Great Walkabout Headphones

Wireless RF (radio frequency--think cordless phones)headphones allow you to move from room to room while listening to your favorite audio. Sennheiser is one of the top-rated manufacturers of headphones and after considering wireless headphones by Accoustic Research, Sony and Sennheiser I settled on the RS-130 by Sennheiser.

If you have a cordless phone then you have a good understanding of how wireless headphones that use RF work. Just like cordless phones these headphones work best when you are close to the base/transmitter station. Initially I had a bit of static but once I moved the transmitter away from my TV about 2' then the static went away. I found that within about 50' of the base (even in adjoining rooms) there was little-to-no deterioration in sound quality which was, by the way, on par with a really good set of wired headphones. Moving farther away I began to get a bit of fade-in/out with a bit of static but this was easily overcome by just a slight turn of my head--a lot like what you might have noticed when using your cordless phone. I have a detached workshop that is about 120' from my headphone transmitter; even in the workshop I get reception on the RS-130 headphones although at that location they are very picky about position: If I turn my head the wrong way the reception goes completely away but will come right back with a 90 degree repositioning of my body/head. If I close the 16' wide metal workshop garage door then reception gets really lousy. Again, they work about the same as I've found my 2.4 GHz cordless phone so if you wonder if you'll be able to use the headphones in a particular location then check out how well your cordless phone works there and you'll probably have a good idea (assuming you've got your cordless phone base station in a decent location).

Setup was easy. The unit has a small pyramid-shape base that does triple duty as a transmitter, storage rack and charging station. Two AAA nickel metal hydride batteries go into the headphones and the base station plugs into a 120VAC outlet. An 8' long audio cable connects the base station with your audio source. The audio cable has right/left RCA jack connectors as standard with two adapters being included to hook these to either 1/8" mini or 1/4" standard stereo headphone jack. The unit works best if you let it charge the batteries overnight but if you are anxious to get started you could substitute any good set of AAA batteries until you have time to charge the others. I cheated and tried-out mine with the "uncharged" batteries that came with it and it did work well enough to test it. After an overnight charge the unit worked even better (less static, better range). The batteries are supposed to last 22 hours on a single charge but I've not tested this.

Sound quality is excellent. The unit is comfortable to wear and the velour covered (not leather or plastic) earcups are large enough to enclose even larger-than-average ears. These are an open design so that you can hear normal conversations and background noise while wearing them. I could converse on my speaker phone with them playing but could not hear the phone handset with the headphones on my ears. The surround mode (SRS) function seems to add a nice rich quality to the sound and unlike some reviewers, I did not notice any echo with the SRS switched on. The volume control is easy enough to adjust and although I'd read lots of negative comments about its location being too close to the tuning button, I didn't find this to be a problem. There is no hiss or clicking as long as you are within a decent (50') range of the transmitter.

Some differences between this unit (RS-130) and the RS-120 (besides the price) are that the RS-130 has automatic tuning vs. having to rotate a tuning wheel on the headphones and the RS-130 has the surround mode enhancement. Also, the RS-130 is a 900 Mhz RF design which gives clearer reception over a longer range (again, think current cordless phones vs. those of 5 years ago). If you are going to be using the headphones in the same room as your base/transmitter unit then save yourself some money and buy the RS-120. You won't get the surround mode but with most audio systems you can adjust the bass & treble output that goes to the headphone jack. If you are using a headphone jack from a CD player(no bass/treble adjustment) then you might want the surround mode that comes with the RS-130.

Warranty on the RS-130 is two years.

Be careful that what you buy is a complete unit and not just an additional set of headphones (without the base/transmitter). Lots of lowest price search engines come up with low price hits on the "extra" set of headphones that can be purchased for use with the complete system.