Sennheiser HD 250BT Review – Disappointing

The Sennheiser HD 250BT are wireless on the ear headphones and are part of Sennheiser’s inexpensive line up of headphones.

Accessories

There are no accessories included at all in the box, just the USB cable. It’s a USB-C to USB-A cable. Unfortunately, it’s not pure USB-C which is a bummer. That cable is measuring in about 22 inches.

Design & Comfort

In terms of how it looks, it’s not the best looking. The bottom frame of the headband look unique due to the frame coming out of the earcups, which is kind of similar to the Sennheiser Momentum 3. Although I’m not a fan of the wires coming out of the earcups and how it’s visible, it looks incredibly tacky. It’s as if Sennheiser ran out of material with their budget to produce these headphones. Not a good look.

There’s no folding design, so the headphones cannot collapse, it’s just a solid frame.

For comfort, when wearing them within the first 5 minutes, they start to make my ears feel a little warm. They don’t get sweaty, they don’t hurt, but yeah warm. So not the most comfortable experience you’ll have.

When it comes to wearing it with glasses, they’re still not that comfortable. The odd thing is that they don’t get my ears as warm when wearing glasses. I think the frame of the glasses kind of put my ears out slightly at the top, which pivots the earcups slightly. But then you have the irritation that the earcups are kind of poking my frame into my head a little hard. This makes it uncomfortable with glasses in a different way.

Another big letdown for comfort is the interior of the headband, which I’ll cover very shortly.

The headband flex itself is not too bad. It’s not too tight, so that’s not part of the concern. It really comes down to the cushioning. The earcup cushioning is soft, but a little too firm and I think that’s the most likely reason why my ears get warm.

Going back to the interior of the headband as I mentioned earlier, it’s not comfortable because there’s no padding whatsoever. If you’re bald, this will be very annoying and very discomforting. In fact, if you’ve got a full head of hair like me, they’re still not comfortable. They kind of poke into my head ever so slightly, it’s not a good experience. I’m not sure if Sennheiser didn’t have enough budget for this headphone design. They could have put some padding right at the dead center, maybe two or three inches wide, if they’re concerned about budget costs (instead of putting padding across the entire interior of the headband). You can get far cheaper headphones on the Internet. This is rather inexcusable from Sennheiser.

The headband adjustment is done in notches, it’s not a slider mechanism. The earcup rotation isn’t that much, but it’s just enough to get the job done as it can go up, down, forward, and back to accommodate most heads and ear shapes.

Working out with these could work well. The fact that they don’t shift around at all, but there’s a few problems here. The first is, of course, is that the earcups are on the ear. Of course, when you are working out your ears are going to sweat very quickly and very much so. The other thing I mentioned is just even sitting around for a few minutes, it makes my years get warm so imagine what’s going to happen when you’re working out.

They only come in a black color and they’re weighing in a light 125 grams.

The body construction does feel rather weak. Despite its inexpensive price tag, it feels like something almost half the price. It’s a little disappointing.

According to the manual, you should keep them always dry, which makes me assume that they’re not dust and water resistant at all. It’s to be cautious with them.

Sennheiser does not sell official replacement earcup units, so if you tear them, you can get replacement units from third party sellers.

While resting on my neck, if you’re out and about and on the go, looking left and right is not a problem because the earcups are small. Looking down is a bit of a challenge because the headband curve is a rather sharp angle and the earcups get in the way of my chin. There is one annoyance though, is that they’re not comfortable on my neck because again, the interior of the headband has no cushioning at all. It kind of scrapes against my neck.

Controls

All controls are on the back of the right earcup.

The top button is for volume up and the bottom button is for volume down.

The middle button has a bunch of commands associated with it. It’s used for powering the device on/off, pressing and holding it will enter Bluetooth pairing mode, one tap to play/pause your media, double tap to go to the next track or triple tap to go the previous track. It’s also used for phone calls, single tap answer or hang up a call and some other functions available regarding phone calls.

I’m not a fan of this though, because I’m not sure why all these commands have to be associated with a single button. Why couldn’t they make it simpler like, pressing and holding volume up to go to the next track, and holding volume down will go to the previous track. I’m not sure why it has to force the user to memorize this many commands on a single button.

There are three other things not available, not necessarily required at this price point, but just want to mention them. The first is that if you have it paired with a smartphone, it will not activate your voice assistant. There’s no button to do that, to say turn on Google Assistant or Siri.

