Sony MDR-XB550AP Review

Far too often wireless headphones are the focus for most tech websites and reviewers which means wired budget headphones often get neglected. Well not here! For this review I took the Sony MDR-XB550AP Extra Bass wired headphones through the testing gears, so let’s get started!

The weak body design carries over to the length adjustment. Adjusting the earcup length is done in notches, but it tends to change unintentionally. When placing the headphones in a bag or simply grabbing them and taking them to a different floor in my house, I notice that the length adjustment will have changed, which can get annoying. The culprit is due to the adjustment slider being too loose.

There’s no information from Sony if it’s dust and water resistant so best practice is to prevent any water from getting on it.

There are 4 colour options available which is great to fit your personal preference.

They’re an on the ear headphone and not the most comfortable. After wearing them for 1 hour my ears tend to get a little sore and warmer. At the two-hour mark I need to take them off for a few minutes before I can wear them comfortably again. It’s strange because the headband flex isn’t too tight, but after reviewing a fair number of headphones and headsets, I haven’t had this problem since the Logitech Zone Wireless headset.

What I find strange about the comfort is that the earpads have reasonable amount of cushioning and are rather soft, unfortunately that didn’t help for long term comfort.

The earcups have some great adjustment when rotating them up, down, forward, and back to accommodate various head shapes.

When placing them around my neck, I can look left and right and my chin just barely brushes against the earcups, while looking down is no problem. Of course, your experience may vary based on your neck length. If you try to be cleaver and rotate the earcups, it’ll backfire as the earcups will press into your neck.

It doesn’t seem that officially the earcups can be replaced as Sony doesn’t sell replacement earcups. That should be expected at such low-priced headphones.

Controls

There’s only one control button for the headphones which is a multi-function button which is located slightly down the auxiliary cable. For most devices connected to the headphones it’ll be used to play/pause music and answer/hang up calls. Some additional controls compatible only with iPhones with a headphone jack are double pressing the multi-function to skip to the next track, triple pressing to go to the previous track and holding it for 2 seconds will reject an incoming call.

Sony documentation does state that the behaviour of the multi-function will vary if connected to a different device. For example, while doing random testing on my older Galaxy S10+, the play/pause and next track controls worked but not previous track. In addition, one item that Sony documentation doesn’t state is that pressing and holding the button with no incoming call prompted Google Assistant to read back the subject of notifications from any apps.

It’s unfortunate that basic forward and previous track controls don’t work across smartphones as that is a common feature found in some cheaper wired earbud products. Even more strange is that Sony makes Android devices but the behaviour of the multi-function button works better on iPhones than other Android devices.

Noise Cancelling

There is no active noise cancelling technology (ANC). When it comes to passive noise cancelling, so simply wearing the headphones, it hardly blocks any exterior noise. However, these headphones aren’t designed to block any exterior sounds and such items shouldn’t be expected at this price point.

Microphone Quality

Don’t expect the best microphone quality on such a low priced wired headphone. However, considering the price it’s not bad. When taking phone calls, it performed decent (sample in the video above). Whether the headphones be connected to a phone for regular calls or on a computer for Teams or Zoom calls, it performed equally well.

In terms of background noise isolation, it surprised me a bit. When I replicated a noisy café environment, despite the microphone being a bit down the cable, it did a decent job at cancelling the surrounding noise. This performance also carried over to a wind test. With wind blowing from a fan about 5 feet away, again it did a fairly good job at blocking out noise from the wind.

Audio Quality

As written earlier, these are Extra Bass headphones which is part of Sony’s line of headphones that put higher emphasis on lows even right of the box. For bass heads at such a price, you’ll be in for a treat.

Bass can get quite deep for the right set of songs, including rap songs such as Offset’s “54321”. That bass emphasize will carry over even for songs that aren’t meant for it. For instance, “Hold Me Closer” by Elton John & Britney Spears will have bass a bit overbearing for some people. Since that song is better with vocals as the star of the song, it can be a bit off putting having it drown out by bass.

However, it’s important to realise that you can simply lower bass in an equaliser on a phone or computer 3^rd party app (or built in equalisers like within Spotify). So that should eliminate any concerns about too much bass for songs.

There is some irony to all this. With the bass lowered in an equaliser, it’s not too deep if you don’t want it to be and the headphones handle it well. However, if you increase mids or treble then the sound gets worse. It left me scratching my head because if I increased just mids, highs or both together, the song would sound flatter. For some reason mids and highs would suffer and sound worse instead of having increased emphasis.

Software

In the manual that comes out of the box, there’s mention of an Android app called “Smart Key” on the Google Play store. When I scan the QR code in the manual, it’s a dead link. If you search for it manually in the Google Play store, the top result is the Sony Headphones Connect app. Upon opening, installing it and going through the list of supported wired headphones in the Headphones Connect app, the MDR-XB550AP isn’t there.

It seems at one point these headphones did have an Android app support, but Sony has since abandoned that venture.

Conclusion

You’re not paying much money to get some great bass audio. If you’re a bass head, then you won’t be disappointed. However, that’s the main highlight of these headphones. While understandably these aren’t meant to “wow” anyone for mids and highs, the fact that the audio quality goes down when increasing them in an equaliser is a shame.

It’s also a bit baffling that basic media controls to go to the next or previous track don’t function consistently across multiple devices despite cheaper audio devices being able to do so.

Lastly is the comfort, it doesn’t take long for the headphones to become a bit irritating on the ears, and remember, I reviewed my fair share of headset and headphones.

If you only care about bass and won’t be wearing these headphones for a lengthy period, they’re worth looking into. If you don’t fall into those categories, despite the price tag, you’re better off looking elsewhere.