Bas82
New Head-Fier
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- Nov 29, 2006
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Well, here it is my review of the Panasonic RP-HX50 Slimz. As I didn't found too much info about these on internet, I decided to write a review after a two weeks of use.
I'm going to split the review into four sections: presentation of the product, hardware characteristics and comfort notes, sound quality, and final conclusions.
1. Presentation of the product.
The RP-HX50 comes in a very simple double-dvd case with 'notches' to keep it inside in the exact position it is planned to. The case is of the same quality as any other double-dvd case, semi-translucent, with no extra padding nor anything. No manuals are included (at least in the presentation here in Argentina). The price here is around U$S 50.00 (AR$ 170).
The presentation is as good as it could be considering the design and the way they were thought. As comparison, the presentation of the Sennheiser PX-100 (around U$S 100.00 here) has a better presentation though less 'flashy' (flashy because the HX50 presentation stands out from the crowd, but because it is much more sober than the usual headphone presentation).
Overall, I'd give the presentation item a 8/10 (consider it a 7/10, personally I'll give an 8/10 because it's original compared to the common headphone presentation).
2. Hardware and comfort.
The build quality is pretty good for the price. The hinges are all plastic (don't expect the sturdy hinges of the Senn's PX-100), but the cups themselves are of good quality. The earcups of course don't enclose the ear, but they rather sit over a reduced area of the ear, and they do an acceptable job of isolating some ambient noise (may I remark 'some'). They do not warm too much my ear as other headphones do (perhaps I am too sensible to this, but I have found more than one full sized can uncomfortable due to the fact that my ears become too warm). The earcups overall provide an excellent fit to my ears, and the majority of people that have tried them (including people that usually have problems with headphones fitting) do agree that they are prominently comfortable and for its size, the ambient noise isolation is very noticeable.
When walking on a crowded street, I can hear the street noises at normal hearing volumes. At high volumes, the ambient noise becomes of course almost inaudible, but due to the mix of high volume and partial enclosure of the ear. At the same volume, I hear much less ambient noise with these Panasonix than with my PX-100. To be able to shut ambient noise on my PX-100, I have to deaf my hearing with the volume.
The headband is comfortable, and is well designed to allow the cans to be parallel to the side of the head. When the cans sit over the ear, they sit perfectly parallel, and there is no need to adjust anything to make the cups sit inline with the ears. As they rotate over the vertical axis, they autoadjust to be a little degrees rotated and provide an excellent fit. It's not cushioned as the PX-100 headband, nor it needs to be. They do not move at all in my head once they are in the correct position. As they are also very light, once I'm using them I hardly notice them. They are one of the most comfortable headphones I've ever used.
The cable is a standard double-wire cable with an L plug, pretty much standard in Panasonic low and mid end headphones, and it's gold plated.
Overall, between hardware and fitting, I'll give them a 9.5/10, as they are really comfortable (even more comfortable than my PX-100, which are open) and provide much more ambient noise isolation. They do not seem to be fragile, though thay are not designed to throw them around carelessly.
3. Sound quality.
As soon as I took them out of the box and plugged on my iPod (iPod Video 30GB), they did sound as everybody says: very crisp highs (almost too crisp), open mids and poor bass. Excellent soundstage by the way, for its size and design.
The iPod Video, at least in my experience, is not the best player I've tried. I don't have other portable players around, but playing the same song, with no equalization, on my iPod and on the headphone out of my full size pre amp (Yamaha C-4), the difference is noticeable. The iPod comes to life with RockBox (a mod that every iPod owner should do, in my humble opinion), and with RockBox in flat settings, the RP-HX50 do sound really alike on the iPod and on my Yamaha C-4 also in flat EQ.
After a week of using them for one hour a day and leaving the iPod playing at mid volumes on the nights for a little burn in (I don't want to raise a discussion about this, as burn in for headphones is a controversial topic), all I can tell is that they improved a lot. I can say, to mitigate the voices that may arise sustaining that it was me who adjusted to the headphones, that I listened to the RP-HX50 for an hour a day and then went back to my PX-100 for the rest of my hearing session (4hs a day approximately), so, there was no too much room to "fit myself" to these headphones.
