So this will my first review here on Head-Fi, I found this little gem while looking up some reviews of a Sony MDRV6 where a forum member said in a thread that the Chinese soundMAGIC HP150/151 exceeded all his expectations for the price, so I Iooked it up and it seemed the HP150 and HP151 were both very underrated, all reviews I managed to find were very positive about the headphones except for the HP150 which had some hinge-breaking issues that got fixed with the release of the HP151 which from my knowledge doesn't exhibit any driver changes.
Build quality:
They had to make some sacrifices here, black plastic everywhere, squeaky when moving around but doesn't really bother me in my opinion.
Comfy and soft pleather on the headband and the cups, the cups have some padding, but your ears tend to touch the driver material and which does get a bit uncomfortable after an hour or 2.
The headband can be stretched quite a bit and there's a really nice touch with numbers on the the metal to indicate how much they're being stretched, also a nice color indicator on the left (blue) and right (red) to know what way to wear them.
And lastly is the cable, which is a proprietary one, I heard a lot of negative stuff about them but I don't really mind them especially since they're easily replaceable now on soungMAGIC's site, gold-layered, has a snake-like feel to them and locks nicely in place and feels very sturdy overall.
Overall I really like the aesthetics of the headphones themselves.
Sound Quality:
Here's where things get interesting, I've heard quite some headphones from the likes of Sennheiser, Harman Kardon, Audeze, Sony and Focal just to name a few, but these are impressive considering their price.
Overall they're considered balanced which the mysterious Chinese company shows with quite a bit of pride on their package, graph included, and I tend to agree, however the low-end and high-end response have some extra extension, which as a result has a really nice thump and impact to most songs, and some added clarity and a bit of sparkle in the highs. The mids are really nice and crisp as well, but gets a little bit pushed back sometimes depending on the track material I feed it, this is a nitpick however because the mids are decent in general.
Really easy to power as well, sounds decent with a phone or a laptop, but can sing a bit more when juiced up with a decent amplifier and DAC.
Goes well with all kinds of genre's, can push out decent clarity and resolution when presented with classical, acoustic music, bass-heavy tracks whether it be soul or funk or something heavier like hip-hop or house can really pop after a bit of burn-in thanks to the 53mm drivers and closed back design, my only notice is that especially female vocals are slightly thin sounding sounding but is fixed mostly by adding a nice standalone headamp, it which makes it sound fuller.
In short these headphones are pretty sweet for the price if you can live with the build quality you'll get a pair of well-rounded headphones that IMO rivals some $200+ headphones.
Build quality:
They had to make some sacrifices here, black plastic everywhere, squeaky when moving around but doesn't really bother me in my opinion.
Comfy and soft pleather on the headband and the cups, the cups have some padding, but your ears tend to touch the driver material and which does get a bit uncomfortable after an hour or 2.
The headband can be stretched quite a bit and there's a really nice touch with numbers on the the metal to indicate how much they're being stretched, also a nice color indicator on the left (blue) and right (red) to know what way to wear them.
And lastly is the cable, which is a proprietary one, I heard a lot of negative stuff about them but I don't really mind them especially since they're easily replaceable now on soungMAGIC's site, gold-layered, has a snake-like feel to them and locks nicely in place and feels very sturdy overall.
Overall I really like the aesthetics of the headphones themselves.
Sound Quality:
Here's where things get interesting, I've heard quite some headphones from the likes of Sennheiser, Harman Kardon, Audeze, Sony and Focal just to name a few, but these are impressive considering their price.
Overall they're considered balanced which the mysterious Chinese company shows with quite a bit of pride on their package, graph included, and I tend to agree, however the low-end and high-end response have some extra extension, which as a result has a really nice thump and impact to most songs, and some added clarity and a bit of sparkle in the highs. The mids are really nice and crisp as well, but gets a little bit pushed back sometimes depending on the track material I feed it, this is a nitpick however because the mids are decent in general.
Really easy to power as well, sounds decent with a phone or a laptop, but can sing a bit more when juiced up with a decent amplifier and DAC.
Goes well with all kinds of genre's, can push out decent clarity and resolution when presented with classical, acoustic music, bass-heavy tracks whether it be soul or funk or something heavier like hip-hop or house can really pop after a bit of burn-in thanks to the 53mm drivers and closed back design, my only notice is that especially female vocals are slightly thin sounding sounding but is fixed mostly by adding a nice standalone headamp, it which makes it sound fuller.
In short these headphones are pretty sweet for the price if you can live with the build quality you'll get a pair of well-rounded headphones that IMO rivals some $200+ headphones.
