To avoid waking Mini up on Friday and Saturday nights when watching films as him room is above the lounge I am looking at headphones, but I don’t know the first thing about them.

I am thinking about over ear, and have been looking at Sennheiser. Budget up to £200 including a 5 m cable if I go wired.

What should I be looking for?

Which sound best, wireless or Wired?

I am just going to do the usual and suggest what I own. However, I own them based upon countless recommendations on here.
I went for some Sony WH1000XM3s.bluetooth and noise cancelling.
They are the bee’s knees. I got mine for a little over 200.

I’d go for whichever iteration of the Sony MX1000’s comes to budget. Wireless and noise canceling. Wired should sound better but far less flexible

Edit, ones above for correct model ref

+1 for what @mrwhyte said, i got some at the begining of MArch 2019, use them everyday for work and listening to music they are truly lovely sounding headphones and the sound isolation is amazing. Some good deals on them now as a good few years old and newwer models out.

Go into John Lewis and try some on. You’ll want the ones you find the most comfortable for TV watching. If BT TV then I’d be using this over wired and going down the ear bud route. I find it much more comfortable for long periods of use.

Like Mrwhyte, I was going to recommend what I have. They’re on-ear, not over ears, but they have been blimming fantastic. AKG N60NCs. 5-star WhatHiFi recommended.

Then I saw how much they now go for on Amazon and I nearly fell off my chair.

I’m pretty sure I paid the best part of £300 for them when they were new. At £89 they are the absolute steal of the century. I’m almost tempted to buy another pair!

In terms of noise cancellation, is this something you want for at home with boy in bed? I have Bose QC35 II, but for listening to music when the kids are in bed I wear Bose Sport Earbuds with no noise cancellation.
Noise cancellation is awesome, but maybe not for home. I’m in a coffee shop now with my QC35’s and they’re a godsend (not that young mums and kids are in anyway annoying….). Home use I’m happy not to be too isolated.

Also got the Sonys, love them.

@Jakester – what’s the microphone like on the AKG N60NCs? Good enough for work Zoom calls?

I ordered some Audio Technica M50x-BT2 For £110 from Amazon but they aren’t shipping for another month. Not sure if they were the right choice for day to day use being more ‘monitor’ headphones, wonder if I should cancel.

Are the people suggesting Bluetooth using them with a TV? I’ve not had good experiences even with ones claiming low latency, and fiddling with audio sync settings is tedious. Noise cancellation is extra cost that doesn’t sound useful here.

No specific recommendations from me, wired will get you better sound quality at any given price if you don’t mind the wire. Wireless is convenient but imo you want something with its own receiver for TV use.

I’ve got Bose NC700’s which are out of your budget but I’d 100% recommend a BT NC over ear set. They should have NC settings so you can turn them to whatever level of cancellation you need.

Mine are used for TV/movie watching, work long ass teams calls, work training sessions, music when I want to be in my own bubble, and will be used on planes/trains/automobile passenger.

They’re my 3rd set of headphones and were free with my Pixel 6 but they’re the most used. My others are Beyer dynamic wired with a Fiio amp/DAC and an Audeze wireless/BT planar magnetic gaming headset.

Are the people suggesting Bluetooth using them with a TV? I’ve not had good experiences even with ones claiming low latency, and fiddling with audio sync settings is tedious.

If the TV has A2DP then it should be perfectly fine with zero lag/sync issues.

There are shedloads of new Bose700s on eBay for ~£160 – presumably other people who have got them free with a pixel6

@kelron – If i go BT it will be through the stereo amp connection. As I know nothing about this your points are very helpful.

Thanks all so far.

t3ap0t
Free Member

@Jakester – what’s the microphone like on the AKG N60NCs? Good enough for work Zoom calls?

Yep – I’ve used them in the office (we’re open plan/hotdesk) for Teams/Zoom calls and they’ve been fine. There’s a mic on the cable if you need it as well, if wireless isn’t doing it for you.

kelron
Free Member
Are the people suggesting Bluetooth using them with a TV? I’ve not had good experiences even with ones claiming low latency, and fiddling with audio sync settings is tedious. Noise cancellation is extra cost that doesn’t sound useful here.

