Sennheiser HDB 630  Headphones Review

The Sennheiser HDB 630 have a balanced default sound. Their slightly emphasized bass adds just a touch of thump and punch to kick drums, ensuring they feel immersive and full. The mid-range is virtually flat, so voices sound accurate and true-to-life. The treble is also balanced, with a slight roll-off in the upper frequencies, ensuring sounds like hi-hats don't become too piercing. You can customize the default sound via the parametric EQ in the App or the EQ presets.

It's worth noting that the frequency response of these headphones is notably affected by fit and where on your head you place them. You may hear slightly different-sounding audio if you place these cans further back or further forward on your head.

With ANC turned off, these cans have a slightly boomier bass. But the frequency response doesn't vary with connection type. The dip around 5 kHz you can see in that graph is not audible, and we believe it's an artifact of our testing process.

The Sennheiser HDB 630 have poor frequency response consistency. Regardless of your anatomy, their sound can change quite a bit based on how you position them on your head. However, you can also expect the amount of bass you hear to vary from our results, depending on factors such as your head size, hair length, and whether you wear glasses or not. In particular, people who wear glasses with thicker frames can expect a drop in bass, although anyone who wears thinner frames will be much less affected. That said, if you take the time to get a proper seal with every wear, and tend to position them on your head the same way each time, you'll likely hear similar-sounding audio with each wear.

The Sennheiser HDB 630 have superb compliance with our bass target. The low and mid-bass are gently boosted, which gives sounds like kick drums extra thump and punch without overwhelming the mid-range. The high-bass is well-controlled, so your audio doesn't sound muddy.

The Sennheiser HDB 630 have outstanding compliance with our target in the mid-range. The entire region is virtually flat, so instruments and vocals alike sound clear, present, and detailed.

The Sennheiser HDB 630 have remarkably good compliance with our target curve in the treble region. The region isn't as well-controlled as the bass or mid-ranges are, with a dip in the mid-treble that can render sounds like cymbals a touch warm. But there's enough airiness to the sound to ensure these cans don't sound dull out of the box. In general, you can expect smooth yet detailed audio from these cans. 

The Sennheiser HDB 630 have impressive peaks and dips performance, meaning they don't deviate much from their balanced sound. The bass and mid-ranges are flat. The treble is a little more uneven. While the peaks and dips in this range are still fairly modest, they're enough that sounds like sibilants may sound a touch dull or piercing depending on their pitch.

The Sennheiser HDB 630 have amazingly well-matched left and right drivers. At worst, the phase response mismatch between the drivers skirts the audibility threshold, but we didn't notice any issues during regular listening. You can expect objects to be accurately and precisely located in the stereo field.

These headphones have decent group delay performance. You can expect tight and accurate bass reproduction and transparent, clear transient reproduction from these cans.

These cans have don't produce audio that interacts much with your outer-ear, which is normal for closed-back headphones. As a result, your audio sounds as if it's coming from inside your head, rather than from a pair of speakers in a room.

These headphones have remarkably low harmonic distortion. Even at high levels, you can expect clean and pure audio reproduction.

You can use these headphones via a wired connection, but they still have to be powered on, so you can't use them passively.

These are the settings used to test these headphones. Our results are only valid when used in this configuration.

The Sennheiser HDB 630 have a clean, understated design. Their design closely resembles that of the Sennheiser MOMENTUM 4, particularly in the headband, yokes, and ear cups. However, the HDB 630 use a slightly different color scheme. Their oval ear cups are black with a smooth matte finish, while the yokes are silver. The headband is black, with the Sennheiser logo located at each end.

The Sennheiser HDB 630 are generally comfortable for most people. Their soft, plush ear cups conform well to most head shapes, although people with larger ears may find the inside of the cups rubs against them. If you wear glasses with thicker frames, you may also find it hard to ensure the cups form a good seal with your head. Still, the hinges rotate a full 180 degrees, and the headband features a smooth adjustment system, allowing you to fine-tune the size for a better fit. That said, there is also limited padding at the center of the headband, which can cause discomfort in people with larger heads. Finally, if you've longer hair, you'll want to take care when making adjustments so your hair doesn't get caught in the hinges or yokes.

