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The vast majority of our reviews come from verified purchases. Reviews from customers may include My Best Buy members, employees, and Tech Insider Network members (as tagged). Select reviewers may receive discounted products, promotional considerations or entries into drawings for honest, helpful reviews.

• Rated 5 out of 5 stars

  HDB 630 = 360 SOUND

  • Tech Insider Network Member

  The Sennheiser HDB 630 is rather deceptive. Out of the box it looks stiff and uninteresting next to its many attention-grabbing peers. Its innate aural demeanor is also more restrained than those tuned for the boom. But like a confident James Bond at the poker table, the 630 is neither boring nor bluffing. With help from its bag of gadgets, it accomplishes what so few Bluetooth headphones can, be not just competent, but masterful with every musical genre thrown its way. PRELUDE: FIT. FEEL. CONTROL. The 630 is no feast for my eyes. It’s plain and chunky. Fortunately, it’s designed for my ears. Like nearly every other headphone in this price range, the case is plastic. One of the few complaints I have with the 630 it feels plasticly too. The flimsy, hollow feel of its lone physical button nags at me each press, not the experience one wants with headphones this expensive. But that’s the worst of it for me. I’m neutral about other things like its weight, which is nearly 1lb. It’s so comfortable with its cushiony, buttery soft imitation leather headband and earpads. Clamping force for my small head is gentle too, though not so much that it affects audio quality or noise cancellation. So, while I know I’m wearing the 630’s, they aren’t tiresome. The head band extends about 1.25” so that should accommodate almost everyone. I did a measurement to find it’s max width fully extending the arms and pulling the ear cups out as far as I was willing to go. The ruler read about 8.5” pad to pad. When it comes to headphone controls people tend to line up behind physical buttons or touch. I’m impartial. If physical button placement is thoughtful, I’m happy. But that’s not the case with my other over the ear headphones. The buttons are tiny with low tactility and minimal separation from each other. It’s awkward for my fingers to quickly find the right button when I need to immediately pause or skip a song I can’t bear to hear again. In that regard, the HDB 630’s gesture controls are an improvement. They are intuitive and stress-free to use. Tap to pause or play, swipe up or down to adjust volume. But their high sensitivity makes them imperfect too. If I brush the side of the ear cup while adjusting the fit things often happen that I don’t want to occur like the volume or track changes. Touch capability can be turned off in the app, but it’s inconvenient to have to pop back into the app to change the volume. Better would to be able to do some kind of press on the 630’s one physical button to toggle touch on and off. About that button, it has multiple functions. Primarily it mutes the mic on phone calls and summons your phone’s voice assistant when playing music. It’s also used for pairing and power. The 630 in normal use wakes when you place it on your head and goes to sleep when you remove them. Having been burned when forgetting to turn off headphone previously this is just another winning feature for these cans. Sennheiser says the 630’s battery can last 60 hours with ANC. That’s a month of listening time for me so I can’t vouch for that claim, but I do trust it based on my usage so far. As expected, the battery depletes faster playing lossless music than 320kbps AAC or lower sources. Pairing is a standard affair. It arrives in pairing mode; just connect to your device’s Bluetooth settings and ready to play. A QR code sends you to the direct download for the app in iOS and Android app stores. Wired connections are also supported via a 2.5mm sub-mini jack and USB-C port. All cables are supplied, even a dual jack airplane adapter. Then there is the secret weapon, BTD700 dongle for devices that don’t support aptX. I’ll discuss that more later. ACT I: Natural Sound The 630 is promoted as audiophile quality. My non-elite ears aren’t official confirmation, but out of the box it’s sound is clean and honest rather than artificially aggressive. Mids offer crisp vocal punch, and bass is a team player rather than hijacker. And treble is bright, though on the shy side. With audiophiles being purists, I think this true sound explains why the 630’s are regarded as such. In the app, this equalization is labeled “neutral,” and while that word can emote indifference, it manifests here as authentic. I sampled many genres of music and this “mode” does an especially enjoyable job with classical and jazz. It had almost a symphony hall ambiance where whispering horns were apparent as the drums were clapping. Rock and rap made a good impression too, but these genres are more about letting go than detailed listening. And for that, the 630’s standard doesn’t shake, rattle, and roll you. It’s there, it can be felt, but it’s a tap not a shove. But Sennheiser has a great fix for that. ACT II: The Equalizer and The App A parametric equalizer in the app transforms the 630’s from a calm colossus to nearly whatever you want it to be. Honestly, if live on 1000% bass all day long you’ll be happier with headphones marketed as such. But for everyone else, Sennheiser has not just made a terrific sounding neutral headphone; the parametric equalizer offers users the opportunity to re-shape the sound in detail that few other headphones offer. So, if you need a little more shake in your Drake, dial it in. If you are not familiar parametric equalizers they essentially expand on the graphic equalizer by allowing changes not only to frequency gain, but also the frequency and range too. It’s complicated to fully explain but it will make sense when you play around with it. There’s a graphic 5-band equalizer option too. Sennheiser designed the parametric equalizer’s controls to encourage experimentation. An A/B button lets you make two versions of your formula and then compare “A” and “B” side-by-side. Additionally, you can test your formula against the 630’s natural unprocessed sound to hear how much tweaking you’ve done. These tools are a huge confidence booster that your changes are improvements over the base sound. The app is loaded with other customizations and controls. I can’t go over them all here, but they are the basics like EQ presets and noise and wind cancellation. One unique-ish feature is Crossfeed which re-balances older recordings that sound lopsided by favoring either the left or right channel. ACT III: Lossless in Apple As an Apple user it’s always bummed me out that aptX isn’t supported. Sennheiser fixes this by including the BTD700 aptX USB-C dongle. This is truly a standout feature, not just for Apple users, but anyone who uses any aptX incompatible device. Supposedly the dongle is plug and play, but I must manually choose BTD700 as my Mac or iPhone speaker output. The 630, however, does usually auto switch to BTD700 connection. If not, this can be done in the app’s connections settings. I first used the BTD700 with my Mac because that’s where my lossless ALAC files live. I sampled the same genres as I did with my initial sound test and I was shook at the difference. Regular Bluetooth audio playing 320kbps AAC sounded excellent but ALAC via the BTD700 on these cans is a higher-level experience for me, no exaggeration. I nearly melted hearing Yo-Yo Ma playing Bach’s Cello Suites. Every tiny detail of his bowing was discernable like I was playing on my loudspeakers but with the 630 it felt more personal. It was as if I was sitting next to him. Next, I transported a few centuries to the latin jazz of Herb Albert. It was truly a 3D musical experience with all its instrumentation and vocal layers. This is musical immersion in its pure form. Every other genre has similar qualities that made the 630 sound even cleaner and nuianced. Most of my sampling was in “natural” EQ but, as with the regular Bluetooth audio, but some rock tracks with pronounced bass did need some help, but then were full of life. Wired hi-def lossless audio is also possible by connecting a USB-C cable (one is included) between the 630 and a device’s USB-C audio output port. ACT IV: Call of the Wind and Other Noise Cancelling The 630’s noise and wind cancellation are inline with other mid to high end headphones I’ve tried. My test of these features for all my headphones is done at a local park literally front of a major airport’s runway. Big loud 737s and A320s. There’s also heavy traffic too. I do this so my impressions have at least a tinge of a scientific comparison. My result with the 630s is, with noise cancellation at 100%, volume at 40% playing Lord Huron’s XXX, I could not hear the jets taking off. Only when they were directly above me did the sound break though. The noise cancellation only became less effective at 20%. My normal listening volume level is around 50% so I’m happy with the 630’s NC ability. The wind gusts were averaging 16 mph during my noise cancellation evaluation. With wind reduction off my ears were almost blown out it was so loud. Switching it back on and gone. Finally, call quality. The 630 easily is the most natural sounding I’ve encountered in a headphone. The person voice on the other in comes is crisp and clean and I’m told they experience the same. Background noise is squelched, but not eliminated entirely. That is unless the background is wind. At that point audio becomes choppy sounding and unusable. Infinitesimal negative for headphones that exceed so well at its chief purpose. FINALE: Top of the Tier It’s rare to find a headphone that is for “everyone,” but the 630 maybe it. Certainly, it merits hard consideration with its lovely, authentic, but still highly adjustable sound thanks to the parametric EQ. And the included BTD700 is more than just a bonus throw-in, it’s a musical opening Apple users and others don’t usually get to enter. Call quality is crisp and clear too. So even if its noise cancellation is only adequate, unless you live on a construction site give the 630 a little slack here. The only reason I really see not putting the 630 at the top of your list is you just can’t get enough bass.

