Good, portable headphones
Written: May 06 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: very comfortable, good sound quality
Cons: need to crank up the volume, other people can hear your music
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| Sombrero's Full Review: Sennheiser HD-490 Consumer Headphones |
I purchased a new pair of HD490's to replace my HD433's for portable use. (I use HD580's for home listening.) I should point out that I only looked at Sennheiser headphones because I've had good experiences with them in the past, so I really can't compare against anything except other Sennheisers :) The specific reason I replaced the 433's is that someone massively tripped over the cable while I was listening to them, and really did a number on the jack. As such, sound would drop out of either ear depending on the jack's precarious position.
The headphones are *extremely* light and comfortable to wear. This is a significant improvement over the HD433's which would irritate my ears after only an hour or two of listening. (Note that I'm not talking about the sound 'fatiguing' my ears. I mean that the HD433 has flat foam pads that sit on your ear, and it isn't all that comfortable.) The earpieces of the 490's also sit on your ear, unlike the HD580's that sit around your ear. However, they are still much more comfortable than the 433's.
From a sound quality standpoint, I'd have to say that they're in the same category as the HD433's or maybe a little bit better. I'm not an audiophile, but I can notice the difference between the 490's and 580's, although a lot of that may just be a difference in tone due to the padding that sits between your ears and the drivers on the 490's.
One thing in regards to sound that gets on my nerves is that they 'give off' more sound than the 433's or the 580's. By 'give off', I mean that someone standing next to you can hear a fair bit of what you're listening to. Although all 3 pairs of headphones are open designs, the 490's 'give off' an order of magnitude more sound than either of the others. This would probably explain the other annoying problem, which is that to get an equivalent volume level to the 433's, I have to turn the volume way up. I use a Rio500 for portable music, and while I would listen to a minimum volume level of 4 or 5 (out of 20) when using the 433's, 14 is the minimum volume level for the 490's. I could still probably cause significant hearing damage if I pushed it up to 20, so it's not that significant of an issue.
From a portable use perspective, the fact that only one wire connects to the headphones (it doesn't split and send one wire to each ear) is nice. The cord is still 10 feet long, so that is a little annoying, but I'm fine with that; I just stick the slack in my pocket. Because the headphones share a lot of your music with the surrounding world, I don't advise them for use in the library or a similar situation, but they're fine for struttin' down the street.
Although the headphones look cool in a picture, they're not quite as cool in real life. Of course, I have a black pair, so if you can find a silver pair, they might be cooler.
Overall, they're a good pair of headphones and I'm happy with the purchase. I would prefer that it not bleed off so much sound, and operate off the same volume scale as other semi-portable headphones. If those issues were resolved, it would be my ideal set of portable headphones. Comfort is the key issue, and it does that quite well. Surely much better than shoving those dang earplugs in my ears!
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
Sombrero
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Member: Andrew Sutherland
Location: Cambridge, MA
Reviews written: 6
Trusted by: 1 member
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