The sound on these phones is so lush and rich, it’s hard to believe they’re not wired.
Comfort-wise, they’re all right - the Bose QC35/700 and the Sony 1000XM3/4 are probably a little better on that count (and also about 40-50g lighter), but these sit snugly on the head and they don’t really make the ears hot (indoors). The soft lambskin earcups might have something to do with that. Also very stable overall, including when lying down.
I don’t really care about the NC, so I leave it off - that’s better for sound quality anyway.
Some of the smart features are a bit rough around the edges. The “smart pause” that detects when you take the phones off your head also often ends up briefly pausing the audio when you’re just adjusting them on your head or when you make some sharp head movements. I turned it off in the app.
I also had a hard time trying to get my MacBook to pair as my second connected device after connecting my phone. The connection with the laptop simply wouldn’t hold. I had to reset the headphones, clear the paired-devices list and set my computer up as my first device and the phone as the second for it to work. Even so, occasionally, I have the headphones disconnecting from my laptop when they are also connected to my phone. Multipoint connectivity is not the best.
The Sennheiser Smart Control app is all right - better than it was a few months ago, I believe. The equaliser in there allows you to customise the sound a fair bit using either of two interfaces - a standard slider one and one where you move a dot around the screen, along, above and below a horizontal axis. And you can set equaliser profiles that you can toggle between.
The sound is the kicker that makes up for all the meh stuff. The default “neutral” setting was a little bass-forward for me, but after a bit of playing around with the equaliser, it’s now super delicious and addictive, up there with audiophile-grade wired headphones from Sennheiser and other brands. Only, you don’t need an amp, and you don’t have to fuss about with wires.
You can use these wired. The sound is just as great when using them that way via USB-C.
When using the aux cable, note that you need to line the notch on the 2.5mm pin up properly with a notch in the port, insert and then twist clockwise to lock it. The manual says counter-clockwise, which is an error (pointed this out to Sennheiser support and they said they’d get it fixed). In aux mode I use it with a Fiio BTR3 amp and the headphones really shine with the extra oomph the amp gives them.
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