Sennheiser MM 450 Bluetooth Multimedia Headset with Noise Cancellation (Black)

by Sennheiser

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 3.3 x 7.9 x 7.5 inches ; 6.4 ounces
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B002O03HHM
• Item model number: MM 450
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: November 30, 2009

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

An ideal headphones for frequent fliers who want to be enveloped in their music rather than the drone of outside noise, the Bluetooth-enabled Sennheiser MM 450 noise cancelling headphones provide a detailed sound image, while patented NoiseGard-2.0 technology minimizes background noise in trains or planes.

Click here for a larger image.

It also keeps you in touch by mobile phone wherever you are--answer calls wirelessly by simply by pressing a button on the ear cup. The easy-to-use controls are within optimum reach and provide concise "click" feedback, and the invisible high-performance microphone ensures that conversations are clear--making this headset the perfect all-in-one sound solution. It also includes a direct cable option, enabling you to listen as a wired headphone when Bluetooth is not permitted (mobile phone conversations require Bluetooth).

These closed mini headphones are embedded with NoiseGard 2.0 technology, which provides up to 90 percent active noise cancellation. They are also equipped with TalkThrough function, which is able to distinguish between background noise and speech, enabling you to continue your conversations with fellow travelers without removing the headphones.

When not in use, the MM 450 can simply be folded away and stowed in the included carrying case.

 

Sennheiser's NoiseGard Technology

Sennheiser's NoiseGard 2.0 technology guarantees undisturbed music enjoyment and ensures that you have a relaxed journey. Irritating background noise is minimized by anti-noise, a technology that was initially developed for pilots and which has already been used successfully in the cockpits of major airlines for several decades.

And if you want to talk to the person sitting next to you, that's no problem either. The convenient TalkThrough function enables you to conduct a conversation without removing the headphones. At the push of a button, miniature microphones mounted on the outside of the headphones pick up the surrounding sounds while an electronic circuit filters out the voice of the person speaking to you and plays it clearly through the headphones.

What's in the Box

MM 450 headset, audio cable with in-flight adapter (3.5mm double mono adapter), USB cable, wall charging adapter, carrying case

Specifications

• Wireless technology: Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR; supports A2DP, HSP, HFP, AVCPR profiles
• Range: Up to 33 feet
• Noise cancelling: Up to 90 percent
• Noise cancelling technology: NoiseGard 2.0 (with TalkThrough)
• Microphone pick-up pattern: Omni-directional
• Frequency response (headphones):15 - 22,000 Hz
• Frequency response (microphone):100 – 10,000 Hz
• Sound pressure level (SPL): 107dB (at 1mW, 1kHz)
• Ear coupling: On-the-ear
• Transducer principle: Sealed (closed)
• Total harmonic distortion (THD): <0.1 percent
• Listening time: Up to 10 hours (8 hours with NoiseGard)
• Talk time: Up to 20 hours
• Standby time: Up to 200 hours
• Charging time: Approximately 3 hours

Compatibility

Optimized for MP3, iPod, iPhone (iPod and iPhone are trademarks of Apple Inc. registered in the U.S. and other countries), and portable media players. Also great with in-flight entertainment systems.

Warranty

The Sennheiser MM 450 is covered by a 2-year warranty with the backing of Sennheiser's worldwide service network.

Product Description

Best of breed Bluetooth multimedia headset with Noiseguard 2.0 active noise cancelling system.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

62 of 70 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars First Sennheiser Product Disappointed With!, January 9, 2010

By 

Aggie85 (College Station, TX) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Sennheiser MM 450 Bluetooth Multimedia Headset with Noise Cancellation (Black) (Electronics)

I am not sure where to start!

I own several Sennheiser products including the HD 580, HD 590, HD 600, HD 650, and PXC-450s.

Since I am using my smartphone (Nokia N900) more & more and it works well with bluetooth, I decided to try and replace my TWO year old Plantronics 590A.

The main reason for the purchase of the MM 450s was the "noise-canceling".

Well, after several days of use including in work areas with a lot of "voices" in the background, I have given up on the MM 450s. They sound great but the noise canceling doesn't work very well. I can hear other people's conversations quite clearly when I am in a phone conversation with noise-canceling on (I thought I had it off)!

The MM 450s have also disconnected from my Nokia N900 and Nokia N97 quite often (I have never had this problem with my Plantronics 590s which I currently use all day (+10 hours)).

IF the MM 450s were ~$250, I would keep them because of the great sound... but for $450, I want great sound + noise canceling.

So my set of MM 450s are going back to Amazon!

UPDATE 01/16/2010:

I replaced the MM 450's with my 2nd choice, the Nokia BH-905s! After several days of using them, I think they are almost as good as the MM 450's and the price was only $209.00 delivers (much better than the $450.00 for the MM 450s).

