Digital Trends

Sony MDR-NC500D

March 3rd, 2008 | by Mike Kobrin

Features and Design

At first blush, the MDR-NC500D look like pretty standard fare for noise-canceling headphones, dressed in black and chrome accents with full-size swiveling earcups, a padded headband, and a built-in rechargeable battery. The pads on the earcups are not particularly large or soft; leather covers some surprisingly dense memory foam that's nowhere near as squishy as the pads on competing models like Bose's QuietComfort 3. Inside the earcup, soft fabric covers the speaker drivers and angles back to accommodate the outer ear.

On the bottom of the left earcup are ports for AC power and for the included 3.5-mm headphone cable. The right cup is home to the power switch (with blue LED status indicator), a reset hole, and a noise-cancellation mode button, as well as a Monitor button that mutes audio and pipes in ambient sound via tiny mics on top of each earpiece.

The overall construction feels reasonably sturdy, and the design isn't too techie-oriented except for the telltale blue LED.

Extras

The NC500D's come with a rigid zippered case covered in black leather and nylon. Several Velcro straps on the inside hold the 60-inch detachable headphone cable, a shorter 20-inch cable for use with inline accessories, AC adapter, and inline battery pack. A small pocket inside holds the airplane adapter, 2 AA batteries (included), and 1/4-inch adapter.

Comfort

In spite of the pads' stiffness, we auditioned the cans on a 5-hour flight, listening for about 3.5 hours before choosing to give our ears a rest. The headphones virtually disappeared after a while thanks to their relatively light weight and perfect amount of tension (for our head, anyway) on the well-padded headband. Our ears did get warm, but they didn't sweat as much as with the Bose QuietComfort 3. On the whole, the Sennheiser PXC-450 are more comfortable, but they're also enormous compared to the Sonys.

Image Courtesy of Sony