Sennheiser RS 165 Wireless Hi-Fi Headphones Review _ Perfect for home audio!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthis video is brought to you by ncix.com great technology selection and service hello everyone i'm dmitry with hardware canucks and you guys know that sennheiser's product portfolio is uh you know spans pretty much everything from gaming headsets to travel headphones to high-end travel headphones like the momentum wireless that we reviewed in the past but their home audio and tv audio systems are just as vast something we haven't fully uh covered on this channel and today we're gonna change that as we put one of the latest wireless headphone solutions for your home to the test so this is the rs 165 that promises to combine rich sound with the long-term comfort and i sure hope so considering the price point so let's start with the base this tower is a multi-purpose transmitter that can support two headphones in parallel it's got that piano gloss finish in some areas with an overall attractive and modern look to the entire system that looks like it's part of a unit there's a battery indicator right below the sennheiser logo at the front with red led to indicate charging and green when the headphones are fully charged now this is important because the contacts on the headphone and the dock are not magnetic and so it's possible to misalign the contacts and the battery led at the front would indicate just that there's a bass boost button right below with a center led to indicate when on the same can be found on the headset itself but i wish the base button was moved to the top of the dock where it's easier to press as otherwise the structure is pretty light and can tip over unless you hold it although some rubber pads at the bottom help to stabilize it from slipping all over the place at the very bottom is a power led that turns green where the headphones are on and once placed on the dock they enter a standby mode to begin charging and every time you have to take off the headphone off the dock you have to manually power them on with a button on their right ear cup that also acts as your mute switch with a single click now the setup is pretty simple the dock needs ac power and sennheiser is accommodating enough with region specific adapters that you can slide onto the ac brick and plugging in the back of the tower and this is also where an analog three and a half millimeter input jack is located with a two meter cable included so you can plug this into your tv your audio system your smartphone your notebook your desktop computer whatever and it's unfortunate to not see an rca or a quarter of an inch adapter to be not included within the accessories and moving on to the headphones they carry a similar design language as the dock itself with a piano gloss and matte black and silver accents on the sides with three large and easy to distinguish and reach buttons for bass boost and plus the minus four volume adjust now at first impressions the headphones feel a little plasticky especially since the plastic is not coated with anything and most of the time some sort of rubberized or textured surface helps to convey that premium feel unfortunately that's not the case with the rs 165 now the joints are metal but you still don't get that sense of solid build now having said that my first pair the sennheiser hd558s feel very similar in the build quality department compared to the rs 165 but they have lasted me so far uh without any issues whatsoever the ear cushions are plenty deep and soft enough to shape around the ear um and not sure if you like this type of material but i've noticed the heat concentration and thus prefer either leather or velour ear pads with a twist they come off and reveal the battery compartment on each side and it's really good for sennheiser to include proper rechargeable aaa batteries as well alright so the comfort level i would say is a solid nine the ear cushions are deep enough so there's my ears do not make contact with the internal drivers there is no squishing going on because the ear cups are large enough to encompass the entire ear without having a specific pressure point on the ear itself um but as you can see their rectangular design is not super attractive and i prefer sennheiser's other pairs in terms of design but you can see they're pretty wide and kind of bulky looking i wish they were slightly uh slimmer profile for this wireless iteration now some of you may see the dual pockets on top of the headband and ask what that feels like and i say it helps to distribute whatever tension that might accumulate on the headband while you're wearing the headphone and over my continuous single five hour listening session i had to take them off uh once in a while for about a two minute break to ease out that tension that has accumulated on headband however i had to take them more often because of the heat accumulation inside the ear cup and on the surface of the ear cushion itself something that you would have to do more often to let your ears breathe than have to take that off because of any discomfort you might experience with a headband and something to also keep in mind while they are a closed back headphone they do leak quite a bit of sound something that i was not expecting considering the isolate super well but on the outside people definitely might hear what you're listening to now as far as sound quality man sennheiser does not disappoint considering this is a wireless headphone now they are using their proprietary wireless link over 2.4 gigahertz band that's something that helps to differentiate the sound quality over something like this versus using a bluetooth connection with other wireless headphones so the base region at the default setting is very nice uh it's pretty flat but still giving us detailed hits without muddying in