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  Posted 2 months ago by TechO

• Rated 4 out of 5 stars

  Good sound. Great noise canceling. Small cups.

  • Top 500 Contributor
  • Tech Insider Network Member

  I'll front load this review by saying my biggest gripe with these headphones is the size of the cups. They feel like they barely fit around my ears and it sometimes bothers me. But when I'm not thinking about that, they sound good and the noise canceling works really well so I'm enjoying them. Setup was easy enough. They connected to my phone like any other bluetooth headset. The app has an option for logging into an account but doesn't force you to (which is always nice). There's a lot of options to explore in the app as well but I found the sound was pretty good out of the box without a lot of tinkering. Another small things but I noticed immediately and really appreciate was the giant L and R on the inside of the ear cups. I don't know why so many headphones feel like they need to hide the L and R somewhere and barely emboss it so you can't see it. It's on the inside of the cup. No one will see it aside from me when I need to. A small detail that I really like and haven't seen elsewhere. I'm not an audiophile or anything but I've tested enough headphones to know what sounds good to me and these are up there as some of the better sounding headphones I've tried. The bass sounds nice but not overpowering. Everything sounded great. Podcasts. Music. Videos. Comfort is not bad but my only real complaint does exist in this category. The headphones are nice and light and the head band adjusts smoothly and feels good to wear. But the ear cups are just a little too small for me. I don't have this issues very often but it felt more pronounced with this set than others I've used. If I move them around enough, I can probably find a spot where it doesn't feel like every part of the cup is touching my ear, but it's not easy to keep maneuvering them. It's not crazy uncomfortable but I'm just not used to the ear cups touching my ears as much as these do. Other than that one issue, I like these headphones a lot. They sound really good and package up in the carry case for easy moving around. If you're looking for a more premium wireless headset and either have smaller ears or don't mind the ear cups touching your ears, these might be ones to look at.