The bass has improved a lot, really a lot. The highs are way sweeter but crisp enough to detail a triangle, and the mids are as open as they used to be.
However, they do lack bass (at least to me, that I'm used to bassy headphones and bassy general sound, personal preference). I equalized them in RockBox to improve bass performance. My current EQ is very simple however, as I did not touch the advanced settings. I simply set a gain of +2dB on bass with standard cutoff frequency and -1dB on treble, with standard cutoff too.
The range of music I hear is very ample: on a single day I may range from classical (opera and concerto) to metal (Fear Factory or Disturbed kind of metal), passing through a lot of jazz (from Chet Baker to US3) and some Bossa Nova. Overall, they do sound acceptably well on all of them, which is remarkable considering the difference in music. I hardly have to adjust anything on EQ settings to hear what I'd like to hear.
For example, listening to Carl Orff's Carmina Burana first movement (O Fortuna), or the III movement of Vivaldi's Verano, I can hear everything, from the cymbals on Carmina Burana, to the low cellos and high pizzicato violin passes on Vivaldi's composition.
With Fear Factory's Edgecrusher song, the bass is very clear, the voice too, and just sometimes the guitar runs over the drums (but that is a characteristic of Fear Factory composition, since the guitar riffs were usually tied to the very fast Herrera's drumming). The bass on Stone Sour's Socio song is crisp, clear, and rich.
Listening to Jamiroquai's High Times song is a total pleasure.
Overall, I'll give the sound quality a 9/10, but you may consider a 7/10 or 8/10 if you look for a headphone that may be average on almost every kind of music but excel at some specific type. A good exception could be vocals, where the RP-HX50 do perform noticeably well.
4. Final Conclusions.
For the price, the Panasonix RP-HX50 are unbeatable. They do not have the sound quality of my Audio Technicas CM7, and my sennheisers PX-100 do sound a little better, but the HX50 do give a much, much better soundstage. They are way more comfortable too (the CM7s keep falling off my ear constantly), have a very acceptable build quality (they look good too), are small, really portable, have an excellent fit and they do have a nice sound quality. They've became my everyday headphones.
Please, if there's anything important that I left, or any additional detail needed, just tell me and I'll add a note about it.
Cheers!
Sebastian.
PS: pardon my english please, is not my mother tongue
I'm going to split the review into four sections: presentation of the product, hardware characteristics and comfort notes, sound quality, and final conclusions.
1. Presentation of the product.
The RP-HX50 comes in a very simple double-dvd case with 'notches' to keep it inside in the exact position it is planned to. The case is of the same quality as any other double-dvd case, semi-translucent, with no extra padding nor anything. No manuals are included (at least in the presentation here in Argentina). The price here is around U$S 50.00 (AR$ 170).
The presentation is as good as it could be considering the design and the way they were thought. As comparison, the presentation of the Sennheiser PX-100 (around U$S 100.00 here) has a better presentation though less 'flashy' (flashy because the HX50 presentation stands out from the crowd, but because it is much more sober than the usual headphone presentation).
Overall, I'd give the presentation item a 8/10 (consider it a 7/10, personally I'll give an 8/10 because it's original compared to the common headphone presentation).
2. Hardware and comfort.
The build quality is pretty good for the price. The hinges are all plastic (don't expect the sturdy hinges of the Senn's PX-100), but the cups themselves are of good quality. The earcups of course don't enclose the ear, but they rather sit over a reduced area of the ear, and they do an acceptable job of isolating some ambient noise (may I remark 'some'). They do not warm too much my ear as other headphones do (perhaps I am too sensible to this, but I have found more than one full sized can uncomfortable due to the fact that my ears become too warm). The earcups overall provide an excellent fit to my ears, and the majority of people that have tried them (including people that usually have problems with headphones fitting) do agree that they are prominently comfortable and for its size, the ambient noise isolation is very noticeable.
When walking on a crowded street, I can hear the street noises at normal hearing volumes. At high volumes, the ambient noise becomes of course almost inaudible, but due to the mix of high volume and partial enclosure of the ear. At the same volume, I hear much less ambient noise with these Panasonix than with my PX-100. To be able to shut ambient noise on my PX-100, I have to deaf my hearing with the volume.
