Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsPossibly the best headphone under $175
Reviewed in the United States on May 8, 2022
I've looked at and seen M50x's in the wild I don't know how many thousands of times. A good chunk of my favorite streamers and YouTubers use them, I see them out in public commonly, and every time I look at headphones on amazon, they always pop up near the top. I really hadn't written them off until I - foolishly - wore a pair of the M50xBT's at my local Best Buy, and was surprised at how uncomfortable the headband was. It felt like a 5 pound headphone was placed on my head, and I almost immediately took them off. That was somewhere in the 2019 - 2020 time period and I recently decided to give them another chance with the regular wired version, and I couldn't be more glad that I did.
There had to have been something wrong with the one I tried on at Best Buy, maybe one too many people had flattened the headband out or something, I don't know.
Comfort: The headband and the very light weight of this headphone make this possibly the most comfortable headphone I've ever used with a solid headband. When you see photos of this headphone, you would think there isn't very much - if any - padding on the headband, and while there isn't a massive amount, the cushion still somehow makes this thing feel more comfortable on my head than HyperX's Cloud series headsets, which are known for their comfort. The weak point on their comfort surprisingly comes from their earpads. The earpads, while tolerable for now, are absolutely going to be swapped out with Dekoni Audio Choice Leather earpads. The earpads are extremely shallow, and the ear opening in them is one of the smallest I've seen, with only the Astro A10 Gen 2 and the Picozon headset (don't even look it up, it isn't worth the 10 bucks) coming in smaller. The clamp, while tight, is also comfortable. I've had a pair of Drop x Sennheiser HD58x's since about August maybe September 2020 and have been using them commonly since then, and these don't clamp as bad as they do but it does get close. So, if you do think about buying these, maybe invest into some Dekoni earpads, or some Brainwavz earpads (since Dekoni gets EXPENSIVE)
Sound: So I'm just gonna say this right now, I am no where near an audiophile and make no claims to be one, however I do know the sound signature that I like. Since I got these, I've ran these off an FX Audio DAC-X6, an iPhone 13 with the Apple Dongle, and a PS5 Dualsense controller. When I first plugged them into my PS5 controller, I was taken off guard a little by the tinny sound, but figured they just needed to be broken in a little, so I decided to break them in with the only way I know how to. Playing Black Ops Cold War. I played for a few hours, and they sounded a lot better, but still not how people have described them, so I did what people in the audio community suggested for me to do and plugged them into my amp and played white noise through them overnight and until about 2 or 3 in the afternoon. That put them where I wanted them. I could hear everything clearly and with no problem. I could hear details in music that I was never able to hear before just because of the headphones I was using. I could hear footsteps in Cold War that I wouldn't have with my A40's. My only complaint about them is that the bass isn't nearly as good as my XM4's, but I wasn't expecting it to be, and I can still EQ them.
Tl;dr
The M50x's are an extremely comfortable headphone, and combined with some break in time, are some of the best closed back studio/gaming headphones you can get for under 175.
