Sennheiser - PXC 550 Wireless

I've been pretty happy with my Sennheiser PXC 550s. I've had them for about 10 years at this point. I prefer over the ear headphones because anything on the ear or in the ear hurts after awhile. One resource you can look at is audio spectrograms of different headphones. That will show how well they each do at different frequencies. Just google something like: audio spectrogram pxc 550.

I get this with the Momentum 4 but not the PXC 550.

PXC 550s are more comfortable for me, but the sound isn’t as “full”. I like to have both to swap out.

I have used a bunch my picks are the following Overear Bose QC ultra 2 - super comfy,. really good noise cancelling and decent features for easy use For the best actual noise cancelling the pixel bud 2s are actually incredibly good, when I fly which I do often for work I stack these two together and can't hear any other noise when listening to something which is really good. I have used the the qxc550s which are amazing but take some tweaking to sound better than the Bose ones which are great out the box. I've also use the jabra ANC headphones for work which I forget the name off, decent enough but wouldn't buy with my own money. If I could only pick one I'd probably take the pixel buds despite having the worst sound (not bad by any means) of the lot simply because they are small, have the best noise cancelling and easy to track with the app so I've never lost them.

Honestly I only have bad experiences with Sennheiser. I had a PXC 550 and regretted it, and bought the Accentum, which in many ways is even more disappointing.

Yeah pxc550, still my favorite but low battery life and two pairs of earcups, HD450BT and the worst of the group the Momentum 4 on/off switch broke have to use them wired.

Sennheiser PXC 550. I kind of have mixed opinions about them. The comfort, battery life, and audio quality are all great. Noise cancelling is pretty good. I was skeptical about the fancy 6-mic noise-cancelling thing, but outbound audio seems to be really clear even when there's background noise. The "pause when removed from head" feature was a giant pain with constant false positives that drove me nuts, but turning it off resolved that. They'll connect to two devices, but they don't always make the right decision about which one to actually use. They'll pair to more than two devices, but then they really start choosing poorly. Limiting them to exactly two mitigates most of the gremlins, and I suspect a single device would work just fine. I also suspect newer models are better at it, especially with proper Bluetooth 5.2 support. And they're micro-USB instead of C, but that's definitely fixed in current models. I also have a pair of Pixel Buds A-series for travel and backup. There ok, but have the same limitations as other earbuds in terms of battery life and comfort. Fine if you've got maybe one or two meetings in a day, but not great if you have them back-to-back.

My PXC550's are still going strong nearly ten years later. I use the things all the time. I'm not saying they will last forever, but $300 for ten years is a good investment considering they keep me sane when I travel or have to work in an office.

If you’re not going the pad replacement route, FWIW I just retired my Sennheiser PXC 550s for the Bowers & Wilkins PX7 S2e. I highly recommend the 550s—they lasted me around 10 years but I finally caved to the fact that they’re too small for my ears, especially when I’m wearing glasses and earrings. The B&Ws feel and sound so much better to me, and the noise cancelling is on par to the Sony & Bose pairs I’ve tried. If you’re an app person, I like the B&W app better than the Sennheiser app, too.

Have had both Bose and sennheiser and Bose felt budget in comparison. I still have the senny’s the px550 or whatever they were. Still going strong 7 years now. Bose quiet comfort are quite tinny in comparison. I had those before the sennys and left them in a hotel in Bali 🫠

Does anybody else also feel that sound output is not very high . I bought xm5 but disappointed with sound output despite keeping full volume. Earlier I had Pxc550 , that one also had same output