I’ve used the ones I recommend with both the TV and AV receiver via Bluetooth and it’s worked fine. No noticeable latency at all. NC means you don’t need to have them up as loud for the same quality. IME, of course.

I got the xm4 from Sony ebay aus as factory seconds. Same price as new xm3s. Not a mark on them. Zero issues. Sound great.

Sounds like Bluetooth tech has moved on then, or I bought bad headphones before. Probably the most convenient option if it works well.

Sony great for music / films, bad for Zoom.

Bose equal for films, better Mic.

Nothing beats trying on in shop for comfort / sound preference.

Ignore What hifi. Got to be reason they never rate anything 1 or 2 stars when there’s a lot of crap out there. Never so disappointed than when buying some of their 5* rated products without trying first.

Ignore What hifi. Got to be reason they never rate anything 1 or 2 stars when there’s a lot of crap out there. Never so disappointed than when buying some of their 5* rated products without trying first.

Or, do what I did, took the WH recommendation and go and test, and find the product is great? It wasn’t a WH recommendation, it was a recommendation from about 5 years’ direct personal experience…

I went for some Sony WH1000XM3s.bluetooth and noise cancelling.
They are the bee’s knees. I got mine for a little over 200.

Had a quick flick through the thread, nobody seems to have mentioned that the Sony WH-1000XMs can also be used wired so win win. You might need a longer AV cable than the supplied 1.2 mtr one.

Headphones are a bit like bike saddles, there are bad designs/manufacturers which should be avoided but everyone will have a different view what the best one is.

Thanks all, very helpful. Those Sonys seem to be the place to start..

Which sound best, wireless or Wired?
I went for some Sony WH1000XM3s.bluetooth and noise cancelling.
They are the bee’s knees. I got mine for a little over 200.

On that sort of budget, I’d be going for the Sonys. The thing with those is, you can use them wired if the internal battery dies, some of the competitors don’t, like the reality expensive Apple and B&W cans, which is a remarkable omission! Wired will sound better than wireless, just because the bandwidth is better, you can listen to Lossless wired, BT can’t carry the information. If you’re using a phone, you can get Lightning to 3.5mm if it’s an iPhone, or USB-C to 3.5mm for other devices. The cable I got for my Taotronics SoundSurge cost about £7, IIRC, works really well with my iPhone.

Wired will sound better than wireless, just because the bandwidth is better, you can listen to Lossless wired, BT can’t carry the information.

I think that’s out of date knowledge, it all depends on the BT protocol in use. We’ve had LDAC for a while which is as close to lossless as makes no odds and there’s a new one which is truly lossless… which I can’t remember the name of.

Ah, here you go. It’s an extension of aptX. You will, of course, need new hardware…

https://www.whathifi.com/news/qualcomm-says-aptx-lossless-can-deliver-lossless-cd-quality-audio-over-bluetooth

Budget nice sounding headphones used to be the Takstar Pro82. But I see on Amazon they’re up to about £126. Half that price where I am. I’d walked into Tesco and tried all the headphones that were on demo. They must have all been damaged because they all sounded terrible. Went on Head-Fi and did some reading and bought the Takstars.

Wired, no noise cancelling (you can have quality sound, or ANC). Replaceable cable. Very comfortable long listening for most people. 70+hrs to burn in.

Thanks again Count Zero and mrdestructo the Sonys still seem favourite but I will check out the takstars.
When I send music from my phone the amp displays 44.1khz sample rate vs 48khz when connected to the optical for tv. I don’t know how to find the transmission rate to another device.

Edit: it has that aptx, so possibly upgradable with an update. Thanks for the link Cougar

You can use the Sony’s wired, but the DAC in them is that good, there’s literally no point

https://www.google.com/amp/s/soundguys.com/headphone-burn-in-isnt-real-17463/amp/

All great suggestions above:
200 quid is a massive budget for headphones- imho obviously.
I’m mixing pro level audio on a 45 quid pair of AKG K240s. I’m sure you can find something that looks a little less studio like but you get the point. Searching in online Music shops rather than electronic or HiFi shops might be worth a look. Such as:

AKG K240 on Thomann

I got the £200 figure from a general search on wireless headphones and with a view to something good that would last. I would be very happy to spend 1/4 of that on decent wired headphones that will do the job. Thanks for your suggestions.

