Review on Sony - H900N Hi-Res Noise Cancelling Wireless Headphone Twilight Red (WHH900N/R) by David Turner

Summary: Well-designed pair with good sound quality and noise cancellation, simple user interface and solid build quality, but also some very annoying options and misleading marketing. They are comparable to the more expensive Sennheiser (PXC-550 and HD-1) and Bose (QC35) models I've tried. Other reviews contain a lot of information about these headphones, so I'm just adding a few issues/details (handy?) that aren't mentioned in the product description online. Ultimately, these were the reasons for me to go back to the Sennheiser PXC 550 Wireless. NO SIMULTANEOUS CONNECTIONS TO TWO DEVICES - *PAINFUL* FOR APPLE USERS You can really only connect to one device at a time - all the others I've tried allow you to connect your computer and phone at the same time, and you can make calls and music easily between switch devices. This also means that when you turn on the headphones, all available devices are automatically connected. H900N not. While you can connect more than one device, only one of them can be a phone-enabled device: this is really only possible with Android devices, and only after you have disabled the connection to music (e.g. A2DP) in the device settings . (Apparently Sony explains this by saying you can connect to a "music player" and a "smartphone" at the same time. I don't know how many people still have a dedicated Bluetooth-enabled music player. Maybe that unicorn is you.) If you have a If you have an iPhone and/or a Mac, you may need to disconnect from one device and connect to another, which is a pain when using these headphones for both computer video chatting and phone calls. With pretty much every other Bluetooth audio product I've tried, attempting to connect on the second device will disconnect from the first and switch to the second. This Sony fakes a successful connection on the second device for half a second and then just silently fails. It also means that if you want to tweak your audio settings while playing audio from your computer or other device, you'll need to switch to and from your phone. Strange! Simultaneous connections have one downside: audio dropouts can occur in an environment with a lot of Bluetooth signals, and if that's your environment, you'll face the opposite problem - the need to constantly disconnect from connected devices. If that's you, then Sony is a good choice.2. YOU CANNOT USE THIS WIRELESS WHEN CHARGING. On the one hand, they have excellent battery life, but if you look at the actual battery life numbers in their manuals, you can see that they're not that different from Bose or Sennheiser. In fact, they all show between 20 and 24 hours of gameplay with the NC on. If you mainly use wireless headphones, it can be annoying that you can't use them while charging. Sony doesn't make it clear if you can use the mics when connected via an audio cable to take phone calls while charging. I didn't bother testing it to find out.3. AUDIO ENHANCEMENTS ARE MEDIUM The Sony Headphones Connect app gives you access to some fine tuning BUT - spatial enhancements (VPT) are only available when using the lower quality SBC mode, which is the purpose of using aptX and AAC nullifies. Compatibility. When spatial extensions are enabled, the application is forced to connect to the SBC. Sony claims it has technology that upsamples (or something like that) lower quality MP3 audio (encoded at over 248k resolution) to match high quality (i.e. almost lossless) audio. and/or studio quality sampling). BUT it cannot be used simultaneously with EQ or Spatial Enhancers. Since most audio is already pretty decent at 248k or higher, this feature doesn't make sense to most people who aren't audiophiles, and if you search the internet for "Sony DSEE HX" you'll find that even audiophiles find this do not seem to understand. What is it. And Sony doesn't explain it at all in their manual or help pages. PRO or the little things I liked about it, wish they were in other headphones1. Press the power button to check the battery level at any time. Senns can only do this when no audio is playing.2. Double tap to play/pause (less jittery than the Sennheiser PXC 550 I tried)3. Cover the right earbud to temporarily mute music and unmute external audio4. The volume up gesture is done right: drag and hold and the volume will continue to increase5. The app lets you decide whether you want sound quality (aptX etc.) or connection stability (SBC). Ideally, the headphones should work properly, but if you're having trouble with your Bluetooth connection, this setting can be critical. The headband on them is the most comfortable I've tried, with Bose coming in second.6. The buttons and touch controls are on different sides, so you can't accidentally play or disable calls while trying to set up the NC or check the battery. SOUND and QUALITY NC: Sound: - great sound! Significantly better than Bose; The Sennheisers sound more balanced and less powerful than these, but you really can't fault the sound. Slightly, but annoyingly, these are the only ones of the four earbuds that DO NOT come with an airplane adapter. Noise Cancellation: I've struggled to believe they cancel out more noise than the PXC 550, but I've had a hard time noticing any real difference.