You know what the worst workplace safety hazard is these days? Not asbestos. Not forklift traffic. It's your colleague making a Teams call from a café without proper headphones, and you get to hear every espresso machine whirr, every baby scream, and every order shouted at the barista.
You don't want to be that colleague. That's why you're reading this.
What Do You Actually Need from Teams Headphones?
Anyone can slap together a fancy spec sheet. In practice, you need three things:
- A mic that picks up your voice and not the dog barking, the kids fighting, or the neighbour's renovation. CVC8 noise suppression filters background noise out of your speech. Your colleagues hear you, not your life.
- Active Noise Cancellation (ANC) that lets you focus. In an open-plan office or at home with kids, ANC is the difference between keeping your sanity and losing it. It removes constant background hum – air conditioning, traffic, the washing machine. It won't remove your boss's nagging, but music helps with that.
- Multipoint connection, meaning headphones connected to two devices at the same time. Call comes in on your phone while you're working on the computer? The headphones switch automatically. No need to rip anything off your head.
And then the thing nobody advertises but everyone needs: battery life that actually lasts a full workday. There's nothing more embarrassing than your headphones dying in the middle of a quarterly review.
VMK25.2 or VMK20 – Which One for Teams Work?
VMK25.2 is the straightforward choice if Teams calls are part of your daily grind. 55 hours of listening with ANC on and 95 hours of talk time. Read that again. Ninety-five hours. You can forget your charger at home on Monday and remember it on Friday. Bluetooth 5.4 keeps the connection rock solid, and Jasse's tuned DSP makes sure the sound is balanced and won't fatigue your ears even through a marathon of back-to-back meetings.
The VMK25.2 also has an optional wireless boom mic accessory. It attaches via USB-C and bumps the mic quality up to a level where your colleagues might think you're sitting in a studio. Or at least in an actual office.
VMK20 is the more affordable option and, honestly, perfectly capable too. 40-hour battery, ANC, multipoint, CVC8 mic – all the essentials are there. The fabric finish is light and comfortable. 250 grams on your head feels noticeably less than the VMK25.2's 300 grams, which can matter during an eight-hour meeting marathon.
The VMK20's ANC works independently from Bluetooth, which means you can use noise cancellation without music or a call – just for the sweet, sweet silence. On the flip side, it also means ANC doesn't turn off automatically with the headphones. Remember to press the button off, or the battery will drain overnight.
Why Valco and Not the Other Guys?
Do you know who Sony's CEO is? How about Bose's? Nobody does. You'll recognise our Henri by the Alfa Romeo that's being towed through downtown Oulu yet again.
But seriously. Valco headphones cost a fraction of the big brands' flagship models. The money you save, you can spend on coffee – or help us fund the Death Star. We're at roughly 0.00003 percent now.
And then the thing nobody else does: we repair these. In the hands of Jasse and the service team in Kajaani, headphones come back to life. No need to bin them and buy new ones every two years. That's both wallet-friendly and environmentally friendly, though we're not saying it for greenwashing points – we're saying it because it's true.
On sound quality: Jasse has tuned these so that music sounds like music, not a phone line. For Teams calls, that means your colleagues' voices sound natural. You can even tell the difference between when your boss is actually angry and just regular-angry.
Who Should Pick Something Else?
Let's be honest.
If you need Microsoft Teams-certified headphones with a physical Teams button that show up in IT's admin panel, Jabra and Poly make those. They're more expensive, more boring, and their sound quality is mediocre, but IT departments love them. The corporate machine runs on certifications.
If ANC is the only thing that matters and money is no object, the Sony WH-1000XM5's noise cancellation is a hair ahead. You'll pay double for that hair, though. And when they break, you buy new ones.
Summary
| | VMK25.2 | VMK20 |
|---|---|---|
| Battery (listening) | 55 h | 45 h |
| Battery (talk) | 95 h | 40 h |
| Bluetooth | 5.4 | 5.0 |
| Drivers | 45 mm | 40 mm |
| Weight | 300 g | 250 g |
| Boom mic | Optional | No |
| Multipoint | Yes | Yes |
| ANC | Yes | Yes |
For Teams calls, the VMK25.2 is the best choice. Longer battery, newer Bluetooth, boom mic option, and Jasse's latest tuning. If the budget's tighter, the VMK20 gets the job done too – no shame in that.
Both get repaired when they break. Both fund our Death Star. Henri needs it for his Ferrari corruption budget, so every purchase helps. Cheers for the money.
