Sony MDR-NC200D Headphones

Sony has recently introduced the MDR-NC200D noise cancelling headphones which guarantees to reduce 98.2% of ambient noise running on a AAA battery for 22 hours. The device comes with an instruction manual, a zip-based travel case, an airplane adapter, a detachable 3.5mm right-angled cable and a AAA battery. The headphone comes in a shade of black with Faux leather pads and slightly matted oval shaped ear-cups. It feels pretty light on wearing, yet retains a sturdy build and it doesn’t stick to your ears making it best for the humid weathers. The cups swivels from 90 degree to flat and provides a generous tilt for ear adjustment. The head rails are flexible with extra padding for comfort and longer extension.

MDR-NC200D contains all the controls on it’s left cup housing an Artificial Intelligence Noise Cancellation (AI NC) button and a sliding power switch with a green status light indicator. The AI NC button when pushed pauses for few seconds to initiate one of the three digital noise cancelling modes for planes, cars and indoor surroundings. Below is the 3.5mm headphone jack and a mic next to it. Also, it features a monitor button to hear the outside world while the headphones are on with a pop-out slot for the battery. Every button push is accompanied by a chime to aid in recognizing the selection. Though the battery is used for the noise cancelling functionality & sound amplification, the headphones are still usable for music when its switched off. With power-off the headphones provides low bass and the overall audio quality deteriorates significantly with external noise seeping in. Switching on the device drastically improves the sound quality with heavier bass and crispy highs & mids. Also, it makes the low-bit rate files sound a little better.

As for our wish, it would have been better if the passive power-off mode contained better sound quality as well as instead of having an external battery it would come with a recharchable in-built battery just like the bluetooth headsets. The device is modestly priced at $200.