Archives for March 27, 2020

Sennheiser HD 4.40BT Bluetooth Over-Ears for $70

If you are looking to spend under $100 for a pair of closed over-ear bluetooth headphones but don’t want to get the many non-audio brand ANC/bluetooth combo options, then for $70 you can get the new condition Sennheiser HD 4.40BT by Amazon actual with a maximum of two pairs per customer at the sale price. They average 4.2 out of 5 based on 5500+ ratings.

NOTE however that this is a Bluetooth 4.0 headphone (might be a deal killer for those with new BT 5.0 smartphones and such), and supports apt-X but not apt-X HD.

Note also that the recently revealed Sennheiser bluetooth headphones in the 4-series cost a lot more and have not been greeted as liberators by the early reviewers.

I haven’t seen these but I had their “cousins”, the HD 4.20S wired over-ears and from the pictures it looks like they use similar pads. Those HD 4.20S pads are probably the #1 feature of the headphones…

Here’s the HD 4.20S pad, around 1 inch thick!

sennheiser_hd420_earpad_thickness

PS: just like the previously mentioned HD 599 sale, the HD 4.40BT and 4.20S came out at IFA 2016…

March 27, 2020 Filed Under: headphones Tagged With: ,

Etymotic ER4 IEMs for $250 (SR or XR) [MD]

IF you are fond of the Etymotic ER4-SR or ER4-XR in-ears with those Etymotic customary multi-flanges, they are currently on offer for the next two days and change [from blog-posting time] at the Massdrop website for $250 with free US shipping per pair.

They will ship in late April 2020. You can select in the shopping cart which one you want (or you can get them both of course). They come with a 2-year warranty per the listing over there…

March 27, 2020 Filed Under: in-ears Tagged With: ,

Master & Dynamic MH-40 Closed Over-Ears (Wired) for $130

If you like the Master & Dynamic aesthetics and/or their sound (let’s not forget that LOL), a number of the color schemes of their closed-back over-ear wired MH-40 are on sale for $130 with free US shipping at the Amazon website.

A total of a lucky 13 options are available over there but not all of them are on sale. Click on the color of interest to see whether it’s on sale. They average 4.1 out of 5 based on 330+ customer reviews and they have about 1/3rd of that in customer reviews…

March 27, 2020 Filed Under: headphones Tagged With:

EU: Sennheiser HD 599 Open Over-Ears [Ivory] for 130 euro

As we just mentioned in the previous post, the black color scheme of the Sennheiser HD 599 goes for $130 in the US market, but not the Ivory…

On the other hand, things are in the opposite direction in the European market. The black color scheme goes for 200 euro but the Ivory color scheme is on sale for 130 euro (short for “euro-dollars?) by Amazon Germany with a limit of two per customer at the sale price. This is not a lightning deal, so expiration time is unknown…

Together both colors average 4.5 out of 5 based on 1280+ customer ratings and they have 47 answered questions.

Funny how simple wired headphones have a lot fewer questions than wireless and headphones with mic/remote. I wonder why ^_^

March 27, 2020 Filed Under: headphones Tagged With: ,

Sennheiser HD 599 Open Over-Ears for $130 [limit 2]

You can score a very serviceable set of open-back over-ear headphones for less than half the price you’d pay for the fashionable trendy $300ish ANC/BT over-ears and get better sound too! As of the time of writing, the new condition open-back over-ear wired Sennheiser HD 599 is on sale for $130 with free US shipping at Amazon by Amazon actual with up to two pairs per customer at the sale price.

This is the black color scheme [not the Ivory] that is marked as an “Amazon Exclusive”. It comes with a 2-year warranty, replaceable earpads, and thank the Old Gods and The New [and R’hllor too of course ~ even though it does not have any red on it] it has detachable cables and it comes with two of them…

They average (both color schemes grouped together) 4.6 out of 5 based on 1360+ customer ratings and they have about 10% of that in peer-answered questions. When you drill down on the customer reviews by option, 185 of the 434 reviews are for the black option. Unfortunately it does not automatically calculate the rating when you select the filters/sub-options, so short of going through the 185 customer reviews manually to average them…

The HD599 is the headliner of the new HD-5?? [I can’t put the standard “X” in there because now there’s the Massdrop HD-?XX partnership] that starts with the HD559, then the HD 579, and in-between these two open-back models, there’s also the HD 569 closed-back. These were introduced at IFA 2016, that’s 3.5 years ago as of the time of writing.

PS: if you are not familiar, in recent months Amazon has switched to (sometimes) showing customer rating scores instead of customer reviews. The ratings include the customer reviews but also anyone who gives the product a 1-5 star rating without actually writing a customer review. It’s obviously easier to rate than to review. Even the customarily idiotic one-sentence useless customer review you see on Amazon is “harder” to write than just click or touch a 1-to-5 star rating 🙂 But I’m digressing…

March 27, 2020 Filed Under: headphones Tagged With:

Hifiman TWS-600 truly wireless down to $79

IF you prefer to try your luck with truly-wireless earphones from headphone companies instead of consumer electronics companies, the new condition Hifiman TWS-600 truly wireless (with bluetooth 5.0 and low latency support) are currently down to $79 at the Amazon website, sold by the Hifiman Amazon store and the Gramophone Amazon store, both fulfilled by Amazon so Prime members get their fast(er) free delivery.

They also promise a range of up to 150 meters in open unobstructed areas (eg open fields), up to 38.5 hours playing time (WITH the charging case). They are IPX-4 rated, and per the product description over there, they “required” 10-20 hours of burn in 🙂

They average 3.8 out of 5 based on 110+ customer reviews and have near half of that in peer-answered questions…

PS: my only experience so far with “truly wireless” are the Jaybird Run TW, so I can’t help much 🙂

March 27, 2020 Filed Under: truly wireless Tagged With: ,