Panasonic RP-HC55 Headphones Review - Intro

The Panasonic RP-HC55s are a set of in-ear active noise cancellers. The actual MSRP is $100, but you can find them for about $60 if you look around. This price point makes the RP-HC55s the least expensive set of active-cancellers we've reviewed to date. One of the first things you'll notice about the RP-HC55s is their control pendant. Although we go into a lot of detail in the review about why we think the pendant could have been implemented better, we will say that it needlessly creates comfort and portability issues.

The headphones didn't perform very well on the audio quality test, but as inexpensive active-cancellers, the RP-HC55s have two strikes against them from the get-go. We were impressed that the active cancellation feature actually functioned, allowing the headphones to isolate about as well as mid-range in-ears. We're not particularly concerned about the poor audio quality since in-ear headphones will have to compete with ambient noise anyway, so perfect quality would likely be wasted.

We did think the RP-HC55s could have implemented their active noise cancellation feature better, however, by allowing users to switch the feature off and still listen to music. While annoying to have to listen with the sometimes active cancellation, at least the battery dependency is a bit of a non-issue: the RP-HC55s could last for almost 100 hours off one AAA battery, which is simply absurd.

Overall, although the RP-HC55s aren't amazing, they also aren't priced disproportionately. For $60 there are definitely some other good options to compete for your cash, like the Denon AH-C351s, but the RP-HC55s are a good pick in their own right, in spite of their awkward control pendant.