Sometimes it's hard to know exactly what application a headphone is best suited for ... and the HD 238 was one of those times. As I asked each member of the sales team here at HeadRoom what the best application of these headphones might be, a rather quizzical look would cross their face. These headphones seem to be a great solution in search of a problem ... which we eventually figured out. |
[caption id="" align="alignright" width="198" caption="The Sennheiser HD 238, a good headphone for the office."][/caption] They're not a sealed headphone, so they won't block out the noise of a loud environment --- in other words, they're not a good traveling headphone. The earpieces rotate flat so they'll fit in a drawer or briefcase, but they don't fold up into a smaller size, so packing them in a backpack or purse is not convenient --- in other words they're not good student headphones. After much dialog with the sales team here, we came to the conclusion that where these headphones excel is in the office. They're very light and comfortable on the ear, and small enough that they're not likely to overheat your ears. They're not sealed so you'll be able to hear the phone ring and people calling you, and they're not loud from the outside, so you're not likely to disturb someone in the next cube with your music. And when the phone rings it's easy to flip them off your head and around your neck to answer; you can even hold the phone receiver against your shoulder with your head cocked to one side while wearing the headphones around your neck because the earpieces are so small they don't get in the way. Then, at the end of the day, you can take the headphones off, rotate the earpads flat, and easily store them flat in your desk drawer. |
[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="298" caption="Frequency response of the Sennheiser HD 238"][/caption]There's one last thing that made it worth finding a good place to use these cans: they sound very good --- to me anyway, they didn't fair as well as I expected in our listening tests. I've got a number of suspicions why, the biggest being that all the headphones in the test are quite good and there was plenty of room for matters of taste to move the averages, but I thought they were very good.I like a bit of a laid back sound, and the HD 238 is a bit soft sounding. As far as I'm concerned, that's good news for all day long listening sessions at work. They also measured very well, the 50Hz square wave test in particular was very good which reinforces my impression that these cans have really good, tight bass response. The Sennheiser HD 238 is strongly recommended for office applications. |
Leave a comment
All comments are moderated before being published.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.