Most of you know the scenario - you love playing music out loud, but your parents or room mates want you to keep the sound ridiculously low. Being stuck in this situation for months, a good pair of headphones was pretty much a top-priority in my To-Buy list.

You may also know that deciding on which headphone to buy is really difficult, especially since no store lets you try them out. You gotta go on user-reviews.

The SONY MDR-XD200 won hands down after I went through a bunch of headphones. This baby has bang for every frikkin buck you pay.

Specs

• Closed-Type Headphones with Long Stroke Diaphragm for Dynamic Movie Sound
• Capable of Producing Movie Quality Sound with Dynamic Sound Range
• Sound Mode Switch for Movie and Music Enjoyment
• Comfort Fit with Urethane Leather Ear Pads
• Ear-Conscious Design for Wearing Comfort
• Large 40mm Driver Unit with 360kJ/m³ High Power Neodymium Magnet for Outstanding Sound Quality
• Response Bandwidth: 10 - 22000 Hz
• Sensitivity: 102 dB
• Impedance: 70 Ohm

Performance

The sound quality is really good. The sound does not distort at high volume. The bass and treble are evenly matched. Sony’s set them just right for optimum headphone listening. There’s a slider that lets you change modes while watching movies or listening to music. The difference, sadly, is not much unless you try it out on original 5.1 DVD movies or high bit-rate music. All it does is make the sound seem more wide. The headphone also does a decent job at cutting out environment noise.

Comfort

Trust me on this one - excellent. The ear-cups are carved in such a way that your entire ear is covered perfectly by the spongy part. The band over the head is pretty comfortable and does not hurt a bit even on long hours of use. And since this baby is pretty light weight (8 Oz), you hardly feel any pain in your neck.

The best part is the wire. It’s 11.5 feet long. That’s right, Eleven-and-a-Half feet! To give an example, I had @Sknahs wear the headphones and sit at one corner of the hall. I then carried the music player half way down the stairs with the headphones connected!

The sad part here is that a volume-controller is missing. So if you’re watching a movie sitting on the other side of the room, you’ll need to come down to your media player to decrease the volume every time a horrible song comes on.

Final Verdict

Excellent pair of headphones. Very good bass and treble support, and plays very well on just about every music player we tried (Nokia’s n70, Sony’s own w580i, and the PC). But what will make you buy this, is its price — Rs.1,490 including taxes!

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We (Shanks and myself) went down to SOGO (Hayes Road, Bangalore) to order them (since I don’t trust the guys at S.P Road). The piece I got was the last one he had! On the way back, we stopped by Corner House for some ice-cream (cake fudge anybody?), and we couldn’t resist ripping out the headphones from its package and testing it out on the Sony w580i. It was only then that we realised that it had the 5mm jack and not the standard 3.5mm jack. We went straight to the electronics shop and bought a convertor for 12 bucks. We came home only to realise that the jack could be pulled out to reveal the 3.5mm jack!

Now no more being told to decrease the volume, or being shot in the ass while playing Counter-Strike because you couldn’t hear your opponent come right behind you. Yay!