In a world of big brands, headphones and noise cancelling, Sennheiser has managed to capture audiophiles with it’s premium quality headphones for a cheaper price.
The Sennheiser PXC 550-II Wireless is a great quality travel headphone with excellent sound, great battery life, ANC and more premium features.
Design
The PXC 550-II headphones have a matte finish with leatherette accents on the headband and the circumaural (over-the-ear) earcups. They’re made from tactile soft-feel plastics and pleasant synthetic leather, and their comparatively modest dimensions mean even the smaller-eared user won’t feel swamped. There are touch-sensitive controls on the outer panels of the earcups, but you wouldn’t know it from looking, as the panels are blank. The earcups themselves are ear-shaped, which allows for a tight, secure fit that blocks out a decent amount of ambient room noise passively. It gets a little uncomfortable after prolonged use
Features
The headphones do a number of things automatically. Opening them from the folded position automatically turns them on and puts them in pairing mode. Once paired, removing them from your head immediately powers them down.
Like a lot of wireless on-ears, the PXC 550-IIs focus its functionality around the right earcup. It’s home to a button for Bluetooth pairing, which also summons a voice assistant with a longer press, with support for aptX Bluetooth 5.0, low-latency and AAC functionality too. There’s also a slider for engaging or deactivating active noise-cancellation, and a micro-USB input for charging the battery. Sennheiser claims you’ll get 20 hours of use with noise-cancellation activated, or 30 if you leave it switched off – both figures seem eminently achievable.
The on-ear controls are intuitive and responsive. The right earcup is also where you’ll find the touch-controls. A single tap/ swipe in the middle of the right ear’s outer panel switches the Play/pause, skip forward/back, volume up/down, mic mute/unmute and call answer/reject on the headset. The PXC 550-IIs are also tricked out with a selection of mics to use for phone calls, voice control and active noise-cancelation. A quick double tap disables ANC and mutes music, and puts the headphones in Transparent hearing mode, in which the ambient mics subtly pick up your voice and your surroundings for easier conversation.
Behind the acoustic cloth on the inside of this hard-working earcup is a 32mm full-range driver. There’s another in the left earcup, but apart from some noise-cancellation mics, that’s it for the left-hand side.
The PXC 550-IIs can be used in conjunction with Sennheiser’s Smart Control app. There is some EQ customisation available here, as well as degrees of noise-cancelation (‘anti-wind’ to reduce wind-borne noise, ‘adaptive’ to respond to changing levels of external noise, and simply ‘on’).
Amazon’s Alexa voice assitant is built in, but it isn’t hands-free. A button-press is required, as well as setup in the Alexa app, but this is a quick matter of signing in and adding the PXC 550-II as a device.
Pricing
The Sennheiser PXC 550-II goes for a cheaper price than other big brands in the market. They currently cost $187.