The Sennheiser HDB 630 have very good controls. They are primarily touch-sensitive controls, offering a wide range of gestures for playback, volume, calls, and noise control (1, 2, 3). The power button is the only physical control. This approach keeps the design clean and reduces button clutter, but it can take some time to get used to. The controls are located on only one ear cup, which may feel limiting for some users. Additionally, we were unable to customize the gestures through the companion app. The touch surface can also register accidental inputs, especially during adjustments.

The headphones provide both voice prompts and tones, with options to select the language or disable voice feedback entirely. Battery level, power state, and connection status are clearly communicated with distinct prompts, and the volume limits are easily identifiable thanks to clear warning tones. However, some tones, particularly for switching between ANC and transparency modes, can be a bit ambiguous, and it is not always obvious which command is being successfully registered.

The Sennheiser HDB 630 have middling portability. Their ear cups can swivel and lay flat, but won't fold up into a smaller shape.

These headphones have a great, well-made case. It features a hard-shell structure with a fabric-covered exterior that has a slight amount of give, offering solid protection without feeling overly rigid. Inside, the case uses custom-molded cutouts to securely hold the headphones, along with dedicated spaces and pouches for cables, dongles, and other accessories. The interior is lined with a soft, velvet-like material, and the pouches use tight drawstrings to keep everything from shifting around in transit. The case fully zips closed for a secure seal and includes a carrying strap, but its large size makes it better suited for a large backpack or airplane carry-on rather than everyday transportation.

The Sennheiser HDB 630 have a great build quality. It feels similar, if a little more premium, than the build quality of the Sennheiser MOMENTUM 4 Wireless. Most of the construction is plastic, which helps keep the headphones relatively lightweight, but they still feel reassuringly solid. The hinges offer a wide range of motion with no creaking, and the yokes utilize a smooth sliding adjustment system that allows for fine-tuned fits. That said, the plastic hinge area where the ear cup connects to the yokes could be a potential weak point if the headphones were dropped. The ear cups are plush and well-finished, with a faux leather covering that feels premium; however, long-term durability is difficult to judge.

Since the headband lacks a plush covering at the center, it feels less premium. The included analog cable feels adequate, but somewhat thin. The USB-C cable is thicker and of higher quality, albeit a bit short, and is probably better suited to laptop use than a living room listening station. These cans don't have an IP rating, so walking around in heavy rain with these on isn't the best idea.

These headphones offer decent stability. They work well for everyday use and will stay in place while you're listening at a desk or walking around casually. However, more vigorous head movements, such as headbanging or jogging, may cause them to shift around or fall off your head.

• Sennheiser HDB 630 headphones
• BTD700 USB Dongle
• USB-C to USB-C audio/charging cable (1.16 m / 3.8 ft)
• 3.5 mm TRS to 2.5 mm TRS cable (1.22 m / 4 ft) cable
• Airplane adapter
• Hard case
• User guides

These headphones have amazing noise isolation. They do an excellent job blocking out sound across most of the frequency range, although the lowest rumbles of a bus engine will still make their way into your audio. They also don't perform as well in the mid-mids as cans like the Sony WH-1000XM6, but still greatly reduce sounds like the ambient noise in an office. The ANC performs similarly whether set to adaptive or max.

These headphones do an excellent job of blocking out real-world noise. All but the lowest rumbles of a plane engine are greatly attenuated, while the sounds of people talking or typing are significantly reduced. Still, these cans can't quite match the performance of top-tier ANC headphones like the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones (2nd Gen), largely because the Sennheiser's ANC is a touch weaker in the middle of the mid-range.

The Sennheiser HDB 630 come with a wind reduction feature to mitigate the effect of wind blowing against their ANC mics. This feature performs better than many similar ones, and wind noise is noticeably reduced when it's activated. That said, if you're outside on a very windy day, you'll still hear wind noise along with your audio, and activating the wind reduction feature slightly reduces the overall ANC strength. And changing between the different wind noise settings doesn't measurably change the overall strength of the effect.

These headphones have very good leakage performance. If you're listening at average levels, people around you won't be able to hear your audio. And even if you listen at loud levels, any audio that does leak out will sound thin and weak.

These headphones come with a mic that has an okay recording quality. Your voice is comprehensible, but sounds thin and lacks air. Still, the recording quality is the same regardless of the connection type.