the mid range and the bass boost button i'm so happy that they've actually included that because if you ever need that extra boom extra punch within your within your tracks you have that option it really boosts the upper base regions and listening to averythia from dead mao that last drop really gave me a goosebumps uh with that bass on however bass boost is not for everything vocals become muddy um become very boomy as well so not a very good base hit for all the genres however it's good for trance where there's not too much vocals and if you want to just experience extra rumble and headphone because that's almost what it gives you now because the mid-range is not disturbed at the default profile it's very clean vocals are clear but not harsh and help to position you within the audio setting with a slightly semi-open like sound stage which is a huge benefit now treble to the most part is smooth i have encountered a few harsh portions where i had to turn down the volume as speech was too lipsy and it was only when i got up from my chair it kept reminding me that this is a wireless headphone because the audio quality is spectacular for sort of the wireless iteration um there is no crackling that you usually get with bluetooth devices um when you boost up the volume on the headphone itself and the source as well the background becomes very clean and you do realize how excellent the link is between the headphones and the transmitter because the background and even at higher volumes is super clean without any harsh interference or any interference whatsoever and this leads me to the wireless range they advertised for 30 meters with the line of sight however in my apartment signal strength turned out to be really weak although this was with a few walls in between where headphones would cut out at about six meters with two walls in between where my wifi signal at 2.4 gigahertz the same frequency that the headphones operate would be at about 80 strength now one cool thing i discovered is once you come back within the range of the dock it will fade the audio in instead of hitting you at 100 volume so the rs 165 from an audio perspective is impressive considering it is wireless that i wish had come with extra accessories like rca adapters and different ear cushions to sweeten the deal and i personally would prefer the styling of the headphones to be in line with the hd 500 or 600 series headphones but i also understand they need to have space for the wireless transmitters on their somewhere and if you are in the market for a wireless solution i would actually recommend you check out the rs line from sennheiser because they've actually made a proper wireless solution with excellent audio so guys this concludes this review of the rs 165 uh give us a like if you found this review helpful um make sure to subscribe because we have a lot more audio reviews coming to you in the future uh and also similar content like this thanks for watching we'll see you in the next onethis video is brought to you by ncix.com great technology selection and service hello everyone i'm dmitry with hardware canucks and you guys know that sennheiser's product portfolio is uh you know spans pretty much everything from gaming headsets to travel headphones to high-end travel headphones like the momentum wireless that we reviewed in the past but their home audio and tv audio systems are just as vast something we haven't fully uh covered on this channel and today we're gonna change that as we put one of the latest wireless headphone solutions for your home to the test so this is the rs 165 that promises to combine rich sound with the long-term comfort and i sure hope so considering the price point so let's start with the base this tower is a multi-purpose transmitter that can support two headphones in parallel it's got that piano gloss finish in some areas with an overall attractive and modern look to the entire system that looks like it's part of a unit there's a battery indicator right below the sennheiser logo at the front with red led to indicate charging and green when the headphones are fully charged now this is important because the contacts on the headphone and the dock are not magnetic and so it's possible to misalign the contacts and the battery led at the front would indicate just that there's a bass boost button right below with a center led to indicate when on the same can be found on the headset itself but i wish the base button was moved to the top of the dock where it's easier to press as otherwise the structure is pretty light and can tip over unless you hold it although some rubber pads at the bottom help to stabilize it from slipping all over the place at the very bottom is a power led that turns green where the headphones are on and once placed on the dock they enter a standby mode to begin charging and every time you have to take off the headphone off the dock you have to manually power them on with a button on their right ear cup that also acts as your mute switch with a single click now the setup is pretty simple the dock needs ac power and sennheiser is accommodating enough with region specific adapters that you can slide onto the ac brick and plugging in the back of the tower and this is also where an analog three and a half millimeter input jack is located with a two meter cable included so you can plug this into your tv your audio system your smartphone your notebook your desktop computer whatever and it's unfortunate to not see an rca or a quarter of an inch adapter to be not included within the accessories and moving on to the headphones they carry a similar design language as the dock itself with a piano gloss and matte black and silver accents on the sides with three large and easy to distinguish and reach buttons for bass boost and plus the minus four volume adjust now at first impressions