Pros & Cons
- Accurate, clean audio performance across the full frequency range. Comfortable, secure fit for long listening sessions. Durable.
- Passively reduces ambient noise significantly.
- Cable is not detachable.
- More appropriate for professional/studio use than personal listening.
The Sennheiser HD 280 Pro, a $99.95 (direct) headphone pair designed for professional studio use, was released in 2003, before I began writing for PCMag. However, I often use it as something of a standard to A-B test similar types of pairs with, so it seemed appropriate to give a proper full-length review. A no-frills, exceedingly comfortable pair, the powerful and accurate HD 280 Pro is ideal for recording and mixing applications. It proves the term “flat response” doesn’t mean “no bass.” There’s plenty of rich, articulate low frequency response here, but the entire frequency range is dutifully represented. At this reasonable price, this is where your search for a pair of studio headphones should begin. It may well end here, too.
Design
For a recording studio headphone pair, the single most important design element, after the drivers that produce the audio, is long-term comfort. Sessions last a long time. People sweat, gravity presses headbands into skulls. The HD 280 Pro($83.00 at Amazon) does an admirable job of keeping long-term sessions more or less fatigue-free. Sure, if you don’t take them off for hours at a time, you can expect some sweaty ear cups, perhaps, or some minor discomfort along the headband. But as someone who wears these headphones on a more or less daily basis, I can tell you they fit securely and comfortably for long sessions.
There are pairs with more plushness to the ear pads, like the NuForce HP-800, but the HD 280 Pro is unlikely to be described as uncomfortable by many users, and it passively blocks out up to thirty decibels of ambient/room noise. If you blast these while recording near a mic, there will be some sound leakage, but they don’t bleed like an open pair would—their circumaural (around the ear), snug fit prevents most sounds from escaping, provided you listen at moderate levels. The ear cups are swivel-mounted, which allows for an even more secure fit as they adjust automatically to the shape of your head. The headband is easily adjustable and stays in place.