The microphone has a good noise handling performance that's much better than the Sennheiser MOMENTUM 4 Wireless'. In moderately noisy environments, the microphone captures voices clearly while keeping background sounds at a lower level. Some noise remains audible, but it doesn't significantly affect speech intelligibility. In very loud settings, such as a subway, the microphone also does a good job of suppressing surrounding noise and reduces the mic gain to prevent clipping. Still, the noisier the environment, the harder your voice is to understand.

These headphones have superb battery performance. They're advertised to last 60 hours, and we measured 54.2. They also fully charge in 1.5 hours, and Sennheiser claims you can expect 7 hours of performance from a ten-minute charge. They charge via USB-C and can deliver audio while charging.

The Sennheiser HDB 630 come with a superb companion app that is both feature-rich and easy to navigate. In fact, it's so rich in features, it's worth checking out this video of the app in action. It offers a wide range of customization options, including graphic and parametric EQs. The latter is especially flexible, allowing you to adjust the Q value of a filter band and even compare and contrast different bands. You also get Bass Boost, a Podcast Mode, and a personalized EQ feature called Sound Check, which lets you create a preset by fine-tuning the sound using your own music. There's even a crossfeed feature that can subtly blend the left and right channels at different intensities. This can reduce the sensation that sounds are coming strictly from either ear and instead place them more toward a phantom center in front of the listener, which better mimics the sound of two speakers in a room.

There are detailed ANC controls, including adaptive, custom, and off modes, as well as an anti-wind mode. And you also get practical features like connection management, auto-pause, sound zones with location-based EQ and noise control, codec and signal path information, and tools for finding the headphones. Additional options include smart pause, on-head detection, auto-answer for calls, comfort calls, tone and voice prompt controls, firmware updates, and factory reset.

These headphones have a decent wired connection. You can listen to audio via both the USB-C (1.16 m / 3.8 ft) and 3.5mm TRS to 2.5mm TRS cable (1.22 m / 4 ft). However, since the headphones must be powered on to function, you'll still experience approximately 30 ms of latency, even when using analog connections. That's low enough for consuming media, but competitive gamers might find it a touch too slow. You also don't get access to the mic via the analog connection.

These headphones have good Bluetooth connectivity. They support multi-device pairing with up to two devices, so you can stay connected to your laptop and phone simultaneously. That said, they don't support a quick pairing feature for either Android or Apple's operating systems. 

Audiophiles may appreciate the support for higher-bitrate codecs these headphones offer, but we have not yet found measurable differences in frequency response between different Bluetooth codecs.

These headphones support a wide range of Bluetooth codecs and are marketed to provide latency as low as 30 ms when using aptX Adaptive Low Latency in Gaming mode. But our tests consistently showed higher latency values across both direct Bluetooth connections and Bluetooth dongle connections.

Using the dongle, we measured latency of about 252 ms with SBC, 246 ms with aptX, roughly 100 ms with aptX Adaptive Low Latency, and around 352 ms with aptX Adaptive High Quality. Although the dongle supports the LC3 codec, the headphones themselves do not, so this option is unavailable.

The BTD 700 USB-C dongle that comes with these headphones behaves much like a dedicated wireless dongle. In practice, it can even offer more flexibility, such as the ability to choose between Bluetooth codecs; however, this comes at the cost of higher latency compared to the 2.4 GHz dongles used by wireless gaming headsets.

The Sennheiser HDB 630 can connect wirelessly to your PC, both via Bluetooth and via the BTD 700 USB-C adapter, which bypasses your computer's built-in Bluetooth hardware. Still, both connections rely on Bluetooth, which has high latency and so may not be suitable for gaming purposes. This dongle does not qualify as a dedicated 2.4 GHz receiver like those that come with wireless gaming headsets.

The Sennheiser HDB 630 will connect wirelessly to your PlayStation console using the BTD 700 Bluetooth dongle, with both audio and mic support. However, since Bluetooth latency is high, we don't expect many gamers to find this setup suitable. If you need lower latency, consider a dedicated wireless gaming headset that uses a 2.4 GHz receiver, such as the Razer BlackShark V3 Pro.

The Sennheiser HDB 630 don't support wireless Xbox connectivity. You can plug in the analog cable to your Xbox's controller and hear audio, but you won't be able to use the headphones' built-in mic.

These headphones come with a Bluetooth USB-C adapter, the BTD 700. If you plug this into your phone or computer's USB-C port, you can bypass that device's internal Bluetooth hardware.