wireless headphones it's a super subjective topic to discuss particularly
because you know there are a variety of headphones in the market right now that
offer everything from you know basic functionalities like just being able to
give you the freedom of being Wireless to headphones that have uber high in
features for example this my friends is the Sennheiser PXC 550's and they're
really geared towards travel so if you're someone who's looking to you know
not compromise on things like sound quality design build and for most party
if you're looking for a headset with noise canceling characteristics this
might be appealing to you the problem is the price because it costs three hundred
and fifty dollars that's expensive so let's find out if it's any good right
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below so guys tech tober has been crazy and I
know a lot of you guys know that well more than I do because I've been
traveling a lot lately for launch events here and there and it's been quite a
tiring process but I'm glad to be home safe and sound in my normal work space
so I can get back to work but over the course of that time I've actually been
using the PXC 550 s not just for listening to music and watching movies
on the plane with the noise canceling feature on I'll get to that later but
also I've used this to edit my videos on the go so this is gonna be more of a
real-world users perspective on living with the PXC 550 s so why don't we get
started first up design and build and these get
a solid 10 out of 10 in my books it's robust very flexible and they've
used a good combination of hard plastic materials and a solid metal frame not to
mention I'm not experienced any creaks and that's to be expected considering
the price the ear cuffs featured this matte silicon like finished has softer
to the touch although I'm worried about how long it
would stay that way over long-term use but I would gladly take this material
surface over any glossy plastic finishes any time of the day I should also
mention that the clamping force was a bit too strong for my taste but that's
because I have a larger head the leather earpads provided
Sealand a nice snug fit plus I never found myself sweating while wearing them
so that's nice now you might find this to be a little bit gross but hear me out
for a second if I'm wearing these or if I'm resting these around my neck and if
I go out to grab a cup of coffee or something like that if I'm maneuvering
my head around it actually picks up the ear cups actually grab onto my period
hair and it kind of hurts a lot so you know if you're someone like me who was
actually walking a beard and if you're thinking of picking the PXC 550's
certainly keep that in mind because you're not gonna like those beard hairs
just getting stuck here and they're now out of the box you do get this nice
carrying case but I did wish if it included a loop so that I could tag it
along with my backpack but rest aside you do get an airplane adapter a micro
USB to USB cable to charge the headphones a 2.5 limiter to 3.5 mi cable
and Inc quarter inch adapter the setup process is actually pretty
straightforward all you have to do is just twist the ear cups and then it'll
automatically turn on the headset now Sennheiser has built a voice
assistant into the headset so it actually prompts you on certain things
like you know powering on powering off and if you have multiple devices
connected to the headset it'll say things like phone one connected phone
two connected phone three connected again it's pretty nice it's I think it's
a good guide when it comes to giving you an idea on what's happening but
sometimes it gets really annoying especially when you get to like a 20%
battery level it says battery down recharge me and it keeps continuing
it'll it'll start continuing to say that after like 10 or 15 minutes and it's
constant now you do have the option to turn off voice prompts through
Sennheiser cap to an app which is a dedicated app for both the Android or
the iOS store the problem is that if you just have
this headset pair to a laptop you actually won't have the ability to turn
on the voice prompt feature because it's not directly feeding into the settings
of the headset it's more of a software pairing methodology I'm not sure why
that's the case but again it's something to be noted my biggest annoyance with
the PXC 550 s is the lack of a physical on-off switch this whole twist to you
know turn on the headset is a complete it's a complete failure in my opinion
because for instance you know if I'm listening to music on on the go and if
I'm if I take them off and if I rest him beside my notebook or something and if I
go out for a coffee or drive ever come back I probably lost
like 5% or 10% of the battery with this headset and that's that's pretty odd
because it doesn't have a you know smart feature where it puts the headphone to
sleep because right now if I hold it this way which is probably the most
obvious way to store your headset it's still on guys this is still on it's
still draining battery so you have to physically fold a headset or twist it to
turn off again that's an extra step and then folder that way store it in your
case and you can conserve battery that way because this is off this is the off
position now pairing on your hand is by far the fastest experience with the PCX
550's so if your smartphone features NFC you just have to tap your phone on the
left side of the ear cup and a little complete that painting process
immediately and automatically it's very fast and convenient or you could use a
standard Bluetooth printer pairing procedure if your phone doesn't have NFC
and now let's discuss the touch pad located on the right side of the ear cup
so as usual you get the normal just like swiping up and down to adjust the volume
swiping back and forth to skip between tracks you also have the option to tap
to answer phone call or tap again to hang up there are a lot of gestures with
this touchpad and it's something that you sort of have to memorize and it's
something that you really feel like you have to take advantage of because as far
as I'm concerned you know I've only used things like volume up and down and skip
track scan for and probably hang up or answer phone calls and that's about it I
haven't used the other gazillion features that Sennheiser has built
inside this time finishing touch functionality but again my biggest
concern though was how sensitive it was because for example if I'm handling this
headphone right now and if I accidentally just tap it it'll start
playing music right away check it out like I have to physically be very
careful with this touch pad because it's super sensitive
I really wish if they give us the option to disable the sensitivity or at least
took this tune the sensitivity within the app but that's not the case it's
there you have to live with it now when it comes to physical buttons there is
the noise guard switch then switches between adaptive and full noise guard
mode that actually completely silent isolates the background noise you also
have an effect mode button that cycles between different effects or
cues that have custom built or pre-built inside this or within this headset one
of my favorite features of the PXC 550's is the smart pause feature that
essentially pauses and music when you automatically take the headphones off of
