Sennheiser today announced their top-of-the-line Bluetooth headset designed for the business traveler. The new $400 PXC 550 Wireless over-ear headphones feature noise cancellation, 30 hours of battery life, NFC pairing, and use three microphones for clearer calls. At first glance, they certainly look like a serious Bose QuietComfort 35 Wireless competitor.
Sennheiser’s NoiseGard hybrid adaptive noise cancellation ensures uninterrupted listening by seamlessly monitoring and adapting to ambient noise levels – whether on a plane, train or a noisy street – to provide the exact level of suppression needed. Sennheiser claims unrivalled speech clarity for business and personal calls ensured by a beamforming array with three microphones. And no matter how noisy the environment, the PXC 550 Wireless offers crystal-clear speech and gives travelers an ideal private space for relaxing or staying focused on work.
Class-leading ergonomics, lightweight design and high-quality materials make the sleek PXC 550 Wireless extremely comfortable even for the longest of listening sessions. Its earpads have been designed in accordance with Sennheiser’s dedicated research into ear shape ergonomics for supreme comfort. And when the journey is done, the fold-flat, collapsible design allows the PXC 550 Wireless to discretely fold away into the provided travel case.
Sennheiser’s PXC 550 Wireless offers a smart travel experience that combines supreme ease of use with features that discretely anticipate the needs of the user: The intuitive, earcup-mounted touch control panel and voice prompt system allows for a convenient selection of settings, while the PXC 550 Wireless can automatically pause music and calls when the headphones are taken off. Previously, I had only seen the intuitive pause feature in the Plantronic BackBeat SENSE wireless headphones I reviewed last year.
The PXC 550 Wireless features four presets for adjusting sound and one customizable Director mode that can be tailored with ease using Sennheiser’s companion app, CapTune. The audio specialist’s first sound personalization app has been developed with the discerning headphone user in mind. Free to download for Android and iOS smartphones, CapTune is both a premium quality music player and a powerful sound tuning app that gives users greater sonic control. Permitting precise adjustments with the equalizer and featuring the unique SoundCheck with which users can tune their music’s sound by A/B-testing different set-ups, CapTune allows for a personalized listening experience. The specially developed plug-in for the PXC 550 Wireless also facilitates personalization of adaptive noise cancellation, audio prompts, and the activation of Smart Pause.
Price and Availability
The Sennheiser PXC 550 Wireless will be available mid-July 2016 in black for $399.
