Sennheiser CX380 II Headphones

Listening to music is essential to me, and I would assume many people, when exercising; specifically, listening to music while snowboarding. So frustrated with my old pair of headphones, I went on a search for a good pair for snowboarding. I'll tell you what I had before, what the problems were, and then compare those to the features of the CX380 II Sport headphones from Sennheiser.

First of all, I've never been a fan of over the head headphones for sports, especially ones where I fly through the air and occasionally smash into things. They get unseated easily, and are just that much more material that you can snap off if they hit something. So a few years ago, I tried some ear-canal headphones, and never looked back. It's difficult to get audiophile quality headphones with ear-canal headphones, but once you get past the sensation of something being "deep" in your ear, you can wear them for hours without even thinking about them. And as long as you don't get a pair of Skullcandy headphones, you can usually find ones good enough quality for most activities. In fact, since Skullcandy pretty much sucks across the board with their products (durability, sound quality, comfort, esthetics, price etc), lets just forget about them for the time being.

The model of Sony headphones I have are no longer produced as the same product, but these are probably the closest thing to the revised version of what I have. Comfortable, as is the case with most ear-canal headphones. Good sound quality, with a frequency response covering just about the whole range of sounds audible to humans. For the price, not bad headphones. There were however several issues which made them less than ideal for exercising.

1) Uneven heavy cord. While I like uneven headphone cords on earbuds, the cable was heavy and would slide around a lot, which in addition to causing a lot of cable noise, lead to my next problem.

2) Stability. The ear buds would unseat easily and often fall out under percussive movement (Running, jumps, etc). Having to stop every five minutes up on the slopes, take your glove off, reach inside your jacket and put an ear bud back in can get pretty old pretty fast.

3) Noise cancellation. Now this one is more of a personal preference. When on the slopes it can be actually safer to be able to hear some noise outside. Also, when you are with friends, good noise cancellation means that even at a low volume, you can't hear them through the ear buds. That said however, I like my music isolated. If I'm with friends, I usually don't listen to music, or just put one headphone in. But when I ride with both in, wind chopping against the ear bud gets obnoxious. But while sports were my main concern, I use the same headphones whether I'm at the gym, on the snowboard hill, in the cafeteria studying, or riding the bus. Noise cancellation is very important to me.

Those were my major complaints with the Sony headphones. They weren't bad, but they weren't great either. So after a long search, I opted to get a pair of Sennheiser CX380 II Sport Headphones. Since I'm still recovering from a broken collar bone I haven't had a chance to test them on the slopes, but I've used them in the gym running, at my computer and all around town.

Thus far they have addressed all the problems I had with the Sonys. I can't speak to longevity, but Sennheiser has a pretty decent reputation, so I'm not worried.

Somewhat to my dismay, the sound quality was only a slight improvement from the Sony headphones. I guess with a speaker that's 3mm in diameter, there is a limit to how much definition you can squeeze out of it. However, five minutes fiddling with the graphic equalizer on my MP3 player, and I had them sounding pretty damn good. But like I said earlier, I wasn't expecting audiophile headphones, so it's no biggie.

To address my three concerns with the Sonys, The cable is much lighter and thus pulls less on the ear buds themselves. There is still a bit of cable noise, but it's significantly less than with other ear buds I've tried, and the snugness and noise cancellation helps to muffle what little cable noise there is.

Along with the lighter cord tugging less, the ear buds fit more snugly, and are much more difficult to pull out accidentally. The earpiece has three features that contribute to the stability in the ear. First, the rubber piece catches a bit on the ear, so that if you try to pull it out, the first line of defense is the slight snag on the ear preventing it from coming out. By the way, "catching" and "snagging" were the only words I could think of to describe it accurately. It's not like snagging a toenail or something, it's just a little added pressure to block it from falling out. Secondly, the plastic piece and cord tuck under the ear lobe a bit, adding to the points of contact on the ear which create a source of resistance to it coming out. Essentially an average shock would have to hit in multiple directions to dislodge it easily, so they stay put. Lastly, supposedly the rubber is made from something which functions better to mitigate sweat lubricating the ear bud and sliding out. I don't know if that's any different from other headphones, but it's worth at least mentioning.

The CX380s have significantly better noise cancellation. They are not TRUE noise canceling headphones as in the ones which use Active Noise Control, but the fit very snugly and whatever they do with the rubber, its connection to the headphone and the seal between the headphone and the ear blocks out a lot of noise. Even with no music playing, ambient noise is reduced significantly.

Plus I found mine on Amazon for 38 bucks as opposed to the $75 they usually retail for, so yay me. Long story short, for everything except audiophile sound, these are pretty much great for any situation, and they aren't too expensive.