The Sennheiser HD 620S are something of a departure for the existing HD range, which largely consists of open-backed headphones – the preserve of audiophiles who don’t want anything, even the headphones themselves, getting in the way of expansive soundstages and high-fidelity audio. The Sennheiser HD 620S hope to achieve the large, dramatic soundstage of open-backed headphones with a closed-back construction that keeps some of the environment around you shut out – the sonic quality of one design, with the sound isolation of the other. According to Sennheiser, its aim is to produce “the most open-sounding closed-back headphones currently in the market”.
Most people don’t have the luxury of listening to music in a soundproof room, after all, and some noise isolation can be helpful – but is this halfway house strategy successful? The HD 620S do sound brilliant, with detail, dynamism and a wide-ranging frequency response. Like many of the best wired headphones out there, they lack some of the modern comforts of everyday consumer headphones, like touch controls or Bluetooth, but they excel in the one area that really matters: the sound. The closed-back design does inevitably impact the soundstage, preventing the truly ‘open’ feel of backless headphones, but not hugely and those jumping over from most consumer headphones will only feel a benefit on this front.
And at 150 Ohms impedance, these headphones are suitable for those getting into hi-fi for the first time,.
