three60's Full Review: Sony MDR-V700DJ Professional Headphones
Hello once again boys and girls. Pull up a chair, get comfy and get ready for another electronics review! This time, I'll be going over my new Sony MDR-V700DJ headphones. Let me first give you a bit of background info and then I'll dive into the meat 'n potatoes. As usual, my review is broken up into different sections with a 1-5 rating; 1 sucks ass, 5 kicks ass.
I've had my trusty Sony V6's for nearly 10 years and though they're comfy and still sound great, they were falling apart. The leather lining around the foam pads has nearly worn completely off and the foam was starting to come off too. So...I thought, well maybe it's time to send these guys into retirement and look for their heir apparent...
ENTER THE V700's
I first spotted these ultra chic headphones at a fairly intense nightclub a year or so ago. They immediately stood out amongst all the other standard DJ set. Then I started noticing more and more DJ's wearing them, including DJ Seven of Epitonic.com and San Francisco's very own Jerry Bonham, a local legend.
OK, so I knew these were serious DJing 'phones, but isn't that overkill for me? Well, I'll answer that question a bit later...
THE LOOK: 5
I'm the first to admit that these headphones are real eye catcher. They're big and are finished in a matte silver color. They have kind of a robotic-retro look to them and definitely look unique.
QUALITY OF CONSTRUCTION: 4
I've read about a dozen different reviews of these headphones and the opinion is really mixed. Most of the ones from people claiming to be DJ's say the quality is really first-rate. Other people say the headband part going over your head is nothing but a glorified piece of foam that'll wear out in no time. Sony says these 'phones "incorporate high-end materials and advanced engineering" whatever that means. Personally, they seem pretty nicely constructed and would probably take abuse pretty well. I used my old V6's day-in-day out at work and am constantly flipping them on and off, sliding them 1/2 off for single-ear listening (and chatting on the phone, hehe) and running over the cord with my chair. These V700's come with a nice long coiled cord so instead of having them drape along the carpet, they sort of snake around my desk. The hinges are made of aluminum and rotate in all sorts of directions, which is what DJ's really need.
One really cool aspect of these 'phones is they can fold up into a relatively compact bundle and stored with the supplied carrying pouch. Nice design touch there.
COMFORT AND FIT: 2.5
The V6's that these replace are much smaller and lighter so I'll need to get used to these new V700's. They're on the heavy side, at around 10.6 ounces, but when you adjust it and slide them on, they feel pretty good. They're fairly comfortable to wear hours at a time, though if you wear eyeglasses, you may need to relieve your ears more often. After some more extensive listening, I find they're too tight for more than a couple of hours.
One thing to note: these are *not* open air headphones, meaning they are intended to block out as much ambient noise as possible. Thus, they will be more snug than other studio monitors, high-end electrostatics from Stax or Sennheiser.
Something else worth noting is that the ear cups are rather large. If you have them on and say, your coworker comes and taps you on the shoulder or the phone rings, it's not that easy to slide them off and let them sit on your neck -- unless you have a really long neck, the cups will probably push up against your chin/jaw. Not really a design flaw since all big studio monitors are this way, but a minor pain nonetheless.
THE SOUND QUALITY: 4
Because these headphones are designed for DJing, there is a definite bias towards being bass-heavy. The 50mm diameter drive units can really, REALLY thump, shake, rattle and roll baby! Wow, it's amazing...great for beat-matching. This is cool if your music lends itself to bass-heaviness. The mids and highs are acceptably clear, but not stunning. Vocals come out fairly clean and tight.
In general, if you're into beat-heavy sounds or big-band jazz, these headphones are great. I wouldn't recommend them for classical, jazz vocals or other genres with lots of delicate passages with detail, I think there are other headphones that're more suitable for you.
OVERALL: 3
While I think the tonal balance is skewed a bit too much to the bass, these are still a decent set of headphones. They're designed to take to lots of abuse from the DJ's they're meant for and will probably be just fine for me. I'll check in later with a long term update!
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