Danny Weber
21:01 27-10-2025
© Sennheiser
Our Sennheiser HDB 630 review tests sound, ANC, features, and battery. With the BTD 700 dongle and aptX Lossless, these $500 cans near studio wired quality.
For years, Sennheiser has been shorthand for precise, pristine sound. This time, the German maker ventures into a space it hasn’t quite owned before: audiophile-grade audio without the cable. The new Sennheiser HDB 630, priced at $500, aims to deliver studio-level quality over Bluetooth. Does it succeed? Yes—though not without caveats.
Sennheiser says the HDB 630 borrow their shell from the Momentum 4, and it shows. The shape and fit are genuinely comfortable, yet the look leans more mid-tier than flagship at this price. The build is largely plastic, with light silver accents that help a little, but aesthetics clearly take a back seat to practicality.
The right earcup houses a touch panel for swipe, tap, and even pinch gestures. The pinch activates adaptive noise cancelling and lets you fine-tune ANC on the fly. It’s an appealing idea, though the gesture logic isn’t always intuitive to remember.
Elsewhere, it’s familiar Sennheiser: soft earpads, a well-judged clamping force, and solid passive isolation. Despite being slightly heavier than the Momentum 4, the HDB 630 stay comfortable over long sessions, which says a lot about the ergonomics-first approach.
The headline here is a set of new 42 mm drivers and a thoroughly reworked acoustic system. The promise is a neutral, balanced tuning with lively mids and a broad soundstage—aimed at the character of open-back wired models.
Out of the box the sound registers as very good, but the real potential unlocks with the included BTD 700 USB-C dongle. It enables 24-bit/96 kHz transmission via aptX Adaptive and aptX Lossless. Once connected, the stage opens up, imaging sharpens, and instruments gain a more convincing sense of depth.
On the standard SBC codec, the presentation lags: it’s clean but lacks that spark. Set up “the right way,” though, the HDB 630 edge impressively close to open studio monitors.
A musical example makes the case. The TRON: Ares score by Nine Inch Nails delivers deep bass, hefty impact, and rich texture—there’s a sense the music breathes. Shift to denser rock like Thrice’s Horizons/West, and the stage narrows a touch, the energy dips, and the sound flattens. The takeaway: these headphones are in their element with electronic, instrumental, and atmospheric material, less so with heavier genres that demand thick, driving low end.
The Sennheiser Smart Control Plus app offers flexible tuning. A true parametric equalizer lets you shape the frequency curve rather than just nudge a few sliders, which helps add low-end weight for rock or smooth the top end for jazz.
The Crossfeed feature blends left and right channels to mimic speakers. The effect is subtle yet pleasant, and the result feels more natural.
Other highlights include adaptive noise cancelling, a transparency mode, multipoint connectivity, and Auracast for broadcasting audio to multiple devices. There’s a catch: settings are managed only via a smartphone. With no desktop app, tweaking on a PC is less convenient than it should be.
The ANC isn’t a revolution, but it’s solid. It reins in voices, office hum, and transit noise, landing close to the Momentum 4. It may not be Bose or Sony, yet the gap feels small in everyday use.
Call quality is clean, and background sounds are noticeably subdued. Despite Sennheiser’s claim of improved call quality through the BTD 700, in practice results favor the headset’s own microphones.
The advertised 60 hours with ANC holds up. In regular listening with noise cancelling, the results come close to the claim. Using the dongle at high bitrates drops runtime to about 45 hours, which remains impressive.
There’s no fully passive wired mode without power, but a 10-minute top-up yields roughly seven hours of playback—excellent for travel days.
The premium field is crowded: Sony WH-1000XM6, Bose QuietComfort Ultra, Apple AirPods Max, and Bowers & Wilkins PX7 S3. Sony nails the feature balance, Bose sets the comfort benchmark, and Apple leans on design and ecosystem. Judged by sound quality alone, though, the Sennheiser HDB 630 pull ahead.
The Sennheiser HDB 630 aren’t just another wireless pair—they reach for common ground between audiophile rigor and everyday convenience. They sound superb, especially with the dongle, delivering detail and depth that used to require an amp and a cable.
The design won’t turn heads, and the $500 price means a deliberate choice. But for those chasing maximum sound quality in a wireless package, this is likely the standout pick of 2025. Just don’t leave that dongle behind: without it, the HDB 630 surrender a noticeable slice of their magic.