Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsBetter than ATH M50x, Sennheiser HD598 in noisy environments!
Reviewed in India on 18 August 2019
I have Audio Technica ATH M50x and Sennheiser HD598 headphones that I've been using for the past 4 years. I also have Yamaha HS5 studio monitors. These are the baseline of comparison for me. I'd never wanted to buy another headphones for myself as I was already set with the two headphones (1 open back and 1 closed back) and a pair of excellent near field studio monitors for my recording deck. But one day my brother got these and was listening to them. I casually tried them on and was blown away by the noise cancellation prowess of these pair. And also was thoroughly impressed by the freedom wireless headphones offered. I was always of the opinion that wired headphone's sound quality could never be matched by a wireless headphones. It's true but these come pretty damn close!
Things I absolutely love about the headphones are;
1. Noise Cancellation is wonderful!. Whatever happens around you is barely audible as soon as you put these on. It may be weird at first but you get used to the active noise cancellation. And once the music starts playing, you're completely isolated in your own world. Nothing comes through once you put these on. I just totally love that about these headphones.
2. Sound Quality: Now this is subjective. There are certain aspects of sound that I like in each of my headphones. On my M50x I like the analytical sound and I like that I can pick up anything and everything. But it gets a little too shrill and piercing because it's treble is too powerful and can be very very fatiguing. As for my HD598, being open back, they have good sound stage and they have the sennheiser veil. They are warm and almost flat. For laid back music listening they are wonderful and you can listen to them for 8 to 10 hours without any discomfort!. As for these, they are the best of both the worlds. The highs are clear and you can pick out the details in all the songs. The bass is wonderfully tight and strong. I've not seen such bass either in M50x or HD598. And I just love it. Even though I prefer the flat sound signature of HD598, I still like the slightly accentuated bass in these cans.
3. The convenience: This was what pushed me to purchase. I can't believe how angry I got when every manufacturer in the world started removing the 3.5 mm Headphone jack. I wowed to never buy phones without headphone jack and also mentally became judgmental about wireless headphones. But after seeing my brother's Sony WH-1000XM3s I understood what I was missing out on. It's the convenience.... Not the sound quality or comfort or anything else that gets to you. I now use the headphones more often. So, essentially I'm getting more out of the money I spent on these. (And these are not cheap!). Battery life seems to be as advertised. I used these cans for almost 10 hours straight for the first 3 days and then had to charge them. These charge up in about half hour. Very nice feature.
What I dislike....
1. Comfort: I have large ears. Even though the cups are large enough that my big ears fit in them, they are not deep enough. After about an hour my ears start getting pinched and I have to adjust them or remove them for 1 or 2 minutes. Curiously enough, this only happens on the right earcup. Either my right earlobe is disproportionately large or the headphone cup is heavier on right side because of battery, because I've noticed that when you charge the headphones, the right earcup heats up. So either the charging circuit is there or the battery is. Whatever it might be, comfort is not as good as the sennheiser. I wouldn't even compare these with M50x on comfort because M50x suck at comfort! These are far better than M50x in comfort and a little worse than sennheiser HD598.
2. Mids: As mentioned previously, I like flat sound signature, and these cans have recessed mids. The voices and instruments in the vocal range (like woodwinds) sound muted on these cans. Whereas on Sennheiser HD598 they are crystal clear. Perhaps my ears need to get used to the sound signature or have become accoustomed to flat sounding headphones. Whatever the case might be, mids are lower than bass and treble sounds in these cans. This doesn't take away from the musicality of the headphones though. The tracks sound wonderfully nice on these. You just need to turn up the volume to hear the voices (which in turn makes the instruments louder as well!) The male voices get muted a little. but female voices sound alright.
In terms of sound quality considering my tastes
Sony WH-1000XM3 --- 8.8/10
Sennheiser HD598 --- 9.6/10
Audio Technica ATH M50x --- 9.4/10
Yamaha HS5 --- 9.8/10 (you can hear everything in these :-)
Comfort
Sony WH-1000XM3 --- 8.5/10
Sennheiser HD598 --- 9/10
Audio Technica ATH M50x --- 6/10
Yamaha HS5 --- 10/10 (you don't need to wear them)
Portability/Convenience. This should be your deciding factor to buy them or not.
Sony WH-1000XM3 --- 10/10
Sennheiser HD598 --- 7/10
Audio Technica ATH M50x --- 7/10
Yamaha HS5 --- 0/10 (these weigh 20 kgs and need wires and a sound card to run)
Other considerations
1. Call quality is decent over the phone but doesn't do well with Whatsapp video call or google hangouts or Cisco Webex (Yes I used these for meetings just to see how good the microphones were. It turns out that direct calls are fine but anything else and they fall apart).
2. Controls: They are a little finicky. I'd have liked physical buttons that have a certainty to them. Here you're sometimes not sure if your action has been registered. Also when your fingers are sweaty, they don't slide as easily as you'd like them to. This causes noise due to finger dragging with friction over the control surface.
Overall, I'd recommend this to everyone who wants to isolate themselves from the outside world. These are very good at that. But for pure sound quality or absolute comfort, I'd still recommend wired headphones like Sennheiser HD598. The problem with wireless headphones is that the technology (bluetooth) is still advancing and it might be 5 more years until it catches up to the quality of wired headphones. Then wireless headphones will fully take over the wired headphones market because only in sound quality department wireless headphones are lacking right now. The technology of wired headphones has come to its peak. There's nothing more to be done in that. The future is indeed wireless headphones with active noise cancellation. There's a lot to be done in this aspect. These technologies are still nascent. There's lot of scope of improvement in terms of pairing ease, bandwidth of bluetooth connection, battery life and noise cancellation algorithms.
These are for people who travel a lot and need sound isolation to enjoy music. These are for people who like convenience over absolute sound quality. Bluetooth technology hasn't yet caught up with the wired headphone sound quality. But it will soon. These headphones are almost there.
I wrote this review because no one has been comparing wireless headphones with wired ones. I hope it helps someone who is deciding to get a new phone that doesn't have a headphone jack. If you value absolute sound quality, don't get a phone without headphone jack. The wired headphones still offer better value and sound quality but at the expense of convenience.
