When my Bose QuietComfort 25 acoustic noise cancelling headphones stopped working, I decided to shop for another set of noise cancelling headphones.
I checked out the Bose QuietComfort 35 and it was retailing for £329.95 on Amazon UK. By chance, I was passing through Johannesburg and found a new brand of headphones I had never seen before – the Sony MDR-1000X at the airport duty free shop
It was retailing for R3499 ($269). The shop attendant said it was at a discount. I checked the Sony US site and it was being sold for $399.99 and £325 on Amazon UK on Amazon. Good deal I thought when I saw the Bose QuietComfort 35 at the shop selling for R4999 ($384).
I quickly did a bit of comparison research between the two phones – the Sony MDR-1000X and the Bose QuietComfort 35.
Though Bose is renown for voice cancelling headphones, Sony developed this headphones to compete with it. The Sony MDR-1000X has Sony’s new Sense Engine and in particular, the Personal NC Optimiser, a piece of auto-calibration software similar to that found on home cinema amplifiers.
Here are some of the features:
- You can talk without taking off your headphones. Place one hand over the housing to instantly decrease music volume.
- The outer surface of the right earpad doubles as a touchpad, with finger movements on the leather surface to control music playback and volume. Tapping on the middle plays and pauses, tap and slide up or down to change volume and left or right to skip track.
- The Sony MDR-1000X offers an Ambient Sound mode, which has two settings. ‘Normal’ allows a little outside noise through, so you can keep an ear out for sirens, bicycle bells and the like. ‘Voice’ means the headphones focus on allowing conversations in. Switch between the two and you can hear a subtle difference in the frequencies being filtered.
In summary, I liked what I saw. Most people had favourable things to say about the Sony MDR-1000X. I was sold and I bought it. Check out What Hi-Fi?’s review of the Sony MDR-1000X. In fact it was awarded 5 Stars and “Best noise-canceling headphones £100+” by What Hi-Fi? in 2016
Taking it home, I decided to unbox it and share the details in a post.
This is the box it came in
Upon opening the black box, I saw a black soft synthetic leather carrying case for the earpads on one side and nothing at first of the other side.
Looking closely at the seemingly empty left side, I pulled at the opening located at the middle of the right side. This revealed the other items I was looking for – a pack of manuals in a see through nylon bag and another containing a micro-USB cable (approx. 50cm), a headphone cable and a plug adapter for in-flight use.
Discarding the black box, here are the contents. You can see the outline for the correct placement of the headphones in the synthetic leather bag.
Now to the headphones; the headphones weigh 279 grams. It is available in beige and black. Of course I got the black colour.
The manual says the usage time is maximum of 20 hours (NC ON) and maximum of 22 hours (NC OFF). We will see how true this is. Time for a full charge is 4 hours.
I should do a review about this gadget after about a month. Watch out for this.
