I bought the Sony MDR-1AM2 Headphones last month. It was a good purchase. They sound really nice. Build quality seems fine. The plastic almost never produces a crackle, and the crackles which are produced are at a very low volume. My Sony MDR-1A (the first model) actually had quite loud crackling plastic (which luckily only produced those loud crackles from time to time), my biggest annoyance about it.
Wearing comfort with the MDR-1AM2 is excellent. The ear pads are very soft and comfortable. The ear opening of the pads is taller than the ear opening of the pads of the Sony MDR-1A, allowing for taller ears. My ears are probably slightly bigger than average, and with the MDR-1A the ear pads sometimes touched the top of my ear, leading to (very) slight discomfort over time. The taller ear opening of the MDR-1AM2 ensures that there is no pressure from the pads on the top of the ear. I place the bottom part of the ear pads on the bottom part of my ears, which is normal for my ear size. The ear pad opening isn't particularly big or anything, but it should be big enough for most people. Most people should feel no discomfort when wearing these headphones. The headband can be extended quite far, far enough for nearly everyone. These headphones are suitable for medium-sized heads all the way to quite big heads. I wear glasses myself, with quite thick plastic legs. It's not a problem at all with these headphones, I can wear them for hours at a time. The very soft pads don't really put any noticeable pressure on the legs of the glasses.
The affordable aftermarket cables I bought for the Sony MDR-1A all work just fine with the Sony MDR-1AM2. They click in, and stay in place. The click in mechanism has not changed, the correct ring size for the end of the plug is unchanged. I haven't really used the bundled cables of this headphone yet, outside from verifying that they work. I'm using cheap aftermarket cables which are compatible with the MDR-1A & MDR-1AM2.
The headphones are very easy to drive. Any smartphone or even affordable MP3-players should give more than enough volume. The volume output is quite a bit higher than the previous model, which had a 48 Ohm impedance. The headphones produce a clear and nice sound, with a nice bass response. Sound quality is definitely on par with what you should expect for a closed-back over-ear in its price bracket. Sound quality wise, my only gripe is some slight sharpness in the sound, occassionally. Because of the very low weight of these over ears, they are also very suitable for outdoor use.
The headphones produce a nice and punchy, undistorted bass (which goes quite loud!). Sub bass is quite prominent and goes very deep. The mids are quite natural, and at the correct volume. The highs are quite present and enjoyable, but sometimes a bit sharp when listening at a loud volume. It's definitely an engaging sound, thanks to the combination of loud bass and treble plus nice-sounding mids. The passive sound isolation from the ear pads is quite good, and I would use these headphones in moderately loud environments. The headphones do not leak much sound to the environment, if at all.
I haven't listened to these headphones long enough to grade them or post a review, so you will have to do with these short impressions (for now). But please do look at the pictures of the unboxing!
Unboxing Sony MDR-1AM2 Headphones & Photo Comparison with Sony MDR-1A Headphones
Now, onto the most important thing: I took about a hundred high-quality photos of the Sony MDR-1AM2 (a photo unboxing). I took these pictures last month, but only very recently uploaded them to Imgur and Cube Upload. At the end of the Unboxing, I put a photo comparison with the Sony MDR-1A (the previous model). I put the two models next to eachother, while lining up the fully extended headbands. You can quickly and easily judge how big the headphones are. There are also up close shots of the ear pads of both models, positioned next to each other. This way, you can easily verify for yourself that the ear opening of the MDR-1AM2 is taller, allowing for taller ears compared to the MDR-1A.
It's
102 photos in total. I tried to take pictures of everything, but I did not remove the ear pads. There are photos included of
the packaging,
the headphones,
both cables,
the pouch and the included documents. It are high quality JPEG photographs, with adjusted lighting & colors (done in FastStone).
The headphones look very fashionable and modern, but I'll let you judge that for yourself!
Link to the Imgur album (contains all photographs, and is easily and quickly scrollable):
https://imgur.com/a/CEs9YKz
Link to the three galleries on Cube Upload (open the pictures through the direct links to get the right orientation!)
http://cubeupload.com/codes/48340c
http://cubeupload.com/codes/a3508e
http://cubeupload.com/codes/608e96
I would recommend viewing the photographs on Imgur, since they are very quick to scroll through there. But the images on Cube Upload are the original JPEGS, without extra compression.
