Pros: comfortable, looks (if you like them, but I think they're ugly)
Cons: feel cheap, bad sound esp for the price, expensive
I listened to these out of my iphone at the apple store the other day while waiting for my genius bar ticket to come up for my busted ipod. I was expecting them to be built really well, and sound decent. I was not impressed.
Some say they like the looks. I think they look like something that is cheap but meant to look classy. Like one of those ritzy prefab homes. But clearly some think they look cool.
They were much smaller in person than in pictures.
I was expecting great build quality from the impressions I read, which I appreciate in a headphone, but the metal on these is for looks. They don't actually seem built better than any other well made plastic headphone to me, either by feel, or by looks. I think my ath-M50 could take more abuse than these.
The sound was not impressive. I was shocked because I was expecting something that was warm, forgiving, rich, maybe something like my old K240 sextetts. But they managed to sound muffled and shrill at the same time. Quite an achievement- if something is going to be warm, rolled off, and muffled you'd at least expect it to be rich and smooth. But the upper mids were shrill, and the mids were muffled and lacked detail. The rest of the spectrum was nothing to write home about. My ath-M50 are more comfortable, look better, are 1/3 the price, and sound better in every way, regardless of source.
The one positive thing I can say is that they are very comfortable for supra-aural cans. They way the pads sit on the outer edges of the ear, while the leather covers the ear spreads the weight nicely. But my circum-aural m50 is more comfortable and isolates better and is not much bigger- smaller in fact since it folds up.
Keep in mind, I listened to these at the apple store. I wouldn't have posted this review if they were open cans, but since they are fairly isolating, I didn't feel like that environment had much impact on my impressions. I would buy these if you love how they look. But if you are interested in sound quality, there are much cheaper alternatives that sound better, are also happily driven from ipods and isolate equally well or better. ATH-M50, srh-840 and AKG K271 (if you like a bass light sound) are a few that come to mind.
Maybe you just can't hear very well.
It does not take me very long to hear how a headphone sounds, the gross colorations most headphones have are there at first, and they are there later, and I hear them pretty quickly. There are sublte things that take a bit longer, but what I described in this post were not subtle. I rarely change my mind not out of principle, but simply because my opinion rarely changes. That's just how it is. I hear headphones well right away. It doesn't take me 635 hours of burn in and 6 weeks of brain burn in to realize there is a 5dB peak somewhere, or a problem with tonality or a resonance.
I am open to hearing another pair and if my impression is different, I'll change this review. Maybe the pair I heard was defective or a fake.
Having read and read on the p5 and finally receiving it, my first impression was disappointing as well. FIRST IMPRESSIONS ARE IMPORTANT.
He said he was in the mac store, so what, they should be able to perform within that environment and he said to tk it with a grain of salt as it was off the cuff while waiting..
nevertheless, first impressions matter and upon owning them now I can tell he knows what he's talking about and I can tell he has a lot of genuine, real world experience.
I also agree with the bit about them being made to look higher quality than they are..I feel that also, and I really wanted to like these. I find them refined, but delicate...andB&W have said they were made withstyle conscious or fashion statement in mind..
I too feel a bit too much show and not enough go with these thus far..
Best regards