you and then it resumes the music when you put them back on it's worked pretty
much consistently all the time across the board it hasn't failed on me so far
so that's pretty awesome but if you don't want to do that especially want to
have a conversation with someone or if if someone's approaching you to have a
conversation with you Sennheiser is actually implemented
something called talk through which is a pretty cool feature that essentially
takes advantage of the two microphones that are on the outside of the
headphones so when you quickly double tap on the touch pad it actually
activates that microphone and it starts picking up the ambient noise and of
course it'll start emphasizing on the acoustic performance or the acoustic
levels of that person who's trying to have that conversation with you so you
don't have to physically remove the headset you can just double tap and
start having that conversation which is pretty cool so how many express my
concerns with a PXC 550's how do they actually sound in person well in one
word phenomenal I left the effect mode to its default setting as I mentioned
earlier and there's fantastic definition in the higher frequencies the bass is
rich and deep when you need it it's also really tight most importantly if your
phone supports aptX playback it sounds even better especially because you know
I really enjoyed my time listening to my collection of flack files in my pixel 3
and this one supports aptX so listening to that on the PXC 550's
was just phenomenal it's really immersive again the bass it's it's again
super nice its crisp the frequencies in the high range of the mid-range are
still very clear and well-defined great sound stage you really won't be
disappointed with the sound quality on the PXC 550 s because they're really
that good now is the noise cancelling feature any good well the short answer
is yes and I'll get to that a little bit but I just want to give you a quick
synopsis on how this technology works so there are four microphones in total on
this headset so there are two on the outside and two on the inside the two on
the outside actually filters out the high frequencies and the two only inside
filters out the lower frequencies so when you combine them together it
actually gives you good isolation of the surrounding environment
and it works really well especially when you're in an airplane it does a good job
sort of isolating and filtering out the jet noise so you can actually focus a
lot on the content that you're listening to or watching and for the most part
it's it's less minimal or I guess it's less beneficial if you're in a quiet
space for example you know in my office space I don't really have to turn on
noise canceling because it's pretty quiet and you're really not going to be
gaining anything out of it in noisy environments it certainly does a really
good job but I do want to point out that if you don't have any music or any
content playing in the background it feels like you're in a vacuum space and
it's very hard to describe that because after using them for quite some time
especially when you're on a flight and when you're ascending and descending it
feels like one of your ears need to pop after that trip because it again it's
just that extra feeling that you get and it goes away after a few hours but again
I just wanted to bring that up but overall as someone who's tried noise
cancelling headphones for the first time this is certainly life changing I
certainly cannot leave my house without these because you know if I'm traveling
these are certainly going to come with me
now another factor to discuss is battery life and I'm happy to report that it has
been excellent on the PXC 550's I was easily able to get well over 20 hours of
use with this guy and of course I've taken it to long
trips with me to Beijing and I didn't run into any instances where I had to
constantly plug in my headphones and one last thing that I want to quickly talk
about is the microphone quality so in quieter environments it's very well done
it actually picks up the voice pretty clearly but if you're in a chaotic
environment of example if you're you know walking through the streets where
it's really noisy there's absolutely zero noise cancellation so the person on
the other end will definitely have a difficult time hearing you
for our Canadian audience memory express is a place to go for home business and
gaming electronics you can try before you buy especially great for peripherals
by visiting one of their stores in Winnipeg Calgary or Greater Vancouver
and more they do custom PCs and will beat any Canadian price guarantee so in
conclusion the PXC 550's from Sennheiser are by far the smartest headphones that
have ever encountered in my life trust me I've encountered gaming
headsets I've encountered wireless gaming headsets as well
but this my friends is taking things to a whole new level and it has its own
downsides so it sounds great it's got a great design and build quality I
actually like the way how it looks and Sennheiser has nailed all the basic
departments are the basic bullet points efficient looking for in a headset in
the first place it's the other features that come along with this headset that's
just a little bit overwhelming so the touchpad is way too sensitive it's got
the Gazoo leaders that you still have to get used to and you have to sort of
learn at a doctor words the other thing is of course the lack of a physical
on-off switch because the fact that you have to turn them on right now it's on
and you factor you have to twist to hear cuts to turn it off is just absolutely
it's not practical so from a usability standpoint I just I just can't use the
PXC 550's because they've got its own quirks now if you feel like you're gonna
be taking advantage of everything all the features like gesture controls and
you don't actually mind the on/off switch the $350 price tag might be
justifiable to you but if you're someone who's just looking for a basic good pair
of headphones that sound great with good noise cancelling characteristics and you
don't really care about gestures and all that kind of stuff I'm running out of
words now I can't really recommend the PXC 550's because there could be better
options out there before I wrap things up I just do want to quickly bring up
something for our Canadian followers here on YouTube Santa has actually
opened up a main headquarters here in Montreal Quebec and essentially you know
they were kind enough to invite us over there to just take a quick tour of what
they have and what's cool is that if you have a Sennheiser product and if it has
issues the RMA process is actually going to be a lot more simpler and easier
especially if you live in Canada so you can just ship it directly to Montreal if
you live locally you can bring it to the office and they'll actually inspect it
and find out what's wrong it was really cool just checking out the facility in
the testing center to see what tools they used to troubleshoot and figure
things out it was really quite an exhausting experience so it's good news
for Canadians who are who owned Sennheiser products but that's about it
guys I'm Eber with Hardware Canucks thank you so much for watching make sure to
check out some relevant content over here subscribe to our new boot sequence
channel for the latest tech news and rumors I'm signing off
and I'll see you guys in the next one you