Headphone Trio: Sennheiser PX 100-II

If you're in the mar­ket for a new set of head­phones, we've got a few op­tions for you. This trio should cov­er many peo­ple- at least, most of those who don't want to drop more than a cou­ple of hun­dred dol­lars on an au­dio­phile-grade set. Next up, we got an­oth­er in­ex­pen­sive fold­ing op­tion, lightweight and portable, from a name you should be fa­mil­iar with. If you're a walk­ing-and-pub­lic-tran­sit mu­sic lis­ten­er con­sid­er­ing mov­ing away from ear­buds, it's im­por­tant to look for some­thing that will hold up to reg­u­lar abuse with­out need­ing a case.

Put away those stock ear­buds and pick up the Sennheis­er PX 100-IIs. Avail­able with in-line three-but­ton con­trols and a mi­cro­phone or with­out, ei­ther way, you'll be hap­pi­ly sur­prised in a few ways. For starters, there is the price- a hard to beat $55 or so at press time. Build qual­i­ty is high- these took a beat­ing and didn't show it, though the pads did get scuffed a bit, they seemed pret­ty well-fit. They aren't the most com­fort­able mod­els around- an up­grade with bet­ter cush­ion­ing is avail­able- but they are on­ly 73 grams, a few more than the pre­vi­ous­ly-re­viewed set.

How­ev­er, the per­for­mance (and stur­di­ness) was worth the bare­ly-no­tice­able ex­tra weight. Iso­la­tion is on­ly so-so, of course- these are open-air and on-ear. But sep­a­ra­tion was im­pres­sive. One tester found the ini­tial bass to be a bit over­whelm­ing, ac­tu­al­ly, but af­ter just a bit of burn-in time (or ad­just­ment), found them per­fect for heav­ier beats. Ra­dio­head's Kid A and Marc Re­bot's Silent Movies both sound­ed great, crisp and boom­ing, while Tom Waits seemed nat­u­ral and fair­ly warm. They might not quite be up your ref­er­ence mon­i­tors, but for portable, fold­able lis­ten­ing, the PX-100 IIs of­fer great val­ue. Avail­able on­line and in stores. And if you're look­ing for wire­less mod­els, they of­fer some that we've checked out in the past that are al­so fold­able.