Sennheiser HD650 Reference Class Headphones, top side view,
We owned the Sennheiser HD 650 Headphones for a decade now, and so, review them here. In that time, we used them with many CD players, iPods, iPads, earphone amps, and stereo receivers. Our impressions follow in this review.
Impressive dynamic headphones with their notably full response. There’s no part of the audio frequency spectrum that this audio head-gear fails to reproduce well. The HD 650s by far sound the best that we’ve ever owned. Their sheer over all quality is unmistakable, and we’ve owned lots of headphones prior. Brands include Sony, Koss, Grado, and Apple over the past 35 years. The Sennheisers indeed shine among these others.
But unfortunately, with great audio reproduction comes a high price. In fact, their cost seems just as high today as it was when we bought ours in 2006. But after using them a while, it’s clear why people keep paying. Why? Because these earphones set a high audio standard that’s hard to beat for the less expensive units. Even some of the higher-priced sets do not out-perform Sennheiser.
So if you’ve got the roughly $500 (current retail) to spend, we highly recommend the Sennheiser HD 650. While you may dislike how much they cost, the HD 650 extreme quality is well worth the price.
These open-air earphones won’t return your money (unless you resell them while still new). But they’ll please you with their durability and accurate sound response for all types of music. The HD 650 has a high resale value as well, in the even that you choose to part with them. But why you would do that, we can’t imagine. Shop around though when buying or selling, as the price on this Sennheiser product varies a lot.
We find them very light given the large size of the cans. That’s especially after we used the Koss Tech 2 headphones for over a decade. Those weigh much more than these.
Due to their lightness and very large size of the “ear muffs,” you can wear these for hours without discomfort. You’ll tire of the music before they wear thin on your head.
Sennheiser includes velour ear cushions on the HD-650. These have big enough openings that your ears easily fit inside. Over-the-ear design. Thus, they rest on your head, around the ear. Neither the cushions nor the back wall inside touch the ear. So this indeed enhances the comfort of these phones.
The silky cushions are very large. This prevents points of high presser from forming anywhere on your head. Even wearing glasses with these on is comfortable.
The Sennheiser signature headband includes spongy soft padding as well that further enhances overall comfort. They indeed paid as much attention in the design to comfort as well as audio performance.
The HD-650 earcushions appear quite durable. Mine look brand new still after several years of use, and so far, have not shed any fuzz balls. These earphones have held up better than some of our Sonys. We had to replace the cushions after a couple of years on those, but not on these so far.
These hi-fi phones looks as great as they play. They feature black with silver trim that gives these headphones a modern, hi-tech look.
They can play quite loud, with the wide dynamic range over the entire audio frequency band. This makes them particularly grand for widely varying musical volumes such as found in classical music. For pop music, these earphones play loudly enough to deafen us. Yet they do it with neither loss in fidelity nor increase in distortion.
You can unplug the premium grade cable; a useful feature should you ever need to replace it. We experienced cables failing in our other headphones and replacing them required taking the phones apart. But not the HD 650. You can buy new cords from Sennheiser, as well from many internet vendors.
The Sennheiser HD-650 product feels great either way. Wear them with the left earphone on the left ear, or left earphone on right ear. The angle adjustment on each earpiece accounts for this advantage. We might do this when listening to hit compilation CDs where they reversed the channels.
As mentioned, the Sennheiser suggested retail price is high.
There’s a black, glaze-coated grill on the back of each earpiece. This is an integral part of the open-air design. But be careful because it scratches, dents, and chips easily. If you beat these up too much, you’ll notice little silver “freckles” appearing on this screen. You should not therefore, just throw this device into your cable cart. Always pack it away for storage in its original storage box or something similar.
Perhaps owing to their lightness, these Sennheiser phones appear quite delicate. These are not earphones that you’d want to throw down on the table when done with them. They may not really be fragile. But because they seem like they would be, we fear subjecting them to much serious abuse. So we cannot comment on how well they’d hold up under such abuse.
These headphones do not come with a protective carrying or storage case, except for the original packaging. But as easily as they can scratched, a padded tote would be nice. This would not only protect them from nicks and dings, but would keep dust off of them too.
More a drawback of open-air design itself than specifically these phones, they do not reduce surrounding noise much. So to listen to the quieter forms of music such as classical or soft guitar, you need a low-noise place. Even a softly running refrigerator nearby comes through clearly while wearing these.
Also, audio output from these others can hear, even when playing them softly. So this is not a good headset for when your partner is trying to sleep beside you in the bedroom. The audio spill into the surrounding environment will likely disturb others.
An iPod does not adequately power these earphones. So, we use a headphone amplifier (the Presonus HP-4) to better drive them. Decent driving produces a richer overall sound.
Not Great Phones for iPod
The sound you get via an iPod is quite bassy. You can cut back on the bass with the built-in equalizer in the iPod to a degree. But this comes at a loss of overall loudness. We would thus, advise against these phones for iPod listening, unless you use a headphone amplifier.
The velour ear cups readily collect dust and lint. So we must run a horse hair vacuum brush over them now and then. This is another reason why a rugged and dust-tight tote case would go well with the HD 650.
On the whole, we found the Sennheiser HD-650 Headphones top-notch for our listening purposes. We will likely never buy any higher caliber earphones. These phones lack none of the features we expect from a great pair of headphones. So we would buy them again, even at their high price. We rate them at 97 out of 100 therefore.
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