The next thing is that there’s no side tone. Again, not a big deal, but for some people that like that feature, it’s not available on these headphones.

The last thing is passive play/pause. For example, when you’re listening to content the headphones will obviously continue playing, when you take them off it’ll automatically pause your content, and when you put them back on it’ll resume your content. It’s not expected at this inexpensive price type, but just want to mention that anyway.

Noise Cancelling

There’s no ANC (active noise cancelling) on these headphones. It shouldn’t be expected at this price tag.

There’s also no transparency mode. That basically has the microphones turn on and force exterior sound into the headphones.

When it comes to just passive noise cancelling (just simply wearing them), even if no content is playing and people are in the same room with me talking, I can hear almost everything. What is being said is slightly muffled because they’re on the ear headphones, but I can make out what they’re saying. If you’re traveling on a bus and you’re listening to say news or podcasts and a lot of people are talking around you, it’ll be very difficult to hear what’s being said.

Battery

Sennheiser claims about 25 hours of usage on a single charge. In my multiple battery tests, I averaged 27 hours, so very close to their claim.

They also say it takes 3 hours to recharge these, which is a little too long. And in my testing that is actually accurate. The tradeoff of recharge time for performance is not the best.

The USB-C charging port is located on the bottom of the right earcup.

Microphone Quality

The microphone, while in a quiet setting, is adequate for people to just hear you clearly enough for important calls, even meetings. However, it doesn’t do as well as my laptop microphone. It sounds as if I’m talking behind a partially closed door. While I don’t expect great things at this price point, just don’t expect amazing performance for phone calls.

While in a noisy replicated environment it performs poorly. This is due to the general quality of the microphone itself and coupled with the slight background noise that comes through the microphone. It’s not as if a lot of noise comes through, it sounds faint, but the lacking microphone clarity doesn’t help.

Lastly, while replicating a windy setting, it’s terrible. Far too much wind noise comes through and would make it difficult for the person on the other end of the call to understand you during parts of the conversation.

Audio Quality

In terms of audio codecs, it supports SBC, AAC and surprisingly aptX, although this not all good news and I’ll explain why.

Out of the box, like typical Sennheiser tradition, everything is well balanced; bass, mids and highs. One is not too strong compared to the other. Of course, if listening to hip-hop, the bass will perform a little bit higher compared to the others, but that’s usually expected.

When it comes to adjusting with the equalizer in the app (which we’ll get into very shortly) performance is kind of weird. Increasing the bass, it can get deep but not as good as the Sony WH-CH520, which is in the same price bracket. The 520 can get much deeper and they’re overall better headphones than the 250BT. Anyway, going back to the 250BT, it can get rather deep but not punchy like subwoofer deep, if you will.

When it comes to increasing mids, it does almost nothing at all. It doesn’t matter what type of genre of music I’ve tested, I tested numerous kinds, it does almost nothing.

Increasing the highs, it does tweak it up higher. Nothing is too piercing and annoying for my ears thankfully. It gives a bit more energy to the music.

Software

Diving into the app, it’s very minimalistic. There’s not much to go on here, but let’s dive into the main thing. Most people are interested in equaliser, which is also barebone. It has bass, mids and treble (not a full-blown equaliser). This isn’t a big not a big deal, you can get some pretty good performance if the manufacturer does a good job of this simplified equaliser. You can set some custom presets if you want to.

Switching to Sound Check, what this basically does is you play a song you’re listening to and then make it go through kind of like a sound check test. Then from here it’ll automatically adjust the equalizer to what it thinks is the best for you. The problem is that if I adjust the equalizer ever so slightly, the sound check adjustment disappears. If I go back to Sound Check, everything is reset there too and you have to go through the listening process again. I honestly found this feature doesn’t work that well for sound balance anyway. I find it to be more of a gimmick than anything else.

The next section in the app is the Discover tab. This is kind of like, almost like ads from Sennheiser so worth ignoring.

The last tab is Settings. Here you can get firmware updates if they’re available. You can also select which tiles you’ll see on the home screen of the app.

Conclusion

If you haven’t shopped around, most people might think if you look past the discomfort, it’s not that bad right? Well as I mentioned earlier, you might want to consider the Sony WH-CH520. They are in the same price bracket as these headphones and in fact, are superior in almost every way.

I’m disappointed by Sennheiser, the 250BT might be a pass for you.