worst I've ever seen. New batteries at OSH, and they died at the 14 hour mark. Didn't even make it home. My remaining Bose X made it the full round trip on one set of batteries with lots of life still left. This alone is probably a deal breaker for me, given the need for four batteries at a time.

The ANR comes on in steps. Nothing at first, then after 5 seconds or so, it gets quieter, then a but later, quieter still. It seems to go through 3-4 learning cycles before I got 'max quiet'. Maybe a minute total. This alone isn't a biggie, but about every 10-15 minutes in flight, usually when I moved my head to look for traffic or use a chart, the ANR would lose its low frequency cancellation. I'd look down, and I'd get a rumble in my headset. After a few minutes, the box would learn again, and it'd go back to normal. It was quicker just to cycle the ANR off/on. For an $1100 headset, this is unacceptable to me.

The rumble issue isn't super obtrusive, but for this kind of coin shouldn't happen.

Now, I just got back from OSH, and will call Lightspeed on Monday to see if I got a bum headset. If it's normal, it's going back. If it's not, I will amend this accordingly.

Too bad, I *really* wanted to love this headset.

Unfortunately, I traded in one of my trusty Bose X headsets for a $ credit, and I doubt I'm going to get it back.

That sucks to hear cannon. I have a set of zulus and a set of zulu 2s and the battery life is awesome. Probably around 40hrs for 2 AAs. The rumbling would be annoying as well, as my current ones certainly don't do that. Looking forward to what lightspeed has to say about it. Also enjoying the pireps from the rest of you guys.

Just thumbed through the manual (probably would have been good to do earlier..) and there's a feature to acoustically map the headset with my ears in it. In Lightspeeds defense, I have not done this yet. This may be where the rumble issue comes from, maybe not.

Unfortunately, my big issue is the battery life. The manual states "A set of batteries can provide up to 20 hours of use..." So it looks like 20 is the max with no use of Bluetooth. Bummer. I averaged 91 hours/month from Jan-June. That's a best case of 18 batteries/month (26/mo using my first run as a baseline). My Bose X and DC Pro X each use four batteries/month (two sets), on average.

The manual specifically cautions against using rechargeables for some reason, so that route is out, too.

Thanks for all the info please keep me posted on anything Lightspeed has to say thinking of upgrading my original Zulus but not if there's issues

I played with it at OSH. Was not really impressed. Stick with the ones you have. I liked the Bose A20 better personally. The new Zulu is too heavy and clamping for me. On top of that, the new noise cancelling was hard to get to work correctly. Too sensitive.

On the ear vs a cup large enough to cover the whole ear? Reminds me of my cheap Sony headphones I use for computer stuff. They hurt after an hour or so. I've always thought the Zulu was incredibly comfortable and lightweight but a full ear cup is a requirement for me.

Zzz wrote: ...They hurt after an hour or so. I've always thought the Zulu was incredibly comfortable and lightweight but a full ear cup is a requirement for me.

I'm in the same boat. When I first got my BoseX headset back when I was instructing, I didn't realize that you needed to tuck the back of your ears into the cup, and simply had them setting mostly on my ears. They started killing my ears after about 20 mins. After I realized how they were supposed to fit, they worked great...still have them after 9 years, but they are backup (co-pilot) to my first generation Zulus now.

I'm about ready to try another headset, but find it hard to believe it will get any better than my Zulus...

Talked to Lightspeed today.

Sounds like the battery issue is normal. He quoted the manual with "up to 20 hours of use", less with BT use. He also mentioned that the batteries they include may not always be the freshest, so I'd probably get a better result with new batteries. Still, even if I got 50% more life, we're only talking 20-ish hours at best. Without saying it directly, the tone of his voice suggested that he agreed the battery life wasn't ideal, especially when using BT.

The good news, if there is any to come out if this, is that in my ignorance I wasn't even using the SuperMegaFantastic ANR settings. I never used the ear mapping function, and without this process the PFX won't even use the external mics and other magic to activate the "Streaming Quiet" ANR functions they mention in their ads. I was quite happy with the noise canceling as it was, so now I'm curious what it will do with this higher-level ANR working. I'll go fly when I get back from this trip and report back.

The loss of the low freq ANR was not unexpected according to LS. He argued that at this level of ANR, any change in the ear seal will cause a momentary acoustic change, though I've never had that issue during thousands of hours with the Bose X and A20.

I asked about rechargeables, and he said they won't hurt anything, but they don't last as long as alkalines, hence the note in the manual.

I'm still on the fence about returning them. If they prove to be even quieter than before, I'll be very impressed and that may be just enough for me to deal with the battery issue. If I don't use them for work, I'd probably only need a set of batteries every month or two. That might be acceptable, though I'm not thrilled about it.

Can't wait to hear results

I was in the Lightspeed office today and tried the PFX on. They do indeed cover the entire ear in a fully enclosed cup, though it is just a little smaller than the Zulu 2. I think you have to have pretty big ears to struggle keeping them inside the cup...

I saved $250 and just got the Zulu 2 on the trade up program from my old 20-3G.

I can commiserate, Cannon. For the ANR to work, there has to be a perfect seal around the ears. Unfortunately, not everyone's head shape or ears work well with them. My wife refuses to wear the Zulus, since she gets that awful loud feedback wobble almost all the time unless she sits perfectly still. She has (cute, in my opinion) ears that stick out a bit.

I get the feedback too sometimes if I turn my head to quickly when looking for traffic. Anything that causes a slight leak around the ears will do it.

On our Alaska trip the Zulus started cutting out intermittently, about every 10 minutes, even with brand new batteries. Super annoying! Apparently the auto shut-off circuit tries to sense if your head has moved in x minutes. If not, it shuts off the ANR. After talking to Lightspeed they think my sensor is broken, so I'm sending them in for service again.

Don't mean to sound too negative. They're great when they work!