Sennheiser - HD1 Free Wireless In-Ear Headphones - Black

Pros: - Nice carry case for headphones and accessories - Rubberized strap is comfortable and unobtrusive - Multiple sized ear buds - Solid base - Magnetic connector for ear buds - Easy to pair with devices - Easy to learn and use inline controls - Wireless has good range - Long battery life - Good connectivity with notifications, phone calls, and music apps. Cons: - Audio quality is not on par with Apples ear bud’s that came with my phone - Uncomfortable in ear canal after an hour of use - No noise canceling/voice focusing for microphone - All surrounding office chatter picked up and transmitted by microphone - Magnetic connection between headphones is very weak - Headset does pick up and transmit the scuffing of the headset as it brushes against my collar - The speakers suffer from midrange sound breakup I was excited about getting the Sennheiser HD1 Free Wireless headset. For years, I’ve been using the headset/microphone earbuds that Apple included with my iPhone. These are the first wireless earbuds that I have owned. The headphones have attractive styling. I really like the rubberized cord that connects all the components together. The earbuds look great. I love the glossy black and grey two-toned bodies. And the wireless range is spot on with the side of the box. I was able to walk around my house freely during phone calls and music listening without worrying about where I placed my phone or laptop. I was able to pair the ear buds with multiple devices. Reconnecting those the earbuds to the phone was super easy. There is a three-button control on the right ear bud cord. The buttons are not large but big enough that they are easy to identify without looking. The strap is designed to hang from your neck. And the ear buds are designed to magnetically attach to each other’s back. I found the magnets very weak but not so weak that the ears buds came apart. However, I do feel that any level of jostling will cause them to come apart and increase the risk of them falling off from around my neck. Sound quality is really where these ear buds fail, in my opinion. The voice and music feel constrained. Almost like the sound is trying to penetrate my ear drum through a very small hole. Base, when there is a strong enough beat, is clear. Highs also seem to be clear. The mid-range, however, seems to break up on the speaker. I noticed this while holding a conversation with my wife. She has a strong high-midrange voice. Some of her words seemed to simply break up. At first, I thought it was static. Then, I noticed that the speakers kept breaking up with the same words and with certain inflections that she was using while speaking with me. I found the same issues with Music. I played a range of music from Classical to modern Pop. Again, the lows, when they were present, seemed strong and highs were clear. The midrange was sloppy. Tylor’s Swifts, Blank Space, had all kinds of issues with the midrange. The beat in the song seems high. There is an afterbeat that throws static into the sound stream. I switched over to my Apple ear pods and the break-up of the afterbeat went away. Also, the ear pods showed immediately the weakness of the Sennheiser’s. I knew going in that these ear buds were not sound canceling. I have a pair of sound canceling head phones if I want true isolation in my music listening and wireless phone calls. But, I got these ear buds to have a light, portable option instead of always carrying around my bulky Sony Headphones. Walking around the office, I heard every conversation taking place around me. The silicon caps on the ear buds offered very little in the way of isolating me from the office. Every scrape of the neck strap against my clothing did enter my ear canal. The sound did disrupt my ability to listen to my phone conversation. The microphone is too sensitive. Every person I spoke with commented that they could hear all the background noise in my office. That is scary because I never want the conversations in the office to broadcast over an open line. My office also has white noise generators that are used to cut down on a lot of the cross noise that occurs when large groups of people are gathered into a small place. The headphones also transmitted this noise. It would have been nice if there was a way to either narrow down the sensitivity of the microphone or if the microphone could zoom in on my voice and ignore the background. Over all, I think the presentation of these headphones is nice. But, given my negative experiences, I cannot recommend these headphones to anyone. Thank you for reading this review. I hope it proves helpful.

