Sony MDR-NC500D review retrospective
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Mark Brezinski
Published on June 26, 2008
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 The Sony MDR-NC500D headphones made us a bit sad. We thought they would've been a great set of mid-range, noise-cancelling headphones. They don't have amazing noise cancelling or audio quality, but they weren't abysmal either. They were very comfortable, came with a ton of extras, and there was even a fun little feature where you could choose your own noise-cancellation frequency curve. All in all, these headphones would be a good buy for a mainstream listener for $200-$300.
Unfortunately, these headphones cost $400. That's more than the Bose QuietComfort 2 & 3, which are probably the NC500D's biggest competition. At this price, the NC500D is more expensive than the already over-priced at $300 for the QC2 and $350 for the QC3. To make matters worse, the NC500D also features worse audio quality than both the QC2 and QC3, although not by any great stretch. We're guessing Sony was trying to market the NC500D as a premium product, and was using the high price to insinuate the NC500D outclasses the QuietComfort headphones. Unfortunately, the price just makes the headphones a bad deal, which is unfortunate because they're not bad headphones. If you want to pick these up, try to look for a really good sale. |