I have some Sony wh700n and I think they’re great. Around £70, so a fraction of the price of the xm3 or 4, and many of the reviews claim they have a more natural sound, with some people preferring them over their more expensive siblings. Noise cancelling doesn’t really have much effect in my opinion, so this might be a deciding factor (I believe the xm series are meant to be very good at this).

They are Bluetooth and can be optionally wired up. I don’t use them with the TV but I would expect lag might be an issue with Bluetooth.

I would be very happy to spend 1/4 of that on decent wired headphones that will do the job.

In the game of ‘recommend what you have’, how’s about half your budget?

Some nine or so years ago I bought an earlier version of the Grado SR80 headphones and still use them regularly for watching TV and listening to music when I don’t want to disturb anyone else. I’ve always preferred open back headphones and these are simple, no-nonsense, no fancy electronics and corded.

https://www.whathifi.com/reviews/grado-sr80x

If going with Bluetooth, you’ll need a set compatible with LDAC / AptX HD for sound quality, but for watching films or gaming you’ll need compatibility with AptX LL to reduce the latency.

You can get a Bluetooth DAC to plug wired headphones into to get both of those protocols. Something like fiio btr3 – https://www.fiio.com/btr3

*edit Was going to recommend AKG K550 mkiii but seems they are discontinued.

If going BT am I better using the TV or stereo amp? Also I see there are RF wireless, are they any good?

I see this is starting to get more complicated.

A wildcard choice (and cheap) is the anker sound core life q30, very decent sounding headphone that responds well to eq, its a bit of a favourite amongst the online headphone crowd for the low cost vs performance and the standard tuning is very acceptable if you don’t wish to use the sound core app and eq.

anker sound core life q30 £80

A wildcard choice (and cheap) is the anker sound core life q30, very decent sounding headphone that responds well to eq, its a bit of a favourite amongst the online headphone crowd for the low cost vs performance and the standard tuning is very acceptable if you don’t wish to use the sound core app and eq.

I have these headphones as does my OH and I’ve been quite impressed. Added bonus they can be used wired too.
I’ve fallen asleep in them as they’re pretty comfortable. Not felt the urge to mess around with equalisers or install the app either.
I’m not overly keen on the way the buttons are laid out, but like the fact I can tap the side and let outside noises in, if I need to listen out for the cooker timer or similar.

To my ears they sound better than my apple in ear things but I do have tinnitus so probably not a great judge, but my OH who has better ears than me is very happy with her’s.

I’ve also got some Sony CH510 wireless headphones which are a bit less bulky and better for zwifting but don’t have the wired option or the transparency thing. However minimal buttons are nice

Thanks everyone, I will head out next weekend to demo.

I found that BT experience of watching TV was awful. I used to faff around with wired but found that if you have a decent viewing distance, having a long cable was annoying after a while.

So what to do about wireless – well recently I bought an Apple TV, mainly for Zwift, 4k and all that.

However we now exclusively use the Apple TV over any other system as it pulls together all the different streaming platforms including terrestrial so well.

What I did find, whilst not working but having to be mindful of my partner who was, is that an Apple TV teamed with a set of Apple wireless headphones is a VERY good experience. I have the AirPod Pros and whilst not the last word in quality (bud fit is key) they are probably the most slick and smooth experience.

Turn on the TV and use the Apple TV and open the Airpod case and the Apple TV offers you a single click option to use the AirPods – immediately syncing and off you go.

Latest gens provide Dolby Atmos like experience where if you turn you head the sound moves accordingly (also on the iPad and iPhones). Also, automatic pause and resume when you inevitably get the missus appear talking to you and you need to take a bud out to hear her.

For the convenience I wouldn’t use anything else really, even though I’ve a set of Q30’s and also Sennheiser HD660 – both incredible headphones in the own right, but the faff doesn’t warrant using them over my AirPods.

I know it’s not a straightforward option but the Apple TV experience is very good when you go all in for it.