---SETUP--- The Sennheiser HD1 in-ear headphones are easy to set up. Upon turning it on, my cell phone found the headphones immediately under the name HD1 IE Free. Paring took under a minute. ---FEATURES--- These earbuds come with several unique features. One of my favorite ones is the magnetized back of the tips. When you aren’t using the headphones, you can have them hang from your neck, as with most. However, the magnetized back of the tips allow for them to be more secured around your neck and won’t fall off as easily if you are making brisk movements. One complaint I do have is with a feature that it lacks. Sometimes, when you miss something on a podcast or want to hear a specific section of a song, with most headsets, you can rewind or fast-forward by holding the Skip Track button. It isn’t the case with these Sennheiser. The control options are the volume up/down buttons and a middle button between those two for turning on/off the headset and for pairing/answering/hanging up the phone. The volume up and down work by click it over and over until desired volume is found. When holding the volume buttons, what happens is, it will either skip to the beginning of the track (lower volume button) or skip to the next track (raise volume button). Fast-forwarding or rewinding tracks is an important feature that I feel cost this headset one star to be removed. If you haven’t used those features in your audio experiences in a while, then it shouldn’t be part of your purchasing decision. ---PERFORMANCE--- This pair of headphones perform well enough to be your main pair. I have multiple bluetooth headsets that go around the neck. I would put these up against some of my pricier ones any day. In fact, recently, I was listening to a podcast and with these on, I could hear the vibrations of the microphone when the host would hit the arm. I hadn’t noticed that before. Regarding phone calls, there are no complaints in that department. ---EXPECTATIONS--- Going in, I didn’t expect these to feel any different than my other headsets and earbuds. However, the design feels great, they are lightweight, and the sound is incredible. The only thing that I was expecting was for it to have a longer battery life. At six hours, its on the lower end of the spectrum for battery life between charges. However, since it’s USB chargeable, most users will be within charging distance all the time. ---VALUE--- The price in terms of value is comparable to other headsets of similar quality. If you’re in the market for a good pair of great sounding headphones, these are ones to keep on the list of possible purchase. ---APPROVAL--- These headsets are TRO approved. I highly recommend this pair for people who are constantly moving, such as athletes or delivery people. Overall, the headset won’t disappoint.

I'll just preface, I love Sennheiser products. Probably a bit biased with them too lol. I wasn't sure what to expect with these earbuds. I've owned many and tested/listened to many. As usual with a Sennheiser product, they were quite incredible. At first when I went to listen to some music with them they seemed to be lacking in depth. Turns out, I didn't have them in quite right. Typical ID10T error lol. Once I re-inserted them though, WOW, The soundstage was completely different. There is ton's of bass/LFE in these. This might put a lot of people off. They are reminiscent of the first gen PX-100's. Great overall sound, but deep punchy bass. I do enjoy a good bit of bass in my music. These will work great for any type of genre of music. They are quite comfortable and they do come with several different sizes of earbud's. They do also stay in once you put them in. I haven't done anything rigorous with them, but I'm pretty confident that they will stay put when performing any exercising or other mobility type actions. Also on the ends of the outside of the earbuds where the Sennheiser logo is locate you can connect them as in my picture below as they have a tiny magnet in each. They're not overly powerful and will disconnect from each other with minimal effort, but it's a nice feature to keep the connected. For battery life, I can't speak to how long they do last as I haven't spent a lot of time with them in. They are rated for up to 6 hours on a single charge. My only issue with that, is the Li-Ion battery in them is rated for 500 charges and that's not really a whole lot, especially if you're using them frequently. Aside from the excellent audio, they do have their app CapTune. It's an alright app, and it does have an EQ that can be controlled. The biggest con with this app is that it will only work with local audio stored on the device. In other words, the EQ will not work with things such as Spotify, Apple Music, Pandora etc... It does integrate with Tidal however. It does help, but the app is cumbersome and not very intuitive. Because of this, the amount of Bass may put people off especially since it cannot be controlled. To utilize it though with Tidal you have to open it through the CapTune app, not directly through Tidal. I did reach out to Sennheiser and at this point, Tidal is the only supported streaming app that can utilize the EQ. There was no intention from the email I received that Spotify will be added. All in all, these are great earbuds, I just wish the app was designed around multiple streaming options, not just Tidal or locally stored music. If you're looking for a really nice sounding pair of earbuds and don't mind spending a bit of money and don't really care about an EQ and enjoy a bit of heavy bass, I'd say look no further than these.