Comparison between both:

Sennheiser MM 450:
------------------
+ Fold up smaller for travel.
+ Sound is best I have heard for bluetooth.
- Price
+ Battery is user replaceable
- Case is CHEAP
- Battery life with noise canceling on was about 10 hours.

Nokia BH-905:
-------------
+ Price is around $200 if you shop around.
+ Case while not small is very good quality (headphones won't get crushed in a travel bag)
+ Battery with Bluetooth + Noise Canceling lasts around 18 hours in my couple of days use.
+ Controls are better laid out (easier to use) than the MM 450s.
- Battery is NOT user replaceable.

Both models:
------------
+ Both have top notch build quality
+ Both are very comfortable for long term use.
+ Noise canceling on both work when playing music.
- Noise canceling only so-so when in phone conversations (when there are periods of quietness). This is probably to be expected since both headsets are NOT over the ear.

In summary, my choice came down to price for what I got.

I am extremely happy with the Nokia BH-905s

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic Build Quality, Rich Sound. Horrible Battery Life. Overpriced., January 26, 2010

By 

kerns - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sennheiser MM 450 Bluetooth Multimedia Headset with Noise Cancellation (Black) (Electronics)

Updated, October 2010:

I stand by many of the comments in my original review. First impressions were mostly accurate.

I sleep with these headphones a lot, and they get a fair amount of abuse. So far, they don't show a sign of wear - well, not outwardly. And they have also loosened up a bit, and are not as tight as they were to start with, though I doubt these could ever be as comfortable as a headphone which enveloped your ear entirely. Maybe that's the price of portability.

These cans are well built, and aside from the slightly awkward and less than ergonomic volume and shuttle controls, evoke warm fuzzies for many aspects of their design and engineering.

But one observation has me moving this product into the "Do not buy" category, and that is the battery life. It's atrocious. The battery is so small, and so poor at holding a charge that I find them frustrating to maintain. I have enough devices nagging for a charge as it is, I sometimes feel as though I am running a daycare center for gadgets - or a nursing home. That these can't even outlast a fully charged iPhone say a lot. And it's easy to see why - the battery is *TINY*.

I guess the good news is that the battery is user swappable, and can be charged outside of the headphones. So if you can get hold of an extra one, you could always just pop in an extra one that is charged. The bad news is I still haven't seen them for sale anywhere, though to be fair I haven't looked in a while.

Still - it's a shame and a fatal flaw of this model at least. I think they could have doubled the size of the battery without bulking things up.


----Original Review Below----


Difficult item to review completely as I've only had them a short time. Let me start with the things I know I like about these, and then move to the things I'm less keen on or just not sure about.

First, the very high build quality is what impresses me most about the MM 450's. Difficult to explain how something could feel so solid and dense without being heavy. The parts are just very well machined. They fit, flex, and otherwise feel exactly as you'd hope and expect from something at this end of the market. If you place a premium on build quality then I don't think you'll be disappointed in this respect.

The solid build supports what I personally think is a pretty stunning industrial design. These are very good looking headphones that walk the line splendidly between being compact without feeling miniature or downsized. Although Sennheiser clearly intended them for travel they are comfortable enough - and sound good enough - to make themselves useful in any setting. The ability to use them as wired phones, and the ease with which this transition is made (automatically disabling of bluetooth on connecting the wire), is one of the more thoughtful features, even if it is a feature held in common with headphones costing half the price.

I will quibble that they feel a bit tight to start with, and I must say my head is not particularly wide - so if you have a melon or a particularly wide head you might think twice. Having said that, I imagine they do get less tense over time. And If you placed them over a basketball for a night or two I suppose they would relax tension. It's probably better in the end that headphones start off feeling too tight rather than too loose.

As for the layout of the buttons and controls for pairing, activating Talk-Through, and controlling playback don't seem immediately intuitive or tactile . i.e, difficult to locate. But I think I need some more muscle memory to build up before I can evaluate it definitively. The overly integrated, low profile nature of the controls might also be part of the tradeoff for the streamlined look and overall design, in which case I'm ok with it. Having giant "PLAY/PAUSE" buttons printed on the side of an ear phone isn't an elegant alternative.

As for audio quality, the standard I go by when judging headphones is do they reveal details or aspects of music that I couldn't resolve or pick on before. These meet and exceed that standard without trouble. The bass tones and overall range are good and if you listen to music at bit rates higher than 256 kbps you will pick up the difference. Having said that, I have difficulty imagining they are are an order of magnitude better than other quality headsets that cost significantly less. They surely best anything you find at the low and middle segments of the market - but it's worth remembering that high end headphones from other manufacturers can be had at half the price.

