Mid-range Android phones aren’t what they used to be a year ago—they now pack in a lot of power, look good and offer a smooth user experience. However, the HTC One E9s does not tick all the boxes.
Most users don’t really set aside a big budget for earphones —that honour is reserved for headphones, which usually improve significantly in sound quality as you go higher up the price bracket. That is why, Sennheiser is focusing on the more affordable segment with its new earphones.
HTC One E9s
Rs.21,900
While the E9s is a part of the One series of phones, the design and the overall look of the phone resembles the more affordable Desire smartphones. The polycarbonate body looks good and there are no rough edges, but one expects the One series of phones to have a more premium metal chassis.
The 5.5-inch display has a 1,280x720 resolution. The screen has good sharpness and brightness levels, but the colour richness could have been significantly better—it is a bit too warm in the colour tone, spoiling the purity of the whites. The E9S is significantly inferior to the Full HD (1,920x1,080) screens of the Moto X Play, Honor 7 and Asus ZenFone 2. The fact is that the E9s’ screen isn’t future-proof, and you will soon feel the need to upgrade to a better device.
The performance is quite smooth with the MediaTek MT6752M octa-core processor, paired with 2 GB RAM, allowing a decent amount of multitasking without any stumbles or stutters. The phone heats up during gaming or extensive camera use. The stamina of the 2,600 mAh battery will get you through a day, provided you are not gaming or using it extensively for navigation purposes.
The 13-megapixel camera takes detailed shots in all lighting conditions. This aspect of the performance is on a par with the rivals. Daytime and good-light photographs are rich and well detailed. Colours in low-light pictures, however, aren’t always the most accurate. This is an acceptable camera at that price, but not something that would sway the buying decision.
Phones around the Rs.20,000 price point are no longer cutting corners on critical specifications. Be it the Motorola Moto X Play (Rs.19,999), Asus ZenFone 2 (Rs.19,999) or Huawei Honor 7 (Rs.22,999), specifications play an important part, which subsequently have a direct impact on the user experience. Which is why the HTC One E9s is a bit perplexing—most of all the lower resolution display.
Sennheiser CX 3.00
Rs.3,490
The CX 3.00 is available in three colours—red, black and white. And this is the 2015 variant of the original CX series, which was first available in 2008. There are some important design changes, the most prominent one being the angled earpiece architecture. This allows the earphones to rest more comfortably on the outer ear, and sit better in the ear as a result.
After wearing them, we realized they are a big improvement over the conventional in-ear earphones that have the straight-line design—they tend to not fit very snugly, and can start falling out under the cable weight. The improved fit also means these earphones do a much better job of blocking out ambient noise.
The sound quality is extremely good, and it actually builds on the predecessors by improving the bass as well as mid-range sound. That is because the CX 3.00 supports more frequencies compared to the CX 300-II, and that means the same tracks sound richer. Bass is better, which should be good news for fans of trance music, for example. Better mid-range frequencies improve most genres of music, including rock. This works across all music, be it vocal-intensive or a wide soundstage. The CX 3.00 are quite loud too, and compared to the CX 300-II, they are louder through the volume range, irrespective of whether you are using an iPod, a smartphone or a PC to play music. And there is absolutely no distortion till 70% volume, beyond which vocals start sounding a bit sharp.
The CX 3.00 are one of the most comfortable pair of in-ear headphones we have tested in a long time. And for the price, they are good as first earphones or upgrades.