In short, I really like these for my work day and casual at-home listening where I tend to have longer listening sessions without a lot of movement. I’ve owned and used a lot of Bluetooth headsets and earbuds and find these Sennheiser earbuds to be an odd mix of good and disappointing. I do a lot of audio work and compared these side by side with Bluetooth headsets from LG, JBL, and Master and Dynamic while listening to the same playlist for consistent comparison. Sound - On the plus side they support the AptX HD audio specification, so the underlying audio quality is fundamentally very good so long as the connecting device also supports AptX HD. They also support the AptX Low Latency spec which helps to keep the audio in sync with video. Although the overall sound is really good, they didn’t provide the fullest or most balanced sound field when compared to the other Bluetooth headsets listening to the same mixed genre baseline playlist. Sennheiser does provide an a music player app that lets you customize the equalizer, but those equalizer settings only work within that same music player, and that app only supports music stored directly on your phone or through the Tidal streaming service. (At least on Android, I don’t know if the iOS version is equally limiting.) Pretty disappointing. Comfort - I will say without reservation that these are the most comfortable Bluetooth earbuds I have personally ever worn -- if I wasn’t doing much of anything. So long as I am at a desk working or eased back in a chair in my living room for a movie or casual personal listening these were so comfortable in my ear that I could wear them for hours and barely even notice they were there. Not so much though once I actually got outdoors with them or for using them to listen to music while working out, shooting baskets, or on the track at the gym. Although the earbuds themselves are very comfortable, the overall design of these earbuds is that they are unbalanced -- there is a smaller and lighter 3-button control box on the right-ear side of the cable, while on the left-ear side of the cable there is a larger and heavier enclosure which I presume houses the actual battery and major electronic components. I personally found a couple problems with this layout, one aesthetic and one practical. Aesthetically it just makes the headset look awkwardly uneven. Practically, the heavier enclosure on the left-ear side tends to sway and bounce around a bit if you are vaguely active and repeatedly tugs at the left earbud and eventually pulls it out of optimal position. Even when just taking my dog for a casual walk I found myself pressing on the left earbud every few minutes to maintain optimal comfort and quality of sound. And that heavier left-side enclosure was so bouncy and tuggy when doing anything active, like shooting baskets at the gym, that it kept bumping the left side of my face and noticeably tugging at the left earbud. You can mitigate this somewhat with the sliding slack adjustment but it never fully solved the problem for me. But if you take up much wire slack at all with the slider the wire ends up too short to even try magnetically joining the buds around your neck (more on this below), and taking in the slack also comes at the price of pulling the mic and controls tighter to, and to the back-ish side of, your neck and further from your mouth so it picks up more movement and less of your voice. Another minor disappointment is that these do not support being used for USB audio like the other HD1 family of products do. Designing the earbuds with flat backs so they can connect to each other magnetically when not in use is nice on paper but in practice the hold was so weak that they kept disconnecting even with minor movement. I don’t see this as an important feature though, and not one I’d personally mark it down for, but it was an advertised feature and one I didn’t think worked nearly as well in the real-world as I’d have hoped to keep the earbuds tidy around your neck when not in use. Overall a very comfortable but otherwise less-than-perfect set of earbuds with good sound for their size and “all day” battery life.

