In shops one can find today a great many headsets of varied shapes and sizes, from the lightest and miniature ones to rather bulky and massive units. Headsets are released under different brands ranging from renowned and expensive to rather unknown ones offered at a minimum price.

But today we shall not go to extremes and review a stereo headset from the well-known manufacturer, namely, Sven. It is a rather big device hidden under a non-remarkable name of SVEN HM 80 BK. Let’s begin our review from the packing, as is already traditional with us.

Packing and Accessories

The packing of the headset under review makes a transparent plastic box of striking dimensions with black cardboard inserts.

Inside the box, besides the proper headset, we found a warranty card.

Technical Specifications

Let’s proceed now to SVEN HM 80 BK technical specifications.

We should not blindly put our trust in the above listed numbers and will try out every feature experimentally. Besides this, our attention was drawn by closed acoustic enclosure which is totally non-specific to stereo headsets.

Design and Appearance

At first glance the headset appearance reminds of deejay headphones: soft harness, two-way rotating ear-cups, no flexible-base-fitted microphone. The only feature telling of the headset kind of the device before us is availability of two connection jacks and volume control accommodating a switch responsible for toggling the unit on/off.

By the way, as far as jacks is concerned, it would be fitting to note here that they have rather massive bases which makes the headset connection to PC or laptop easy and comfortable; the cord of two meters long is more than enough in most cases. By the way, the cord is rather thick and undivided and is properly meant for connection to the left cup of the headphones. As it has already been said, the design of these headphones reminds that of deejay headphones: the harness is soft, lined with textile from inside, and with synthetic leather from outside.

The ear-cups are fixed to the harness by way of plastic bands with the capability of extending rather considerably. The proper fixture of the ear-cups is so designed as to enable their rotation around both horizontal and vertical axes. But there is one drawback: a spring in the joint to restore the ear-cups rotated around vertical axis to their initial position is missing. As a result, prior to taking the headphones on you often have to take time to restore the headphones to their initial position. By the way, the headphones’ case is made from plastic with soft-touch covering which imparts it a pleasant look and even more pleasant touch. The embouchures are made from soft synthetic leather; it goes without saying that they are capable of rotating.

But where is the microphone? Why, we are dealing with a headset! Do you see diagonal elements on the ear-cups with the manufacturer’s logo on them in the figure? Well, as far as the right ear-cup’s element is concerned, it is a mere decoration, but the left ear-cup’s element is not so: it is extendable and hides the microphone inside. It is extendable as long as some five centimeters though, but still brings the microphone close to the sound source. However, SVEN HM 80 BK employs an omnidirectional microphone so there’s no need to bring it too close to the mouth.

The quality of materials is fairly striking; the build quality is also up to the mark: all the parts are well fitted, nothing squeaks nor wobbles.

Operation

Well, to begin with, let’s try the on-head seating of the headphones. They sit well, but press on ears a bit too heavily as both the design and anything but little weight are pretty taxing. Nevertheless, you will get along with this circumstance quickly. The adjustment range is rather wide so the headset will sit comfortably on anyone’s head.

As for the sound performance, everything is quite expectable here. Bass is beautiful enough, but the mid-range is emphasized (as is natural with the headsets) and even a little bit exaggerated, so to say. As a result, the voice-part clearly dominates over the music-part in many compositions. At the same time some emphasized sounds are often partly disregarded. The upper boundary of the frequency range announced by the manufacturer happened to be slightly overstated.

All that pertains to popular music sounds pleasantly. It is also worth noting that unlike most other headsets and low-end headphones SVEN HM 80 BK cannot be qualified as a «mess of metal». This headset enjoys also a clearly expressed stereo effect. The microphone performance is faultless: the speaker is well hearable with the least of noise.

Conclusion

Why, a quite decent headset it is! Its sound performance is not worse (and partly even better) than that of many other more expensive headphones. So, SVEN HM 80 BK is one of those headsets which may be confidently recommended as a substitute for low-end headphones. The more so that it excellently copes with the direct purpose of any headset.

Besides, the appearance of the reviewed device is also fairly good: the soft touch plastic surface is smooth to the touch and totally stain-proof. Workmanship is high-level and faultless. Among the negatives it may be mentioned the missing spring in the joint to restore the ear-cups to their initial position, but this may be qualified as not too grave a drawback.

In all other respects SVEN HM 80 BK proved rather satisfying.