The headband is comfortable, and is well designed to allow the cans to be parallel to the side of the head. When the cans sit over the ear, they sit perfectly parallel, and there is no need to adjust anything to make the cups sit inline with the ears. As they rotate over the vertical axis, they autoadjust to be a little degrees rotated and provide an excellent fit. It's not cushioned as the PX-100 headband, nor it needs to be. They do not move at all in my head once they are in the correct position. As they are also very light, once I'm using them I hardly notice them. They are one of the most comfortable headphones I've ever used.
The cable is a standard double-wire cable with an L plug, pretty much standard in Panasonic low and mid end headphones, and it's gold plated.
Overall, between hardware and fitting, I'll give them a 9.5/10, as they are really comfortable (even more comfortable than my PX-100, which are open) and provide much more ambient noise isolation. They do not seem to be fragile, though thay are not designed to throw them around carelessly.
3. Sound quality.
As soon as I took them out of the box and plugged on my iPod (iPod Video 30GB), they did sound as everybody says: very crisp highs (almost too crisp), open mids and poor bass. Excellent soundstage by the way, for its size and design.
The iPod Video, at least in my experience, is not the best player I've tried. I don't have other portable players around, but playing the same song, with no equalization, on my iPod and on the headphone out of my full size pre amp (Yamaha C-4), the difference is noticeable. The iPod comes to life with RockBox (a mod that every iPod owner should do, in my humble opinion), and with RockBox in flat settings, the RP-HX50 do sound really alike on the iPod and on my Yamaha C-4 also in flat EQ.
After a week of using them for one hour a day and leaving the iPod playing at mid volumes on the nights for a little burn in (I don't want to raise a discussion about this, as burn in for headphones is a controversial topic), all I can tell is that they improved a lot. I can say, to mitigate the voices that may arise sustaining that it was me who adjusted to the headphones, that I listened to the RP-HX50 for an hour a day and then went back to my PX-100 for the rest of my hearing session (4hs a day approximately), so, there was no too much room to "fit myself" to these headphones.
The bass has improved a lot, really a lot. The highs are way sweeter but crisp enough to detail a triangle, and the mids are as open as they used to be.
However, they do lack bass (at least to me, that I'm used to bassy headphones and bassy general sound, personal preference). I equalized them in RockBox to improve bass performance. My current EQ is very simple however, as I did not touch the advanced settings. I simply set a gain of +2dB on bass with standard cutoff frequency and -1dB on treble, with standard cutoff too.
The range of music I hear is very ample: on a single day I may range from classical (opera and concerto) to metal (Fear Factory or Disturbed kind of metal), passing through a lot of jazz (from Chet Baker to US3) and some Bossa Nova. Overall, they do sound acceptably well on all of them, which is remarkable considering the difference in music. I hardly have to adjust anything on EQ settings to hear what I'd like to hear.
For example, listening to Carl Orff's Carmina Burana first movement (O Fortuna), or the III movement of Vivaldi's Verano, I can hear everything, from the cymbals on Carmina Burana, to the low cellos and high pizzicato violin passes on Vivaldi's composition.
With Fear Factory's Edgecrusher song, the bass is very clear, the voice too, and just sometimes the guitar runs over the drums (but that is a characteristic of Fear Factory composition, since the guitar riffs were usually tied to the very fast Herrera's drumming). The bass on Stone Sour's Socio song is crisp, clear, and rich.
Listening to Jamiroquai's High Times song is a total pleasure.
Overall, I'll give the sound quality a 9/10, but you may consider a 7/10 or 8/10 if you look for a headphone that may be average on almost every kind of music but excel at some specific type. A good exception could be vocals, where the RP-HX50 do perform noticeably well.
4. Final Conclusions.
For the price, the Panasonix RP-HX50 are unbeatable. They do not have the sound quality of my Audio Technicas CM7, and my sennheisers PX-100 do sound a little better, but the HX50 do give a much, much better soundstage. They are way more comfortable too (the CM7s keep falling off my ear constantly), have a very acceptable build quality (they look good too), are small, really portable, have an excellent fit and they do have a nice sound quality. They've became my everyday headphones.
Please, if there's anything important that I left, or any additional detail needed, just tell me and I'll add a note about it.
Cheers!
Sebastian.
PS: pardon my english please, is not my mother tongue
