Sennheiser RS 180 review: Sennheiser RS 180
The Sennheiser RS 180 wireless headphones' sound is competitive with similarly priced wired headphones, so you can ditch the wire without ditching good sound.
Steve Guttenberg
Ex-movie theater projectionist Steve Guttenberg has also worked as a high-end audio salesman, and as a record producer. Steve currently reviews audio products for CNET and works as a freelance writer for Stereophile.
Sennheiser has a reputation for making some of the best-sounding wireless headphones on the market, and the $329.95 RS 180 demonstrates that it has learned its lessons well. Though they're fairly expensive, the headphones sound great and are remarkably comfortable to wear. Some may balk at the price, but the RS 180's sonic fidelity nearly matches Sennheiser's top-of-the-line wireless headphone at half the price, so they pose an excellent value to home users shopping for a wireless headphone on a flexible budget.
Sennheiser RS 180
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
Design and features
The RS 180 features 2.4-GHz Kleer carrier frequency wireless technology, which is a lossless, "CD quality," 16-bit/44.1-kHz resolution system. The system worked flawlessly for the most part, but the sound occasionally cut out when I walked across the room and sat in front of my computer. Other than that, I experienced no other interruptions anywhere else in the room or my apartment.
The RS 180 is an open-back set of headphones, so its sound has a tendency to leak out and be heard by anyone nearby. That might rule it out for use in bed, and if that's a concern, Sennheiser's closed-back RS 170 wireless headphones will be a better alternative.
The RS 180's shiny, gray metallic finish looks sleek, and the mostly plastic construction quality feels solid, except where the earcups attach to the headband. There seems to be a bit of play in the joint that might be prone to break over the long term. The user replaceable ear-shaped (as opposed to round) cushions are covered in velour fabric and are unusually lightweight at just 216 grams. As such, the RS 180 is an exceptionally comfortable pair of headphones to wear for long periods of time..
The RS 180 is powered by a single NiMH (nickel-metal hydride) AAA battery in each earcup , and Sennheiser claims a 24-hour playing time on a set of fully charged batteries.
The tightly clustered volume up/down, power, and left/right balance button arrangement along the bottom of the right earcup isn't ergonomically ideal. The power button is centered between the volume up/down buttons, and the volume-down button is much smaller than the volume-up button, so I accidently turned the power off when trying to adjust the volume a couple of times during the first few movies. I made a lot fewer mistakes after just a few hours of use.
The dark-silver plastic transmitter/battery charger base also doubles as a headphone stand. Connectivity to the base is limited to one 3.5mm analog input and stereo RCA outputs, but you can hook up a TV, Blu-ray player, computer, laptop, or tablet to the transmitter. The power supply comes with with four power receptacle adapters, one each for the U.S., U.K., Australia, and the EU.
One input may prove inconvenient for some buyers, but in practice I don't consider it a real limitation when the RS 180 is used with a TV or AV receiver. You probably already have all of your sources, such as a cable box, games, Blu-ray player, etc. hooked up to your TV or AV receiver; if you do, then just connect the RS 180 to your TV or receiver. If you absolutely insist on digital connectivity, go for Sennheiser's RS 220 wireless headphones -- that model has two digital inputs.
Accessories include a 3.5mm-male-to-3.5mm-male analog cable, a female-3.5mm-to-stereo-male RCA connector cable, and a 3.5mm-to-6.3mm adapter plug.
The RS 180 is the only wireless Sennheiser headphone model I've tested with Automatic Level Control (ALC), which maintains a consistent volume level for movies and TV shows. I expect many RS 180 owners will find ALC very useful when the quieter scenes of a movie are difficult to hear, as the technology boosts the volume in the quieter parts of a mix while simultaneously preventing the loud sounds from getting too loud. It's a great feature, and Sennheiser should put it on all of its wireless headphones. You can turn the ALC on and off from the transmitter charger base.
Sennheiser sells extra sets of RS 180 headphones without the transmitter/charger base for $129.95 each, and you can use up to four pairs of headphones with one transmitter base. The RS 180 comes with a two-year warranty, and a proof of purchase or sales receipt from an authorized dealer is required for warranty claims.
Performance
The RS 180 may be wireless, but it (mostly) doesn't sound like it is. By that, I mean it doesn't add any background noise or hiss, but the sound did occasionally cut out when I crossed the room and moved away from the transmitter. Since it's a battery-powered device, the RS 180's maximum volume level can't match wired headphones', so you should look elsewhere if you want to play movies, games, or music really loud.
The "U2: 360° At the Rose Bowl" concert Blu-ray demonstrates the RS 180's ability to project a big sound field. The sense of being in a large venue with 92,000 screaming U2 fans is nicely handled, and the music's wide dynamic range is visceral in its impact. Comparatively, Sennheiser's less expensive closed-back RS 170 headphones shrink the spatial aspects of the sound mix.
Stereo headphones like the RS 180 can't fully reproduce movies' room-filling surround effects, but the headphones still sound remarkably open. For example, there's a scene in the "King Kong" DVD in which the waterfall on the right side of the frame sounds increasingly distant as the camera pans away, to the left. The RS 180 put me in the film, but the closed-back RS 170 headphones' sound is more inside my head and less realistic with the same scene. Furthermore, the RS 180's deep bass response is on full display when Kong runs through the jungle.
It's also easy to hear the RS 180's audiophile credentials while playing classical music CDs. The RS 180's sound is almost comparable to wired, open headphones like the
Conclusion
The RS 180 may be fairly expensive, but its combination of features, comfort, and wired-headphone sound quality make it an attractive buy for anyone searching for a top-quality wireless headphone.