I’ve spent the past week with a pair of the flagship headphones in Sony’s new "eXtra Bass" range – the MDR-XB700. I did promise a review, so read on to see what you’ve got to look forward to when they hit the shops in April.

Aesthetics

The headphones are constructed from a brushed metal finish which works well. Thickly padded earpieces and a wide headband complete the high class look. There’s only one downside – they’re huge! There’s no getting away from it, those 50mm driver units have to live somewhere and when you add the extra-thick padding around the earpieces you’re going to get some comments when you wear them. Get used to it!

Ergonomics

So they’re huge, we’ve established that. They’re surprisingly light though – for one thing, because there’s no active noise cancelling there are no batteries to lug around.

More importantly though, they’re comfortable. I can wear them for hours without feeling any discomfort; the thickly cushioned earpieces completely enclose your ears without putting pressure on them and the headband sits lightly on the skull.

Sound

So now we get to the meat of it – how well do they work? I was a bit worried that the "Extra Bass" marketing would result in something which vibrated my head to the exclusion of all other frequencies, but I’m happy to report that’s not the case.

Bass is there alright, and thanks to the aforementioned 50mm drivers it’s delivered in large quantities (down to 3hz if you believe the spec sheet), but it’s tight, well controlled and doesn’t overpower higher frequencies. Testing with a wide range of pop and jazz reveals plenty of space between instruments and the XB700’s are sensitive enough to reveal subtleties lesser headphones would obscure. Imaging is spot on too, with vocals appearing exactly where they’re supposed to be.

I’d describe them as having a fairly neutral presentation – not the last word in resolution, but everything blends together nicely for a very (to my ears) natural sound.

Isolation

The massive padded cushions form an effective seal around your ears and do a fair job of isolating background noise. They’re not quite as effective at removing the sort of droning white noise you’d get in an aircraft as, say the Beats by Dre which use active noise cancellation but they are much better than the beats at taking away higher frequency distractions such as conversations and ringing phones.

The isolation works both ways too – it doesn’t seem to matter what you do to the volume, nothing leaks back out to annoy anyone else.

Conclusion

As you can probably tell, I’m impressed with the XB700’s. They don’t fit my definition of "portable" headphones and I wouldn’t wear them on the walk to work, but if you want to invest in some high quality sound reproduction for home or office listening you should definitely put them on the shortlist.

There’s no official word yet on a UK price but they’re selling for $129.99 over the pond which should give some indication of the level they’re being pitched at.