the headphones feel a little plasticky especially since the plastic is not coated with anything and most of the time some sort of rubberized or textured surface helps to convey that premium feel unfortunately that's not the case with the rs 165 now the joints are metal but you still don't get that sense of solid build now having said that my first pair the sennheiser hd558s feel very similar in the build quality department compared to the rs 165 but they have lasted me so far uh without any issues whatsoever the ear cushions are plenty deep and soft enough to shape around the ear um and not sure if you like this type of material but i've noticed the heat concentration and thus prefer either leather or velour ear pads with a twist they come off and reveal the battery compartment on each side and it's really good for sennheiser to include proper rechargeable aaa batteries as well alright so the comfort level i would say is a solid nine the ear cushions are deep enough so there's my ears do not make contact with the internal drivers there is no squishing going on because the ear cups are large enough to encompass the entire ear without having a specific pressure point on the ear itself um but as you can see their rectangular design is not super attractive and i prefer sennheiser's other pairs in terms of design but you can see they're pretty wide and kind of bulky looking i wish they were slightly uh slimmer profile for this wireless iteration now some of you may see the dual pockets on top of the headband and ask what that feels like and i say it helps to distribute whatever tension that might accumulate on the headband while you're wearing the headphone and over my continuous single five hour listening session i had to take them off uh once in a while for about a two minute break to ease out that tension that has accumulated on headband however i had to take them more often because of the heat accumulation inside the ear cup and on the surface of the ear cushion itself something that you would have to do more often to let your ears breathe than have to take that off because of any discomfort you might experience with a headband and something to also keep in mind while they are a closed back headphone they do leak quite a bit of sound something that i was not expecting considering the isolate super well but on the outside people definitely might hear what you're listening to now as far as sound quality man sennheiser does not disappoint considering this is a wireless headphone now they are using their proprietary wireless link over 2.4 gigahertz band that's something that helps to differentiate the sound quality over something like this versus using a bluetooth connection with other wireless headphones so the base region at the default setting is very nice uh it's pretty flat but still giving us detailed hits without muddying in the mid range and the bass boost button i'm so happy that they've actually included that because if you ever need that extra boom extra punch within your within your tracks you have that option it really boosts the upper base regions and listening to averythia from dead mao that last drop really gave me a goosebumps uh with that bass on however bass boost is not for everything vocals become muddy um become very boomy as well so not a very good base hit for all the genres however it's good for trance where there's not too much vocals and if you want to just experience extra rumble and headphone because that's almost what it gives you now because the mid-range is not disturbed at the default profile it's very clean vocals are clear but not harsh and help to position you within the audio setting with a slightly semi-open like sound stage which is a huge benefit now treble to the most part is smooth i have encountered a few harsh portions where i had to turn down the volume as speech was too lipsy and it was only when i got up from my chair it kept reminding me that this is a wireless headphone because the audio quality is spectacular for sort of the wireless iteration um there is no crackling that you usually get with bluetooth devices um when you boost up the volume on the headphone itself and the source as well the background becomes very clean and you do realize how excellent the link is between the headphones and the transmitter because the background and even at higher volumes is super clean without any harsh interference or any interference whatsoever and this leads me to the wireless range they advertised for 30 meters with the line of sight however in my apartment signal strength turned out to be really weak although this was with a few walls in between where headphones would cut out at about six meters with two walls in between where my wifi signal at 2.4 gigahertz the same frequency that the headphones operate would be at about 80 strength now one cool thing i discovered is once you come back within the range of the dock it will fade the audio in instead of hitting you at 100 volume so the rs 165 from an audio perspective is impressive considering it is wireless that i wish had come with extra accessories like rca adapters and different ear cushions to sweeten the deal and i personally would prefer the styling of the headphones to be in line with the hd 500 or 600 series headphones but i also understand they need to have space for the wireless transmitters on their somewhere and if you are in the market for a wireless solution i would actually recommend you check out the rs line from sennheiser because they've actually made a proper wireless solution with excellent audio so guys this concludes this review of the rs 165 uh give us a like if you found this review helpful um make sure to subscribe because we have a lot more audio reviews coming to you in the future uh and also similar content like this thanks for watching we'll see you in the next one\n"