I love these light in-ear neckband Bluetooth phones that seem to support every connection protocol. They come in a beautiful round, zippered leather case with a USB cable for charging he Lithium-ion battery and several sizes of ear adapters so that you can get the best fit for your ear canal. The phones have Bluetooth 4.2 and Qualcomm® apt-X™, and supported profiles include A2DP 1.2, AVRCP 1.4, HSP 1.2, and HFP 1.6 - HD Voice, or higher. You can connect to two devices simultaneously, according to the specs, but I have not tested that feature. The specs say that you can get a full charge in 1.5 hours and that the battery is good for 500 charges. I plugged in the convenient charging cable and the indicator LED went from flashing yellow to solid blue in less than 1.5 hours, and the I have listened to the phones now for a cumulative total of about 3 hours. My Pixel 2 indicates an 80 per cent charge remaining. The specs list a 6-hour battery life, and I have no reason to doubt that claim. The phones are comfortable and completely non-fatiguing to wear. I wouldn't think you would buy these to wear as sport phones, so I really can't say how they would hold up under hard play or sports. They certainly stayed in my ears while walking around the house and carrying out day to day activities. The sound is quite detailed, and the low bass is there. I had to fiddle with the adapter and wiggle it a little in my ear canal to get the tightest fit to extend the response into the lowest octave. I probably would have been better served to change the adapter to correct that problem, but I was enjoying the sound too much! There was not a bit of mid- bass mud, and no stridency in the mid to higher frequencies. I listened to Joni Mitchell's Hissing of Summer Lawns and heard detail and nuance in the music I don't remember from the hundreds of times I have listened to that album -- and I started with much younger ears back in 1976! I also tested the built-in microphone performance with my Pixel 2 to make and receive calls. I heard the caller, and I was heard clearly by the person calling. Frankly, I doubt I'll be using these Sennheisers much to answer my phone. I don't want to have my music interrupted. The sound of these phones compares very favorably with several others that I use, including an over the ear model that is much more expensive. I am going to be using these a lot from now on. Comfortable. Easy to pair and charge. Excellent sound. You put them on and forget about them. They are a vehicle to get to the music, and they deliver on that promise every time.

Overview: The first thing I noticed about these Sennheiser HD1 Free in ear wireless earphones is how lightweight the earbuds are! They tips are plastic with a magnet on the outside. The idea is that you can stick them together to form a loop and not lose them. The tips are on the small side, the silicone tip (comes with 4) should sit snugly on the entrance of your ear canal. This is the first pair of earphones I’ve had that sit inside the ear canal, once I found the right tip, they are quite comfortable, I almost forget I have them on. I did not experience any pain or ear fatigue with extended use (1-2 hours). The wire connecting the 2 earbuds seems to be high quality and does not get tangled easily. The controls are fairly large and easy to navigate without looking. Sound quality: These earbuds sound fantastic! One of the best sounding bluetooth earbuds I’ve used! Very good bass and mid levels, I didn’t notice much distortion even at higher levels. This is even without using the CapTune app to adjust the sound. Speaking of the app, I wasn’t able to figure out how to use the app to adjust my music. The app gives me a selection of selecting my music from: either local library or Tidal, I don’t have music in either of these locations. Doesn’t seem like I can add a source such as Pandora, iHeart Radio or Sacker radio, the music apps I do use. Usability: The magnetic tips are meant to create a secure necklace by attaching the earbuds together, however, the magnets are so weak, they barely stick together. Good idea, poor execution. The rubber or silicone wire is nice quality, but a bit “sticky”, while commuting to work, dressed with a winter coat and dress shirt, I find it that it occasionally pulls the earbud out of my ear. Perhaps if the wire was less tacky, it would glide over clothing with less friction and this wouldn’t happen. I tried using these at the gym, they stayed in my ear the whole time while I was on the treadmill. Keep I mind that these are not advertised as water resistant (I don’t sweat that much that I need water resistance). Battery life is excellent, rated at 6 hours, I found it was very close to the advertised time. Audio quality for phone calls is excellent, the person I was speaking to was able to hear me clearly. The mic may be a bit too sensitive, they heard all the background noise of a busy NYC street as well. Conclusion: If you want a premium headset where comfort and sound quality are important, try these out, you won’t be disappointed. Pros: 1. Excellent sound quality 2. LIghtweight, comfortable for extended usage. 3. Nice leather case for storage, a bit on the large side (3.75” wide x1.5” tall) Cons: 1. Weak magnets don’t stick.

