Sennheiser HD201 Lightweight Over-Ear Binaural Headphones
by Sennheiser
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Sennheiser HD201 Lightweight Over-Ear Binaural Headphones
Customer Review: Why These Headphones Deserve Five Stars
Summary: 5 Stars
Although there is still some small room for improvement with the Sennheiser HD201 Headphones (see below), they definitely exceeded all of my expectations, especially considering their ultra-low price. I've only owned a single pair of headphones that I felt were equal to these in quality, and those were Pioneer Studio headphones that I paid a small fortune for in the 1970's. Here's a quick rundown of the pros and cons of the product:
PROS:
- Price: You get a LOT more than you pay for. Excellent quality at any price.
- Great dynamic range: FULL bass, excellent frequency response across the entire audio spectrum.
- Very comfortable: I've never seen this before, but the earcups actually swivel to give you a true "custom" fit.
- No skimping on cord length: Not sure of exact length, but is at LEAST 6' long.
- Great external noise cancellation: The custom fit helps to block out more outside noise than probably 95% of other headphones.
- No skimping on construction: Both the earcups AND top of the headband are well-padded. Adds to comfort.
- Quality plug: Unlike most brands, this model has flexible, molded strain relief for the plug. Should prevent fraying of wires due to strain placed on the cord.
- Simple packaging: Cardboard box with small amount of foam to prevent damage. Hassle-free to open, and environmentally-friendly.
CONS:
- Would be nice if the label for the right/left earcups were a different color, easier to see.
- Would be nice to have manual volume or mute control along the cord.
The "cons" are more nitpicking than anything else, or I wouldn't still give this product five stars, obviously. I almost picked the cheaper ($15) Sony headphones on Amazon. I'm glad that I "splurged" and spent the extra $5 to get the Sennheiser HD201 Headphones though. I've never heard of the company before, but I've bought a lot of "name brand" products as of late that were absolute junk, so I wouldn't hesitate buying these due to their lack of brand name recognition.
I also personally prefer the fact that these headphones surround your entire ear(s). I have NEVER found a pair of "earbud" headphones that provided decent audio. Most of the models that just barely cover your ears (that don't use what I refer to as "earcups") not only have horrible ambient noise cancellation, but lack bass response to the point where serious adjustment to a graphic equalizer is necessary to hear anything beyond the middle-range (vocals). Most of them are painful to wear and you are SOL insofar as getting anything close to quality sound if your listening device doesn't have an EQ. Not so with these.
I highly, highly recommend them.
Customer Review: Excellent Sound and Build Quality at a Great Price
Summary: 4 Stars
I have to admit, I wasn't too impressed with the sound quality of these cans right out of the box. The highs and mid-range sounded nice but the bass was far too thin. After burning them in for about 12 hours using a pink noise generator, the bass response improved dramatically. I'm sure they will continue to sound better as I continue the burn-in process. As I write this review, I'm listening to some Massive Attack and I'm hearing things I've never heard before. It sounds like the background vocalists are standing behind me. Crazy. I bought these to use with my 160gb iPod Classic (6G). The integrated amp in the iPod seems to drive these cans just fine. I do not recommend using the EQ built into the iPod firmware, as it causes bass distortion on a lot of my music (which is all Apple Lossless).
For the price, I am very impressed with how these sound. The sound reproduction is good for the price. For those of us who love heavy bass, these will probably leave a bit to be desired. The bass is firm, and does not make the mids and highs muddy.
These cans are very comfortable. The leatherette ear cups fit very nicely and within a few minutes you'll forget you're wearing headphones. I think this due in part to the cushion on the top of the adjustable headband. For their size, these headphones wear very lightly.
One thing I like about the build of these headphones is the 1/8" gold-plated jack. It eliminates the need for an adapter when you're using an MP3 player. Also the 10' copper cord gives good freedom of motion. My concerns with the build are the plastic swivel joints that hold the actual headphone cans to the headband. They look like they will be the first part to break if anything breaks at all.
These headphones do leak sound, but not too badly. They do a good job of blocking outside noise, despite the fact they do not have noise canceling.
Overall, these headphones are great entry-level cans for everyday use and they are built pretty well. The bass response improves with burn-in, but is not going to be brain-rattling. For the price, you'll be hard-pressed to find headphones that sound much better.
Update 1/12/2010:
I've let these burn in for about 96 hours. At about 48hr of use, the highs became way too pronounced and they sounded really awkward. With roughly 100hr of use on them, they really came into their own. I guess they get worse before they get better. To improve the bass response and balance the highs, I did the "blue-tack" mod (if you don't know what this is, search Google for a tutorial). It helped immensely. These things are definitely worth the $20.
Customer Review: Not loud enough, sibilant, slightly bright
Summary: 3 Stars
In summary this headphone has one general strength:
1) Decent sounding depending on your tastes and needs, given the price, and given the kind of sound you get from most other closed headphones of similar price.
However, the Sennheiser HD201 has 4 important weaknesses:
1) Has very low sensitivity: it takes a lot of volume/power to bring them to satisfactory or normal loudness levels.
2) It's a bit bright, bass is slightly lacking, making them sound slightly thin or "weak".
3) Has a tendency to be SSSSSSSibilant with some female vocals.
4) For a closed headphone, doesn't isolate that much.
Weakness #1 is critical if you are considering these headphones for listening to music from your laptop or portable players. If that's the case, it's very likely you won't be happy with the sound even at max volume. These headphones are REALLY hard to bring up to normal loudness levels. If you will use them with the headphone out of a receiver, or maybe with an electric piano (as I am), then you are probably ok.
