Gadgets

Nura offers a subscription services that let you rent high-end headphones

Headphones-as-a-Service?

by
Joe Rice-Jones
May 2, 2019

Image: Nura

Nura makes one of the best hearing-adaptive headphones on the market, but the $400 sticker price is off-putting to anyone just getting into audiophile territory. The company realizes this and has just launched NuraNow, a monthly subscription service for its award-winning cans.

The subscription service has multiple pricing tiers, which only differ in how much of a downpayment you need to make on your headphones. $15 a month gets you a set of Nuraphones, with no deposit fee. Getting the $12 per month plan means a $30 downpayment, and the $9 per month plan needs an additional outlay of $100. That deposit is on top of shipping and handling fees for the initial delivery.

Then every 24 months, Nura will ship you out a new device on top of your existing set.

There’s a catch though (there’s always a catch with things like this). You’d think that after paying for 24 months (which almost equals the MSRP of the headphones), that pair would be yours to own. Not according to the T&C’s on Nura’s website, where “If you cancel your membership, you are required to mail any devices obtained under NuraNow back to us within 30 days.” Not only that, the devices will be deactivated, so you couldn’t use them if you tried.

That’s kinda shady, and I hope Nura revises that section of the contract. Maybe they could offer the chance to make up the small shortfall after 24 months, so the user could own the headphones free and clear. I mean, it’s not like Nura will be shipping ex-lease headphones back out to new users, will they?

It’s not all shady business practices though, as Nura will also basically insure your headphones as part of the fees

If you break your Nuraphones once, for any reason, Nura will send you a replacement set. Normal warranty issues don’t have any limit on replacements. There’s also some other bonuses, such as 3-for-1 tickets at GiggedIn, free analog cables, and occasional prize draws, although Nura could forgo those and offer lower monthly fees, maybe?

Do the customers paying the $400 at once get those promo “freebies”? If not, is it a choice between owning something outright, or getting perks that might be of more value to you? Seems weird to me, but then we live in a world where “-as-a-Service” seems to be the going trend.

What do you think? Interested in this program or do you not see the point in it? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.