So these headphones feel, look and sound great. But I'm left with enough doubt and misgivings about the Bluetooth implementation, and overall ergonomics of the controls that I have to call off the wedding for now.

The Talk-Though feature was a selling point for me, so I was disappointed to experience difficulties when using this with my iPhone. When connected to my iPhone it only gives me about 5 or 10 seconds of time before the audio automatically resumes playback. I actually thought this was the way Talk-Through had been designed until I tried it with my MacBook and saw that it actually does work as you would expect (without auto resuming audio after a short interval). You activate Talk-Through when you want to talk, and deactivate it when you're done. Maybe the problems I've experienced are something to do with the way Apple has implemented BT 2.1 on the iPhone. Or maybe I just need to restart my phone. The jury is still out on this one.

More troubling, the first call I placed with these using my iPhone seems to have been dropped by the headset. I've placed subsequent calls without any trouble and with good results, with the mic working pretty well and the users on the other end not having any complaints. I can't help being disappointed by the overall quality of the sound when in headset mode. Not sure how much of this is just what happens when you merge quality headphones with the low quality of mobile phone calls - but I had the same disappointment with Skype calls.

When I'm using the headset as headphones connected to my MacBook via bluetooth to, for example, listen to music from iTunes or to watch a film then the quality of the audio is very high. But when I connect them in headset mode to take a Skype call the quality drops significantly. This probably isn't the fault of Sennheiser or Apple, but more likely something in the bluetooth spec itself and the difference between headphone and headset profiles. Still, it's a bit annoying that I'll need a different headset to pull off higher quality Skype calls, that in fact cheap wired headphones together with the integrated microphone of a laptop would seem to produce a better result.

The more I think about it, it seems appropriate to think about the MM450's as two different pieces of hardware: as high-end wireless bluetooth travel headphones with noise cancellation, and as a bluetooth headset. Taken as headphones alone, I think they are fantastic, though almost definitely overpriced. The headset aspects are (to me) less impressive, but I don't know how much to blame on the spec and/or on Apple's implementation of 2.1 - or simply my failure to understand how to control them and to get the best out of them at this early stage.

I'm going to revisit this review in a few weeks once I have more answers.

26 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pricey; paid for (almost) perfection, March 6, 2010

By 

Uche B. Amaechi "amaechi" (Somerville, Ma) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Sennheiser MM 450 Bluetooth Multimedia Headset with Noise Cancellation (Black) (Electronics)

While these are pricey, the sound is by far the best that I've ever heard from a bluetooth headphone.

I'm not an audiophile, but I do like good sounding cans. I've got a set of ER 4Ps, SE 530s, Denon AH D5000s, Nokia BH 905, and now these. The sound is certainly not as rich as the SE530s or as Spacious and complex as the Denons, but the lack of wires... I mean, it's like when I got my first iphone after years of running on treos: a breath of fresh air. But I digress (will come back to the wireless though). The sounds are head and shoulders above the Nokias. I actually bought the nokias first, after buying (and then returning) the PXC310s (which are the non microphone enabled version of the MM450s). i immediately fell in love with the 310s' sounds, but couldn't get over the lack of a microphone (using on my iphone). The sound difference (vs. the Nokias) was like the difference between the iphone and the treo 680 screens--not only resolution and color depth... but.. it's when a difference in amount becomes a difference in kind. Where the nokias didn't sound like bluetooth headphones, the sennheisers sounded like good headphones, period. I could still pick out the glass clicking and people whispering in the background on Ella and Louis' rendition of "Baby it's cold outside"--my defacto test for headphone qualitiy-- I was first (pleasantly) startled by these background sounds when listening to the recording on my er4ps years ago and have since used the recording to audition. The base is tight and punchy; the treble is clear and floaty, and when you turn on the noise canceling the sound is amplified and given even more depth.

Now back to the wireless. Once I went wireless, I find it hard to go back. These have replaced by SE530s. And while I still notice a sound difference (when I nostalgically don the 530s for comparison) the convenience of the wireless, especially in winter when I tend to have my phone in my jacket pocket, or even bag at times (and don't want to take the phone out when taking off my jacket or bag) is undeniable. No more ripped headphone cords or scratched casings from having them yanked out of my ear and dragging across the concrete for a few seconds before I notice (and they're dramatically scarred)<--true stories with my 530s...

So now I've got both the nokias and the Sennheisers. If there's anything I miss in the Nokias (which I keep at home and use with the computer) it's the incredible battery life. It's effectively double that of the sennheisers. But they look dorkish (in my humble opinion), were always loose around my head (and I'm a relatively large guy), and well, as is the major thrust of this review, don't quite make the leap from great bluetooth headphones to good ***headphones.

At the end of the day Sound and Convenience (fit) trump cost (savings) and battery life (which, admittedly can also be considered convenience).

Just my thoughts.