Z710 Wireless Headphones

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• Expert Rating

  3.00 / 5

• User Rating

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• Price

  $ 99.00 (AUD)

Nathan Taylor Good Gear Guide 26/06/05 Follow @pcworldau

Pros

• Recharger on base station, low cost, good range

Cons

• Low-level white noise, slightly uncomfortable cups

Bottom Line

The Z710 is a low-cost analog wireless headphone set. It's decent for the money, but can't match the digital wireless headphones for quality.

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The discreet base station, roughly the size of a pack of cards, acts both as transmitter and recharger for the headphones. Multiple sets of Zensonic headphones can tune into the one broadcast from a base station.

The closed-cup headphones are mid-sized, with integral volume control and tuning dial (to tune to base station). We found the elongated cups a little on the hard and uncomfortable side, and the elastic bridge does not allow fixed adjustments for those of us with wacky-shaped heads, but your mileage may vary. The official frequency response range of the headphones is 20Hz to 20kHz, and Zensonic claims less than 1% distortion and a SNR of greater than 45dB.

In our tests, the headphones demonstrated excellent range, moving undiminished through several rooms and walls, up to 15m away from the base station (Zensonic claims it's capable of reception up to 100m). In spite of our intense tuning efforts, and switching between the three available channels on the base station, we could not eliminate a distracting low-frequency line noise from the transmission. This line noise was present at all ranges, although the intensity often varied depending on intervening objects between the headphones and the base station. We also lost transmission on several occasions at long range, and had to re-tune the headphones. The headphones operate in the 815MHz frequency range, avoiding the 2.4GHz frequency used by Wi-Fi.

The quality of the audio from the cups was excellent, delivering very clean bass and good high ranges. Its volume was a bit limited, but should be enough unless you really like to blow your eardrums. According to Zensonic, the two AAA batteries deliver about 5 to 6 hours running time, and the recharger on the base station ensures that you're unlikely to ever need to switch batteries.