Weakness #2 is very important if you are what's called a "bass-head". These headphones won't give you slamming rich bass. Bass is (slightly) on the weak side.
Weakness #3 is critical if you listen to a lot of female vocals, and you find it particularly annoying when your playback system enhances the letter "S" as in SSSSSSSay, SSSSSSilver, SSSSSSpoon, preCCCCCiSSSSSe, etc.
Weakness #4 is important if you are expecting these headphones to block all noises around you, you might be slightly dissapointed, it does block a bit but not too much.
If you don't care about isolation I would highly recommend the Koss KSC-75 instead of these Sennheisers. If you do want a closed headphone (either you want some isolation from outside noise, or you don't want to bother anyone around you with your music), and are willing to spend a little more, you should consider the Sennheiser HD280 or maybe the Audio Technica AT500.
The above sounds like a massive critique, and I'm giving it 3 stars because really for music these are not that great sounding headphones to me. However, these headphones sound relatively OK compared to how boomy or treble-happy are most other cheap headphones, whether open or closed. Compared to that trend, these are relatively decent. Yet, compared to other very inexpensive headphones known for surprisingly good sound (e.g. Koss KSC-75) these are not that great really.
PS. Another suggestion in general, if you are looking for any headphone related information you must check www.Head-fi.org, it's really the place online for anything headphone-related.
Customer Review: Sound probably not optimal due to fit.
Summary: 3 Stars
I used these headphones for about a month before deciding to return them. i tried to justify keeping them due to their bang-for-the-buck, but ultimately, i decided that the fit and sound weren't really satisfying, even though they were $18, and they definitely sounded better than anything i have ever purchased in that price range.
my previous headphones were a pair of 4-year-old Sennheiser HD497 ($50 to $60). i decided that i wanted a closed-back over-the-ear model to help drone out some work noise. the HD497 are an open-aire model that are over-the-ear for me (barely) but can be on-the-ear for others. that's my only basis for comparison. . .might not be fair.
Fit and Sound Isolation:
(last time i checked, my hat size was 7 1/4.)
the headband is much different from the 497 (and 457, 202, and others). a common complaint with those models was that the one-piece headband was way too tight on people's heads. the 201s fit much looser and the earcups are much bigger, so you get a real over-the-ear fit. however, on my head, i found that it was a bit *too* loose, so i wasn't getting a real seal on my head. as a result, i felt like i wasn't getting proper sound isolation.
Sound:
these are definitely underpowered for my workstation's soundcard. i had to really jack up the volume to bring it up to the 497's level. i am not a huge bass head like some people are, but i felt like i really wasn't getting a decent amount for a closed set. i am going to attribute it to the loose fit, as mentioned above. i was also a little disappointed with a seeming lack of mids. the 497s really excel at presenting the entire range of lows and highs. the 201s sounded considerably less vibrant overall. in fact, parts of me just feel like if i had a bigger head, everything would've sounded better. whenever i slighly pressed the earcups to enhance the seal, everything sounded deeper and fuller.
Price:
for $20, you get good sound quality. definitely better than stock headphones included with mp3 and cd players
Build Quality, Durability:
i do give the 201s some praise for its clean look, but i couldn't help but feel that these headphones were a bit fragile. the pieces where the earcups meet the headband looked like they could disengage at any moment. i also didn't like how the cables were fixed onto the earcups. the 497s have detachable cables which have proven their usefulness when i managed to snap the cord once.
Summary:
i love sennheiser headphones, and i can't argue with the price, but i can't give it more than 3 stars. if you have a bigger head, these might sound much better.
Customer Review: GREAT Value for the Money
Summary: 4 Stars
My background: Not quite an audiophile, but "getting there." High quality sound is very important to me. My main headphones are a pair of Senheiser HD-555 (open headphones) hooked up to a USB breakout sound interfance (specifically, an old Tascam US-122. One of the recording channels is dead, but it still works great as a headphone amp).
I purchased these cheaper headphones to use at work, because I didn't like having ear buds in my ears all day. My review of 4 stars is purely based on bang-for-your-buck. For this price, these things are phenominal, but obviously they can't match a pair in the 100's of dollars, hence they do not get a 5 star rating.
To address some of the complaints others have talked about:
1) Hard to drive -- they are hard to drive, especially from a cheap-o computer soundcard. My work computer needed a 3dB preamp to get it anywhere close to reasonable listening levels. However they seem to drive just fine from an iPod. There is also an advantage here... if you are plugging these into a cheap-o computer sound card, you usually get a lot of noise through headphones. Often you need to turn down the volume for headphones (compared to speakers), hence the noise level is near the volume level. Since these are harder to drive... you get to turn up the volume, and therefore mask a lot more of the underlying noise. Especially good for laptop sound cards where you can hear that background 'beeping and clicking' noise leaking through from the hard drives and video card.
2) Long cord. Its kind of too long, unless you want to run in into the soundcard on the back of your computer -- and then its perfect! Again, its all about the application.
3) Sibilance -- meaning, they over-emphasis the 's' sound. Ssssibalance. Toassssst. You get the idea. Well, the truth is, to me, its not nearly as bad as others have said. I would say its more on the borderline between "too bright" and "sibilant." And once again, if you're driving it with a decent source, and have taken time to break them in for a few hours, I would say it sounds pretty good. This is coming from someone who likes things more on the bright side. If you're into a really deep bass-y sound, or something very mellow, these may not be for you.
Overall, these are a great value for a spare/at work/secondary pair of headphones. I think with the lower efficiency (hence some level of noise rejection) and long cord, they are particularly well suited to plugging directly into a computer sound card, although this can sometimes be a problem because they are difficult to drive.