The world we live in is a noisy place. Thankfully, active noise cancellation headphones are becoming “the thing”, and there is no better time to celebrate our introversion. The Sennheiser PXC 550 is here to tell Bose that there is serious competition to the much-loved QuietComfort 35. Though slightly pricier, Sennheiser adds a little more bells and different kinds of whistles to the otherwise “vanilla” Bose.
Before we get into the performance, it’s worth noting the design. The PXC 550 is beautiful, elegant, and just oozes in quality (other than a little bit of lower-quality plastic on the inner handles). The most striking aesthetic is how the ear cups are shaped; they are oval, and your ear slides into an egg-shaped cavity that is simply just odd. Coming from a heavy user of the Bose QuietComfort 35, I found the Sennheiser a little wild. That isn’t to say they are not comfortable, but Bose seems to have invested a significant amount of effort to make sure you extraordinarily comfortable. After all, I do wear the Bose for the entire duration of a 7-hour flight. I don’t see myself wearing the PXC 550 for that long; during my testing, I eventually did become uncomfortable, and needed to readjust the ear cups or take them off completely from time to time.
While the Bose bests the Sennheiser in terms of comfort, the PXC 550 is chock-full of features. First off, there are different listening modes that changes the equaliser for the various music you listen to. The companion app gives you the flexibility to create sound profiles, which is fantastic, though if you’re inexperienced, you might make the sound worse. That said, the companion app is purely optional, but definitely more useful than what Bose offers. The presets built into the headset provide various flexibility in bass, treble, and reverb, though the bass is only slightly punchier than what Bose produces.
Additionally, the ANC can be set to “partial” mode to allow some level of ambient noise in. It’s helpful when you don’t want to completely eliminate the noise around you, but rather control its influence over your music. Partial ANC, by consequence, creates less pressure around the ear, should you be sensitive to it. That said, the Bose QuietComfort 35 does pull off a better implementation of ANC.
The right ear cup is where the interesting technology sits. It’s capacitative touch, so you can adjust the volume settings and control your music through taps and gestures. It will look ridiculous in public, but it’s a handy feature. A nifty – if borderline creepy – feature is the sound amplifier; a double-tap on the cup’s back will amplify what is picked up by the microphone, should you develop a keen interest in a nearby conversation.
What has been advertised as a feature, but which I find cumbersome, is the mechanism in which you switch the headphones on: you rotate the ear cups to the side. To switch them off, turn the ear cups and lay the headphones flat. It’s irritating when you forget about this mechanism and leave your headphones on for the whole day, draining the battery.
Is the PXC 550 worth the purchase? It sounds great, feels comfortable, has a formidable ANC. That said, the QuietComfort 35 excels in comfort and ANC, and is also less expensive. It boils down to whether having control over the equaliser matters to you, but you can’t go wrong with the PXC 550 either way.
