$1,000 earbuds top Sennheiser’s impressive new line-up of headphones

Sennheiser showed off an impressive line-up of headphones at CES this year, including an in-ear pair with out-of-this-world pricing and performance.

We’ve been generous with our praise of Sennheiser in the past, and for good reason. From our seat, the company just gets headphones right, and today’s visit to the Sennheiser booth only served to further cement our positive opinion. Below is our roundup of some of the new Sennheiser cans we saw and heard on the show floor today. 

IE800 Audiophile Earbuds

We understand that cutting-edge engineering comes at a price, but $1,000 for a set of earbuds? More disconcerting than the lofty price tag itself, however, is the possibility that it might prohibit people from hearing these amazing in-ears. We had a healthy listen, and we’re not kidding when we say they are the best-sounding set of ‘buds we’ve heard yet – and we’ve heard almost all of them. 

They aren’t for everyone, though. The sound signature is distinctly “audiophile” in nature. Bass is accurate and tight, not head-poundingly heavy, and the treble region is sparkling, clean and accurate, not aggressive for the sake of sounding “crisp”.  But if what you crave is a revealing, crazy-accurate set of in-ear headphones that will make you all googly-eyed, then the IE800 should do the trick nicely.

Momentum

Sennheiser reached deep into its bag of design tricks for this set of over-ear headphones. The Momentum (pictured above) were exceptionally light and comfortable to wear and provided some impressive passive noise isolation as well. The leather that is used for the ear pad material is said to come from some sort of exotic sheepskin that is processed in Somerset, England by the same folks that make leather materials for Bentley. The headband is stainless steel, which is also accented with leather. If you’re into animal rights, these may not be the right headphones for you. But if you want a seriously sexy set with sound that is signature Sennheiser, then we think the $350 Momentum are a hot ticket. 

Gaming

Let us not forget that Sennheiser makes some great sounding gaming headphones, too. And, as a producer of some of the best microphones in the world, these gaming headsets provide excellent game chat capability. We checked out the PC 350 and the PC 363D.

The PC 350 is geared toward the professional gamer who needs extremely effective noise-blocking. Sennheiser claims that even at full volume, the PC 350 keep 95 percent of the sound in the headset. That means competing gamers at LAN parties won’t hear a thing, while the wearer can stay completely immersed. Pricing for the PC 350 is listed at $250.

The PC 363D is Sennheisers 7.1 virtual surround sound headset for PC gamers. We found them to be extremely comfortable, but we can’t yet comment on the quality of virtual surround. – you’ll have to wait for our review to get those details. We can tell you, though, that the gaming audio we heard was clean and revealing. And did we mention they were really, really comfortable? Expect to pay about $300 for these bad boys.