Sennheiser has a pretty good reputation for putting out stylish and great sounding headphones. These in-ear headphones are the HD1 Free, which are In-Ear Wireless headphones within the HD1 Family of products. The HD1 family of products are "headphones with MOMENTUM" which means they are focused towards smartphone usage by incorporating a microphone and remote buttons, as opposed to simply headphones. These aren't a "true wireless" set like some on the market, as they do have a cord connecting the two earbuds together. They are fairly symmetric in design with the in-line controls below the right earbud and what I presume is the battery below the left earbud. The cord connecting the two is red/black, while the earbuds have a stainless steel finish which is just magnetic enough to keep the two earbuds together when not in-use. Overall, these look great, are very light and the three ear adapter sizes hopefully make for a snug fit. But how do they sound/perform? From a codec perspective, they support AAC, aptX and of course SBC. This means on the iPhone, it will use AAC while on supported Android devices aptX will be preferred. First off, they're straightforward enough to pair with both the iPhone and Android. On both my iPhone X (running iOS 11.3 Public Betas) and iPhone 7 (iOS 11.2.2), battery life is reported which is nice and pretty much expected nowadays. However, I noticed with both that the audio is not perfectly synced with video, which is a little disappointing. I've seen this on true wireless sets, but never on a "regular" Bluetooth set like these. On my Android devices (Pixel XL and Essential Phone, both with Oreo 8.1), battery life is also reported. aptX is used with both, and audio IS in sync with video. I'm hoping the sync issue on iOS can be improved via updates, assuming the HD1 Free can be updated. Sennheiser does have a mobile app, CapTune, but I can't tell if it can provide product updates or is simply used for equalization tweaks. From a sound perspective, I've found that Sennheiser products provide a well-rounded sound without any loudness or overexagerated bass response, and the HD1 Free seems to follow along those lines. Like most in-ears, you'll get the best sound quality with a snug fit. Battery life has also been very good and the set is very light; you don't really feel the connecting cord from a weight perspective. Overall, I recommend these if you prefer a well-rounded sound signature, but be aware of the A/V sync issues on iOS.

I have owned LG, Sol Republic and lesser brands among wireless earbud headphones and the Sennheiser HD1 Free is one of the better sounding ones I have ever listened to. ---DESIGN--- The HD1 Free is lightweight and has a sturdy and nice build feel to it. Appearance is sleek and very appealing with the red/black color scheme. Inline controls are standard fare and easy to access/use that also allow for phone calls. The earbuds themselves have a snug fit and have solid noise isolation. Earbuds have magnets built in so that they stick together when dangling around your neck, however I found the magnets could be stronger as my earbuds easily detached will little movement. My biggest gripe is these do not seem to be designed with water/moisture/sweat resistance in mind. Most mid to high end headsets have water resistance and the HD1 Free falls in the high end price point for sure. ---AUDIO QUALITY--- The mids and highs are very crisp, clear and robust. The highs are not real harsh like other wireless earphones I have tested and distortion is low. Bass feels full and smooth; unexpectedly good for wireless earbuds to be honest. Wireless bluetooth headphones are still not on the same level as wired ones to me but the Sennheiser HD1 Free gives me confidence that it will probably happen sooner rather than later. Call quality is good and clear. ---BATTERY AND CONNECTIVITY--- Battery life is a reported 6 hours and I was able to listen continuously on a full charge (1.5 hours!) for slightly under the 6 hours mark. You can connect up to 2 devices at the same time and it has a 8 device memory which is great to have. ---APP--- There is no current software or app to use that allows customization or tweaking of the headphones. It is something I sort of expected at this price range so it is surprising. ---FINAL VERDICT--- The Sennheiser HD1 Free is a well built lightweight wireless earphone set that performs well where it matters most, audio quality and comfort. With that being said the battery life is about average compared to the competition and the fact that there seems to be no water/sweat resistance is very surprising at this price range. No app support is also a letdown. 2 year warranty is a plus and 1.5 hour charging time is solid.