The first thing that attracted me to the Sennheiser CX 400BT was their price.
The wireless earbuds retail for $180 in Canada, but right now, you can even find them on sale for as low as $129, a price that offers incredible value.
Sennheiser is known for its high-quality audio products like the recently announced IE 300 or the Momentum 2 Wireless earbuds, which both cost around $400 in Canada. This is great since the company can apply its high degree of sound knowledge to lower-cost earbuds. In practice, that shift in strategy has paid off.
Sennheiser’s support page even says that the CX 400BTs the same audio tech as the Momentum 2, giving these earbuds a soundstage well above their weight class.
How do they sound?
When it comes to sound quality, the 7mm speaker drivers in these earbuds hold their own. Their soundstage is reasonably wide, offering a sense of balance to music that sounds great.
That said, the earbuds’ sound depth is a little limited, with not as much separation between the lows and highs, leading to a sometimes compressed sound. Having said that, vocals are rich and songs with straightforward melodies come across extremely well.
The overall sound quality isn’t as impressive as other high-end earbuds I’ve used, but it’s still superb for the price, making the CX 400BTs a great deal for people looking for a good set of budget-friendly basic earbuds.
Other notable specs include Bluetooth 5.1 and support for popular high-end codecs like AAC and aptX, allowing for a premium listening experience on either iOS or Android devices.
What the connected app offers
As with most wireless headphones, except Apple’s AirPods, you can adjust the EQ within their app to tweak your listening experience. You can even save these EQ presets, so switching back to them later is easy.
You can also use the app to customize the earbuds’ controls. This is nice since I don’t often trigger my smart assistant on the earbuds, so being able to remap that to another play/pause button is convenient.
There may not be a lot in the app, but it thankfully includes a lot of the features people will likely use the most.
Low-cost, but loud and proud
When it comes down to it, I think that these earbuds are a real bargain. While they may not offer high-end features like active noise-cancelling (ANC) or a water resistance rating, they feature excellent sound quality and battery life.
On average, the buds last over seven hours without needing to be charged. With the charging case, Sennheiser says that users should get 30 hours of listening. You can charge them completely in about an hour and a half or get an extra hour of listening with a ten-minute charge.
While this isn’t industry-leading battery life, it’s more than enough time for me, and as long as I remember to plug the CX 400BTs in a couple of times a week, I have no issues.
I also found these earbuds fit comfortably in my ears with a little twist that locks them in place. I would even feel comfortable working out while wearing the X 400BTs if I was doing something where I didn’t want to hear the outside world. Concerning the MobileSyrup touque test, these buds remained snug in my ears, leaving them with a 5/5 Touque score.
When it comes to sound quality, the CX 400BT are a pretty stellar pair of under-the-radar earbuds.
You can pick up a pair at Best Buy until February 4th for $129 CAD, but regularly they’re sold for $179.
MobileSyrup may earn a commission from purchases made via our links, which helps fund the journalism we provide free on our website. These links do not influence our editorial content. Support us here.