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  Posted 1 month ago by swemoney

• Rated 5 out of 5 stars

  BTD700 is the Phone Booth and Cape for the HDB630

  • Tech Insider Network Member
  • Top 250 Contributor

  I'm not going to waste too much of your time here so I'll get to the point. You may not think using the dongle is worth it, until you actually hear 24/96kHz audio lossless sources and your jaw drops. It is the closest I have come to wired connections on a pair of wireless headphones. This isn't an issue with the BT connection that headphone makers like Sennheiser can put on their headphones, the BT limitation is on the audio source, like the phone, PC, streaming device. The cost and average consumer just don't justify this higher quality BT chip. Thankfully, Sennheiser INCLUDES the BTD700 with the HDB630 headsets!!! So as my title says, the BTD700 transforms the HDB630 from Clark Kent into Super Man. Its a massive difference if you have lossless audio sources. I personally subscribe to Apple Music and mostly listen to Apple Music from my iPhone but also to my various speakers throughout the house and this has been good enough for me without having to use lossless CDs. Just do yourself a favor and spend the 10 minutes watching 2 videos on Youtube by the official Sennheiser channel and another one on how to configure your iPhone to maximize audio quality by setting Atmos/Lossless where available. 1. How to stream hi-res audio with the Sennheiser HDB 630 and the BTD 700 dongle 2. How to get the BEST Audio Quality in Apple Music Once you have everything configured correctly, you will see 1. Squiggly Lines below the time line for songs in Apple Music that will say Hi-Res Lossless or Lossless. If you click on that icon, it will tell you the exact bit and sampling rates and also link to Audio Quality Settings where you can again check or choose your streaming quality for each connection type. 2. In the Sennheiser SmartControlPlus app, you can click on Settings and verify you are currently playing back at the expected bitrate. 3. You can easily verify by switching output in your Sound Output/Airplay settings by swapping between BTD700 and HDB630, but really, your ears will tell you all you need to know. You will hear things you never heard in some of these songs, especially with instrumentals and high ranges. I will be honest however, the pairing and integration between the BTD700, HDB630 and your phone/app is not a great experience. If I was grading on this alone it would probably be a 2-3 star experience. Its very clunky and the opposite of seamless, which is opposite of the BT to phone pairing and app experience which is very clean. Putting that BTD700 inbetween really messes with the experience but as I mentioned, save yourself some frustration and just watch the Sennheiser video which worked for me. Thankfully, after the initial setup, this chain survives setup later and just works. Other things I liked about the Sennheiser HDB 630 experience was the auto-on feature once you pick up the headphones and put them on. Also, they turn off and power down if you set them down. The touch controls are well established and the same as most other companies with a series of swipes and taps to control next song/volume/play/pause/answer/hangup etc. The circumaural (around the ear) design is very comfortable and does not pinch or put pressure on my head or ears. The band doesn't squeeze my head and there's nice memory foam on the top which is comfortable for extended use. Earpads are fake leather which is comfortable but does sweat a bit underneath, but also helps with ambient sound even with ANC. They aren't overly heavy either and adjusting the length of the headband is easy. Build quality looks and feels premium with faux leather on top of the band, accented silver metal connecting the earphones and clearly labeled L and R channel which I like while I get used to wearing these more. The case is excellent quality and just folds the headsets flat iwthout having to break them down and jenga them into the case. This does result in a slightly larger profile but not overly so. There's so much included in the case with usb-c to usb-c charging and connecting cable, 3.5mm minijack, splitter, quick reference guide and of course the HDB700. Each device or dongle has its own keeper mesh pocket to secure them from floating around the case. I did try mic for both calls and gaming and its just not that good as you'd expect from a pair of BT wireless rather than PC/gaming headsets. No boom means you're at a disadvantage. While the gap is closing, they still aren't interchangeable or "as good" as the other in all areas. The ANC is also not as good as some of the competitors in this area but it serves its purpose. Sennheiser has been a big name in audiophile circles for a long time and this HDB 630 is another excellent entry into the market. The HDB630 has a ton of versatility with the BT connection, but make sure to try out the HDB700 which kicks it up at least a few notches.

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  Posted 2 months ago by TechBuyer