Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An improvment on the aready great CX300, December 10, 2009
I've owned CX300 in ear monitors for a few years now and have been greatly impressed by their comfort and performance. While on a flight to Zurich I left them on the plane and was unable to retrieve them so on my layover I bought a pair of CX300II not realizing the difference. The obvious differences are the components of the II's are of much higher quality (litz wire, gold plated jack and case among other things). The sound is perceptibly better. I was obviously delighted by the find that my lost CX300's afforded me! I listen to a lot of music and couldn't imagine being more satisfied with the musical balance of these phones. I recommend them highly.
p.s. for those of you who don't know, the asymmetrical length of the right and left cords is so the longer "right" cord goes behind the neck and the "main" cord comes down from the left side of your head.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
From Ace Photo Digital these are NOT fake. Sound great and good value online., December 21, 2009
I just received my order from Ace Photo Digital for both a Sennheiser CX300 and a CX300 II, both are high quality earbuds, especially for the price! Soon AFTER I ordered them I was concerned when I saw all the web sites describing "fakes" that are sold on eBay and even on Amazon.com. Well, after looking at about 10 websites with pictures comparing fake to real, I am convinced these are real. And email correspondence from APD was timely [custservice(at)[...]] and they told me "Not to worry, no fakes here. We buy directly from Sennheiser." I believe them. The shipping worried me but it turned out the Postal Service never scanned in at any location, so no tracking at all and I wasn't sure they were coming but they did. So all is well with this supplier and they are not fake (see my reasons below).
The point is that when I ordered the 300 buds, Ace Photo Digital is NOT the first supplier that comes up on the list to order from, so by default they would have come from somewhere else. I can't speak for the quality from the "first" supplier but people are complaining their's are fake and I assume they are from the first supplier and not APD. No of course I don't work for APD and never heard of them before, but it is good information to find a supplier you can trust as not everything on Amazon is the same apparently, so I give credit where it is due and hope it helps you!
Also I noticed that some other reviews are VERY old and I'm not so sure which item they are reviewing anymore - things change a lot since 2006, even what Sennheiser ships may have changed!
On to the 2 Sennheiser earbuds features...
I already knew I wanted earbuds and I picked these for 2 reasons: price/performance/value and physical size.
In my local trusted [...] I asked what is the sweet spot for price/performance and then followed up online by reading reviews. The other reason is I want earbuds and I don't want them to stick out too far like the older high end Shure ones used to at least. The store said the SkullCandy ones are maybe tolerable for the price (maybe 10 dollars online), and the best higher priced ones were the Sennheiser (I forgot the model) and Dr. Dre and Sure, but the sweet spot were these Sennheiser's. I don't know about the other Senn models in comparison but I like the price of the 300's.
Obviously anything sounds 10x better and is more comfortable than the junk that ships with most cheap MP3 players, that is a given. But these are as great as I would expect from Sennheiser, a great company. Both the 300 and 300 II sound great to me and I am comparing them to about 5 sets of good earbuds in the last 25 years. They have come a long ways, especially the noise isolation style nowadays...
These Senn's are a type called "noise isolation" (blocks the noise by sealing in the ear canal very well, as opposed to actively changing the sound electronically like "noise cancelling" types). I like this style for airplane traveling on long overseas flights, and for wearing on a motorcycle. Sure the active noise cancellation style works better but the good ones are not earbuds and don't fit into your pants pocket when you get off the plane and travel in a taxi, car, bicycle, on foot, etc. The fact that they don't stick out away from the ear very far is great for: resting/sleeping with your ear on a pillow, fitting under a full motorcycle helmet (not legal in some states), or with no helmet on they minimize wind noise hitting them if you at least have a basic windshield on your bike.
The other HiFi earbuds I use that are similar are from around 2004 and are Etymotic ER6 (now replaced by ER6i) but I paid over $120 for them. I haven't compared the sound yet but I think the Senn's are louder (more efficient) than the ER6 which is a problem on a motorcycle, the ER6 would not go loud enough as they are very inefficient. The ER6 also have very thin wire which is always getting tangled when I put them on. The ear canal silicone like part has 2 pieces and over time it itches my ear at the seam between the two. I haven't worn the 300's for long yet but they don't feel as tight and I think they will stay in but be more comfortable for long periods of time.
Why I think these are not fake:
Main things that convinced me were: the 300 had plastic packaging with a lot sticker inside it on the bottom, the shape of the black plastic and screen over the driver itself (remove the ear canal covers to see this), the position and shape of the aluminum colored housing, the plug (which is large and gold on the 300 II), the type of wire. Only the 300 II comes with a black carrying pouch, and one website showed it inside and out with fabric, stitching, size of Sennheiser lettering, all of which convinced me this one is real. A pouch is handy.
Comparison between 300 and 300 II:
I personally can't tell a difference in sound quality. I'm not saying they are the same but to me they are both great. You can bump up the bass of the source and it can really crank it out, and the highs are crisp, on both of them.
Like I said the 300 II comes with a soft case but the 300 doesn't. You can always find something like a small ziplock baggie (go to Ace hardware in the loose nuts and bolts section and ask for small ones!).
One thing I do not like about the 300 II is that it has an oversized L-shaped plug, which would be fine except it sticks out so far from my little tiny MP3 player that it is a bit cumbersome and I am a bit afraid it acts like a lever and if it got hit it could damage the jack on the player or at the very least crack it or make the connections intermittent. For that reason I like the 300 better than the 300 II overall.
Also APD was currently shipping the 300 II in an "ECO" box which is a weird thick stocky cardboard container (like a old box of floppy disks but smaller) made up of like 10 slats of cardboard with all the pieces buried inside it. Weird but hey the contents are the same and it is green (if you recycle). Perhaps someone can comment whether this makes it even more proof that it is not fake, as I would guess this is some kind of brand new container that our pacific rim friends have not yet copied (perhaps?? dunno).
One more thing, like another reviewer made me aware of, the cable is asymmetrical which at first I did not like but now I do: You are supposed to put your MP3 player on your left side to the left earbud, then the longer cable to the right earbud should go BEHIND your neck, not under your chin. In this way it does not dangle and pull down and is also out of the way. If you have long hair you can almost hide them completely!
P.S. These were selling for 29 and 33 dollars for the 300 and 300 II, which is truly a bargain, less than half of that in my local [...].
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2.0 out of 5 stars
Became a lemon after less than 3 months!, December 28, 2009
I bought these earbuds after I read the great online reviews. The sound was really great while they worked. I had some problems in fitting them into my ears, but once I managed to do that they did a good job in isolating the surrounding noise.
Then all of a sudden, after less than 3 months of usage, the sound level in the right earbud became much lower than in the left one, rendering the headphones unusable.
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