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Overall Rating
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Performance
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Features
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Price
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Pros : Comfortable and sturdy, Good Bass, Loud, surround sound, noise cancellation
Cons : Requires the EQ a lot, Expensive, Old Design at this price
Bottomline : The MDR-XB950B1 looks a little old fashioned. The look of this headphone is not so new; it looks like the Sony is continuing their old design streak. It’s also somewhat expensive for what you’re getting – but it’s definitely fun to listen to the right music with. The audio is perfect, but sometimes you have to adjust the equalizer according to music. The Bass effect feature is a good option in this headphone for a better experience. However, if you are a Bass lover then this is the perfect gadget for you.
The MDR-XB950B1 will set your pulse racing with vibrating bass. With built-in Bluetooth, you’ll never need to worry about wires getting in the way as you dance to your favorite tracks. Also, comes with a new smartphone app to optimize bass and four surround sound effects to feel more depth and clarity with an electro bass booster that recreates the thumping beats in your favorite dance music. It comes with audio cord, so you can use it on a device without Bluetooth.
Design and features
This headset is pretty big and bulky. The earcups are huge and heavily padded, with a rubbery finish that looks like it could get really sweaty. However, the headset is actually fairly comfortable to wear when in use.
Wearing it around your neck while on the move is hugely uncomfortable though or you have to stretch the whole band accordingly.
The design is very typical, with the power and bass effect buttons on the left cup (along with the Micro-USB charging port and 3.5mm input), while volume and playback controls are on the right cup. There’s also an Omni-directional mic on the left cup for hands-free calls if you want.
The Sony MDR headphone promises 18 hours of runtime on a 4-hour charge. There’s also an included audio cable that you can use if the battery runs out. Each driver is 40mm in size, and the frequency range is rated at 3Hz to 28,000Hz. Weighing in at 281g, this isn’t the lightest pair of headphones, but as we stated above, it feels comfortable enough.
Performance
The first impression was that there’s way too much bass, and the sound isn’t very clear either due to heavy bass. If you’re listening to pop tracks that have some amount of bass. But in Hip Hop the headphone performs really good and listening to Bollywood songs is great fun. These headphones will give you a club like feel when you turn the volume up.
You get a heavy amount of bass, especially after you press the Bass Effect button, but although that’s important, you really do need to use your smartphone to drive these headphones, as we soon discovered.
Surround sound is something this headset is pretty good at, by the way. Perhaps thanks to that entire extra bass.
Overall, we feel that the MDR XB-800 offers a much better tuned sound out of the box, but if you’re willing to play around with the app, the MDR-XB950B1 doesn’t disappoint either.
As for calls, that side of things actually worked really well. With respect to the Bluetooth range, the headphones worked reliably even at distances of up to 10 feet – the distance you’d get while walking around in your bedroom or living room, for instance. However, there’s one catch – the mic only works in Bluetooth mode, so if your battery is down, you can’t use this as a hands-free headset.