JOE reviews the Sennheiser CX 685, a headphone for sports that won’t leave you pressing your finger to your ear every thirty seconds
Adidas and Sennheiser have been making headphones for a few years now, and their crossover brands bring some great quality sound to your ears for all your sporting needs.
Some people like to wear over ear headphones in the gym, but for us, we like to mix up our routine and if you’re doing pull ups, box jumps, or something that requires explosive movement, they simply aren’t going to stay on your head, not to mention the unpleasant fact that they aren’t exactly a good option for keeping your ears and head from getting a whole heap of sweat on them. Nothing worse than a sweaty sponge on your earpiece.
However, most in ear options won’t cut it either, as they fall out of your ear when doing your cardio exercises every ten seconds, or slide out when you’re on a bench. The same can be said for ones that wrap around the back of your head, they won’t stay in your ears when on the bench press or lying on the ground to do some form of torturous core workout.
However, the Sennheiser CX 685 has come up with a great way to keep the in-ear buds right where they should be with the slide to fit system. Two little adjustable hooks at the top of the headphones themselves which help them to sit snugly in your ear and stay put for the duration.
For us, the ear buds were incredibly comfortable, and fitted perfectly straight out of the box. It was also a pretty rugged looking casing, so from jogging to weights, we weren’t concerned about giving them a thorough workout with our workouts. However with the added option of having the slide to fit system to stretch out and hold them fixed in your ears, we found that we really didn’t need to worry about them falling out at all.
We went through our full routine, from push ups to did some cardio during the heatwave, and we are struggling to remember a time that we had to lift our hands to our ears to push the headphones back in. In terms of sound quality, by this stage we knew to expect that Sennheiser would always be good, so with a quick adjustment to our equaliser we had quality, bass-filled sound pumping into our ears.
While they didn’t block out all the music noise at the gym, they did block out the background noise and in general we were able to concentrate on our own playlist rather than what the gym had pumping in. However, we have tried the model up before (PMX 685), and the sound on that is even better, with a bit more bass thrown in. That said, the sound on these was more than sufficient, and it did isolate very well outside the gym environment too, cutting out a lot of background noise at home or in the street.
When we were running, there wasn’t a problem at all. Because they sit so comfortable and snug in the ear, you don’t notice they’re there, and the chord wasn’t flapping up and down or pulling on the bud from the bounce of our step.
Even in the hottest (and therefore sweatiest) of weather during the recent hot spell, they served us well, and with them being waterproof and sweat resistant, there was no concern of them suffering any ill effects either.
Overall, the only real thing we would have liked to see as an option is a shorter chord, since, like many people, we have an armband for our mp3. That said, it wasn’t much of a problem to solve, we just fed the ear buds up the sleeve and the excess chord simply sat under our t-shirt. There’s no inline remote, if that’s something that you’re used to, but we prefer not to have one so these suited us down to the ground.
These have been the best solution we’ve tried so far for a headphone that will work both in the gym and when out running, without sacrificing good sound quality. With an RRP of just over €60 too, they’re not going to break the bank, providing quality at the right price.
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