Review on Panasonic RP-HTX80B-R Sangria: Retro Bluetooth Wireless Headphone with Microphone, Deep Bass Enhancer, 24 Hours Playback by Brandon Castano

As an audio professional, I was one of the biggest fans of the legendary RP-HTX7-W1 (I bought 4 pieces, I liked them so much ) and I am completely unimpressed with the quality of these headphones for a number of reasons. Build quality is even slightly better than their wired predecessors, and they offer above-average convenience. The only minor issue with the build is that you have to hold down the power button for three seconds to turn it on instead of just using the switch. A minor annoyance compared to the other issues, but given the connectivity issues we'll get to, it's noticeable. The sound quality is the ultimate downgrade. While the overall EQ on them is fantastic and very close to perfectly flat, it sounds like there are minor compression artifacts throughout and the audio is transmitted at a very low bitrate even when the audio is cranked up to the absolute highest settings available Device. . The noise level has also been raised to a disturbing level. There is an audio gate that completely removes any signal when the audio falls below a certain dB level, which can be very annoying when working with quiet sounds or watching a movie with quiet scenes. There's around 20ms of latency, which won't bother the average user, but makes it a bit useless for video editing or competitive modem gaming. turns off randomly about an hour and a half after each session. Initially I thought it was just a battery saving measure with no sound being sent to the headphones, but it happens no matter what device they're connected to and invariably with the sound on. Too bad these headphones aren't better, and part of me is hoping that Panasonic will get together and revise this model with vastly improved Bluetooth integration and much better sound quality, but I wouldn't recommend these headphones to anyone as they stand, even for non-players -Audiophiles.