Sennheiser MM 550-X Wireless Bluetooth Travel Headphones

Excellent headphones. No contest.
I started my search after needing to replace some Motorola Stereo Bluetooth headphones that died after years of use. At first, I had my eyes on the Parrot Zik headphones. After waiting months for them to be released, the specifications indicated that they had terrible battery life with noise cancellation enabled and were dependent on an iPhone app.

So, after rebooting my search, I frequently came across the Sennheiser headphones. I had to visit their website for a product comparision chart to figure out the differences between their models and the "X" lines. It was clear that the MM 550-X was their top of the line offering. After bouncing back and forth between a lower-end model, I decided to just go with the MM 550-X.

I'm glad I did. These headphones are fantastic:

* Great sound without SRS enabled.
* Even better sound with SRS enabled!
* Noise Cancellation works well. It's effective in a noisey office.
* Battery life is great even with...

Not as good as I expected for the price
The glowing reviews here and elsewhere led me to fork over the steep price of these headphones with the expectation that it was money well spent. Like most of you who are considering the MM 550-X, I have other upper-end headphones, in my case Bose QC-15 and Sennheiser HD 598, but would like to eliminate the wire. With the availability of apt-X, which overcomes many of the sound quality issues associated with wireless, Bluetooth headphones have finally become a viable option. I'm not an audiophile by any stretch of the imagination, so while there are those for whom apt-X isn't up to wired standards of listening quality, it's fine for me. So, as far as sound quality goes, the MM 550-X is quite good if you're using an apt-X source.

With that said, there are some areas where I was disappointed by the MM 550-X:

1. Comfort - Both the QC-15 and Sennheiser HD 598 are much more comfortable, especially for extended wear. I routinely wear the QC-15 while I go to sleep...

DISAPPOINTING
Initially I had bought the mm 450-x and aside for the constant crackling coming from the right cup, this baby sounded really great. Spectrum was broad, bass was rich, and movies sounded like in theatres. But due to the aforementioned problem (and others listed below), I exchanged this for the 550-x. I was expecting the same performance since the muscle specs were the same. I was wrong. Below lists some of the comparisons:
(1) Fit: the 550-x is far more comfortable. The 450-x was too small to fit an ordinary sized head.
(2) Noise Cancelling: surprisingly the 450-x was markedly better. 550-x performed poorly.
(3) SRS WOW HD: worked for some sounds, horrible for others.
(4) Volume: the 450-x has way more power. I had to max my 550-x and still wasn't loud enough.
(5) Bass: the 450-x has better bass response. The 550-x bass was horrible for movies. Sounded cheap almost.

In all, the 450-x outperformed the 550-x in many critical areas but I had that...

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