Sennheiser MX 686G Sport Earphone Review

The ear tips themselves feature a tear drop shape and an extendable tip found near the top of the earphone, which when combined creates an extremely snug, yet very comfortable fit.

Looking down the 1.2m audio cable, you will find that the flat green cable leads to an in-line remote control, with a black shirt clip and further the 3.5mm Jack plug.

The in-line remote control doubles in controls for audio volume UP/Down, as well as track changes. The inline remote control also includes a microphone for voice calls.

PERFORMANCE

When it comes to how these earphones sound, we can take a variety of steps to test them. Keep in mind that in our testing, we reviewed these ‘everything-but-Apple’ compatible (i.e., Samsung, LG, HTC, Windows, Blackberry) earphones with both an Apple device and an Android device. Often enough when you get a new set of earphones, the first thing most of us do is load up our favorite track and let the sound pump.

Our testing is pretty simple, we load up our playlist that has genres ranging from hip-hop, to folk, to EDM, to classic rock; artists that range from Krewella, to Led Zeppelin, Kanye West and Bob Dylan. We want to experience the range of the audio device from one extreme to the other. It should be noted, we don’t adjust equalization settings when testing, our settings remain on the default.

Let’s start with the easy part, every song we listened to on our Samsung Galaxy Note 4 sounded great, with the exception of some eartip twisting (we come back to this later). We found that there is a great bass response, decent mid-range, but a slightly lacking high range. You will find a satisfying deep bass sound, but the vocals are not as crisp as we would like to hear. The range is rather limited to the higher end of the spectrum.

We found that the more we listened to the Sennheiser MX 686 Sport, the more we were twisting the rubber ear tips. As it turned out, the bass response heard was dependant upon which direction the output of the ear tip was facing. As we moved from various genres, and various artists within the same genre, we were constantly moving the ear tip to try and match the bass response. Don’t get us wrong, once the ear tip was in the right location, the sound was decent for a set of earphones, but it was a pain to keep twisting the ear tip.

To top things off, we used these headphones for their marketed purpose – we went to the gym! As designed, these headphones fit well, were snug and didn’t fall out through our workout routine or through our cardio session. To be honest, half way through our time at the gym we switched to using our standard Apple Earbuds. Why? Well for a few reasons.

Firstly, we found that the inline remote control was too low on the audio cable, typically we fish the audio cable under our shirt to keep it out of harms way while lifting weights. Unfortunately by doing do, the inline remote control was covered up by the shirt. Secondly, these earphones are only compatible with Samsung/Windows/Blackberry devices, which means it didn’t fair well with our iPhone. The inline remote control could only be used to switch back and forth between songs, you couldn’t increase/decrease volume. We also found that if your triple clicked the centre button, it would take you back to the previous song, and increase the volume of the track playing (even if the volume on the iPhone was maxed out).

While comparing the quality of music through our iPhone with the MX 686G Sport and the Apple Earbuds, we actually found the Apple Earbuds to provide a better listening experience. There was no need to be concerned about whether the music was going to drastically change in volume as a track was changed, and there was no need to be concerned with ear tips. Also, the Apple Earbuds provided a more well-rounded listening experience.