Founded in 1945, Sennheiser electronic GmbH & Co. KG may be the world’s best-known audio company specializing in the design and production of a wide range of both consumer and high fidelity products, including microphones, headphones, telephony accessories, and avionics headsets for consumer, professional, and business applications.

Their product range end with Sennheiser’s new $55,000 Orpheus headphone system and starts with simple and affordable headphones like the Sennheiser HD 202 II Professional. The 202 II Professional are geared toward the home or office listener who seeks Sennheiser’s signature balanced sound and a good amount of passive noise isolation.

Build and Design

The frame of the HD 202 II is made entirely from plastic, and padding is provided by fake leather. Initially, the leather feels very stiff, but it gets much more comfortable after you spend a few hours wearing the headphones. Give the headphones a few days, and they’ll surprise you with how comfortable they can be even after several hours of continuous listening.

Since the Sennheiser HD 202 II Professional Headphones are designed for home and office use, they come with a very long cable that would make them a very bad choice for portable music listening. Given how affordable the headphones are, we can imagine that someone would be willing to take the headphones apart and replace the cable with a shorter one, but such DIY modifications are not something that the average customer wants to do.

Sound Quality

What matters most about the Sennheiser HD 202 II Professional is their performance. That’s when most of Sennheiser’s budget went and it shows. With a neutral tonal balance and a frequency range of 18 to 18,000Hz, the HD 202 II Professional are a good choice for all aspiring producers. Their neutral sound signature can be tweaked using software equalizer to work well with just about any music genre.

The one thing that makes the Sennheiser HD 202 II Professional Headphones really stand out among other similarly priced budget headphones from Sennheiser’s competition is how well they isolate ambient noise. Even when listening at a moderate volume, virtually all outside noises disappear, allowing you to focus on your work and your music.

What’s in the Box?

Being a pair of budget headphones, the Sennheiser HD 202 II Professional don’t ship with any extra goodies, apart from an adapter and a cable winder, but you can get a case for the headphones from Hermitshell. The problem is that the case costs almost half the price of the headphones themselves, so it’s hard to justify the extra purchase. In our opinion, a dirt-cheap soft pouch from Amazon is perfectly sufficient protection for these headphones.