On the subject of headphones

The little white headphones that come with all iPods are kind of cheap and nasty compared with the player itself, and I can't be done with sticking bits of plastic in my ears all the time. So on Monday I went to Circuit City and bought some fancy headphones.

After a bit of research and chatting with a few folk I had settled on the Sennheiser PXC 250. They had generally good reviews, and feature some funky noise-canceling circuitry, making them ideal for in-flight use, for example.

I'd had one previous run-in with noise-canceling headphones; a pair of Bose QuiteComfort 2s. I was at Denver airport, and a polite young chap manning a Bose sales booth persuaded me to try them on. I played Wipeout Pure on my PSP with them on, and the sound was enough to make one go weak at the knees. Sadly, the $300 price tag made my knees even weaker, and I had to hobble off to get my flight, bank account intact.

With this in mind, I had high expectations for the Sennheisers.

My expectations were not met, in any way whatsoever.

• The cable running from the headphones seemed of cheap construction. Specifically it was not particularly flexible, so rather than gracefully flowing from the headphones it did a sort of zig-zag affair, since it had been rolled up and twist-tied in the packaging.
• The Sennheisers rest on the ear, so have padding that is meant to be nice and comfortable against your lobes. Comfortable, yes. Breathable, no. Result: sweaty ears (and it's not even properly summer here yet!).
• The noise-canceling circuitry and batteries (2*AAA) reside in a separate "ladies personal massager shaped" canister. Sorry, it just looks like a black vibrator. Not something to be seen out in public with
• With the noise-canceling circuitry turned on the sound was pretty decent, but during silence or low-volume music a distinct hiss was audible. This sounded very much like the tape hiss that I remember from my walkman in the 1980s. Not good.
• With the noise-canceling circuitry off the bass response from the headphones was pretty poor. Worse, I would say than the default iPod or even my PSP headphones. Shocking.
• Overall, the volume level from the headphones was somewhat low. Normally on the iPod I will have the volume at around 40% of maximum. With the Sennheisers I had it set closer to 80%.

So there we have it; $150 not well spent. Thankfully Circuit City have a no quibble returns policy. So this evening I returned.

Of course this means that I'm back to using the sucky iPod stuff-your-ear-holes headphones.

The Sennheisers were not all bad though, so some reviews later I've settled on the PMX 60 headphones. Amazon have them on offer for $22, so I'll be putting together an order later this week.

You may hear me whining about those as well sometime next week.