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The Terrific SoundMagic HP151 Headphones -- REVIEWED
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May 29, 2025
Think you need to spend hundreds of dollars for really good sounding headphones with rich, full sound and a solid soundstage? You're going to be quite surprised by the SoundMagic HP151 headphones. Tech expert Dave Taylor of https://www.AskDaveTaylor.com/ auditions and reviews the SoundMagic HP151 - a redesign of the HP150 - and finds that there's lots to like about its sound, but some definite issues with packaging and design nonetheless. Learn more: http://amzn.to/2A8pIJv
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Are these the best headphones you can get for under $150? Let's talk about it
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Oh, Dave Taylor here. Hang on. So I'm listening to these headphones. These are the SoundMagic HP 151
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closed back folding headphones, and they're not Bluetooth. They don't have 37 fancy technological
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pieces to them. What they have are really surprisingly good sound. They're based on a 53
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millimeter driver, so this is a pretty big driver, and it gives you a lot of bass. It goes down to
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10 hertz all the way up to 30,000 hertz, so you got a lot of your music there. Most is 20 to 20,000
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Now, frankly, I'm sure I can't hear 25,000 Hz music, but it's just a really great, rich sound
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95 decibel sensitivity, 32 ohm impedance, and I'm listening to them on, whoops, my lossless
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hi-fi, actually. It's a very interesting little device, but it produces totally lossless music
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Very nice, and these headphones are just what you want to enjoy them. Now this is actually an upgrade to the SoundMagic HP150 which had a different folding mechanism These are so eager to fold that you end up having to actually work to not have them fold up which is okay because
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of course, once you put them on your head, you're good to go. It's sound isolating. There's no
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active noise cancellation, but because of the nature of them being over your ears
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you tend to get a very small amount of ambient noise. So you can really, again, you can really
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just listen to the music. I really like it. And as you can see, there's a lot of mobility here
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There's a lot of this being able to flex and it expands and these go up and down. And they have
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this sort of faux rubber foam and it's actually really comfortable. There's a lot I really like
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about these headphones, actually. One of the things I really like is that they make it really
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easy for you to tell blue L for left and red R for right. Now, you can also tell because you always
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have to have the wire plugged in, and the wire is always going to be on your left ear. But a
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surprising number of audio devices make it really hard for you to figure out what's the right
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orientation. And presumably, music is designed to have things that they want, the artist wants
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on the left side in your left ear. So, why would these companies make this hard
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Don't really know. Now comes with a 3 millimeter cable that plugs into anything You can plug this into your stereo your computer whatever It also has a quarter inch stereo adapter for old school stereos
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and a dual plug adapter for airplanes. All pretty basic. So really the only thing that's weird about
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these, let me just unplug this. So it's 3.5 millimeters on both end but it comes with this
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like stupid long cable. This is an eight foot cable. So at home, totally no big deal. But why
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they don't include like a four foot or five foot cable for people who want it on the road is just
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entirely not clear to me because they've done everything else. In fact, let me show you
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The packaging includes this huge heavy duty case, which is more than I would want to carry. But
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But, you know, again, that gets into the question of this is cool, but I'd rather have a nice quality leather bag that I can fold this up, put it in the bag, throw in the cable, and I'm good to go
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This is all I need. I don't need to have this and this. Am I going to put this in my luggage when I travel
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Probably not. So, you know, they've gotten so much right with this, and the sound is really terrific
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There's a full range of sound, and there's a richness here that you don't hear on most headphones
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I mean these are under we get back to the price in a second but honestly I heard headphones that are more and don sound as good as these They really nice It a nice mellow high so it not bright and it not fatiguing
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They're comfortable, so you get a nice, you know, not only that nice soundstage, but it actually lasts a long time, so you can actually listen for hours
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really really nice. Soundmagic did a really nice job with these except for that weird cable that's
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so long and except for the case which is huge. I'm not going to use it. Sorry guys but I will use the
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headphones. So now before I tell you the price let me ask you to click on that subscribe button
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Really appreciate it. Cool. Now these are the Soundmagic HP-151s and you can pick up a pair
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for yourself at $129.99 at amazon.com. This is Dave Taylor. I'm plugging everything back in and
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I am going to go back to my music. So I'll catch you in my next video