Sennheiser HD 800 headphones are grand…

The Gadget Show  Friday 09 January 2009

…and they cost a grand, too. But they are extremely high-class, no?

After a pair of hay-clarse cans for your head balancers? Well, these new coffee-table headphones that Sennheiser has announced at CES could be just the acoustic essentials you’re after. Here’s the kick in the gonadulars, though. They ring in at a tune of £1,000!

So how on Earth can Sennheiser justify such a high price? Well, the audio specialists reckon that the HD 800s are the best headphones ever. Quite some claim. But they do back it up with an impressive spec sheet. First there’s a 56mm High-Definition RING driver which provides new standards of clarity and detail, offering a frequency response of six to 51,000Hz. Trust us, that’s a lot. The largest found in any dynamic headphone, apparently.

We’re not too sure about the “futuristic” design. It’s got an open-back design, but if we’re outlaying a grand we don’t want to be wearing something that looks unfinished. There are silver-plated, low-oxygen, detachable copper cables, though. Nice.