RHA SA950i Headphones Review

1. Introduction2. Packaging & Bundle3. The RHA SA950i Headphones4. Comfort and Performance5. Closing Thoughts6. View All Pages

Hidden beneath an elegant leather covering is an impact-absorbing material that enhances the headphones' cosiness during usage. The soft – foam-like – material spans a large majority of the headband, with the most important areas featuring a greater quantity of the comfort-enhancer.

The headband material's elastic motion firmly clamps each ear cup in place against a user's head and ears. This feeling can take a little bit of time to get used to, but once the music was playing, the force being exerted went unnoticed.

A reason that it went unnoticed was because RHA has designed an effective method of evenly distributing the ‘clamping' force that is exerted by each ear cup. The headband's compact design allows the ear cups' lateral forces to be redistributed in a perpendicular direction, via the headband, hence decreasing the amount of force that is exerted on the ear area alone.

With a maximum length of 65mm and a 55mm width, the SA950i's ear cups are somewhat compact. The centred gap measures in at 35mm in length by 25mm width.

We found that the ear cups' compact design caused our ears to become irritatingly hot after only a short amount of usage. While the discomfort wasn't pleasant, it was bearable; you could still enjoy the rest of your playlist or album before giving your ears a quick cooling break.

The 30mm freedom of movement provided by the SA950i's metal adjustment brackets allows a comfortable fit to be achieved for a wide variety of head shapes and sizes.

Performance of RHA's SA950i headphones was excellent. The set achieved a superb balance between deep bass and high treble, allowing lyrics and effects in R&B, hip-hop and pop songs to be perfectly audible alongside the low-pitched background melody.

Playback of classical music was equally enjoyable with the excellent bass and treble balance allowing each individual instrument to be clearly distinguished without a particular one becoming too overwhelming.

Noise isolation performance was strong; the ear pads managed to block out the majority of low-level background noises such as computer fans or central heating. A mechanical keyboard's typing noise level was where the SA950i's isolation performance met its match.

The in-line microphone's speech-recognition performance was faultless, during our testing. No wind-like interference, no intermittent transmission and no lack of clarity.

Powered by a 2-in-1 3.5mm universal jack, users are able to obtain audio input and output via a single connector – ideal for the phone calling audience. However, this design can cause issues with users wanting the headset to operate as a Skype device through a computer that requires separate input and output jacks.

A plus, minus and centre button can be found on the microphone. Volume adjustment duties are allocated to the plus and minus buttons. The centre button acts as a multi-input switch which can answer phone calls, pause and play music, skip through songs and open up voice commands, dependent upon the number of presses.

RHA advertises the centre button's multi-input function as an Apple-only feature, with limited Android support. We can confirm that the input functions worked perfectly with our Android 4.2.1-based Nexus 4, but our Android 2.2.1-based Archos 70 tablet wasn't so lucky.

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