Page 2 - Physical Look - Hardware
To loosely quote Henry Ford, the Sennheiser CX 6.00BT is available in any color you want, as long as the color is black. For those who like a modern and clean appearance with some understated visual flare, the Sennheiser CX 6.00BT has you covered. As you can see in our photo above, Sennheiser's logo is embossed onto the back of both earbuds. Its glossy plastic finish is pretty generic, but its material choice makes it very lightweight at 14g, which is the same as the Focal Spark Wireless. The CX 6.00BT is designed to go angled into your ears. I would like to commend Sennheiser for making such lightweight earphones for improved comfort as well as being compact in size, so it still fits well for most people, including me. In the end, I went with the medium sized silicone ear sleeves after trying out the small eartips for the best fit. As with all in-ear monitors, users with different sized ears will be happy to know that the company has included four different sized sleeves.
Located on one side of the Sennheiser CX 6.00BT is the 100mAh battery module, which promises a six-hour battery life. Its counterweight on the other side is the three-button remote, which we will take a look at in just a moment. With the counterweight design, the weight distribution of the CX 6.00BT is reasonably well-balanced. An LED on the remote module shows the connection and charge status. According to the manual, it blinks blue when starting up, blinks red when unpaired or shutting down, alternates between blue and red when pairing, flashes purple during an incoming call, blinks purple when a device is cleared, and flashes blue in idle mode. In normal operation, the LED stays off. The LED glows steady red when the CX 6.00BT is charging and changes to blue when fully charged. The LED is reasonably easy to see indoors but not always outdoors; thankfully, your earphones will announce the statuses like "Power On, "Connected", and "Power Off" in plain English. Hitting the volume down button when the earphones are idling will also trigger an audio announcement on the remaining battery life. Charging the battery takes around one and a half hours, but you cannot charge and listen to the Sennheiser CX 6.00BT at the same time. A quick ten minute charge will give you two extra hours of listening time, however.
The Sennheiser CX 6.00BT earphones connect to your audio device via Bluetooth 4.2. Qualcomm's aptX and aptX LL protocols are supported over Bluetooth and SBC. SBC, or Subband Coding, is the default Bluetooth audio codec with reasonably good audio quality and low processing power requirements. aptX is a time domain ADPCM compression algorithm that promises "CD like quality" according to the people promoting it -- but so does MP3 at 128kbps, which, in my opinion, is quite an overused marketing term in the industry. Do not get me wrong; it is probably still an improvement compared to the standard profile, since it has a more efficient encoding algorithm and higher bitrates. In case you are asking, Apple devices does not support aptX, but many Android devices do. aptX LL is the low latency version of aptX to ensure audio heard through your earphones is properly synchronized with the visual media on your device's screen.
A closer look at Sennheiser's CX 6.00BT earbuds. As aforementioned, the company's logo can be found at the back, while the "L" and "R" markers can be found on the cable guard leading into the earbuds. Its drivers have a rated frequency response of 17Hz to 21kHz. These specifications are beyond the hearing range of a normal human being. Meanwhile, the rated sensitivity is 112dB with <0.5% total harmonic distortion. Like many modern in-ear monitors, the drivers aim directly into your ear for a more direct and transparent sound reproduction characteristic. At the same time, it makes the earphones much easier to clean in the long run too. The sleeves assist the aim into the user's ear canals, and since these earphones are designed for a closed configuration, the Sennheiser CX 6.00BT are made for passive noise canceling. As aforementioned, they come in four sizes for best fit and audio performance to the end user.
The Sennheiser CX 6.00BT earphones comes with a three-button remote and is compatible with Android and Apple iOS devices. The buttons provide some tactile feedback, but the Focal Spark Wireless and Apple EarPods are better. The remote comes with an integrated omnidirectional microphone located behind the buttons to go with your smartphone, since it is hard to find anyone nowadays listening to music on a dedicated digital audio player exclusively, haha. The remote module has an antenna inside, and features a USB Micro-B port for charging the battery as well. In my opinion, USB-C is a more preferable choice.
A flat cable about 60cm in length connects the left earbud to the right earbud. The flat cable is not only light and easy to bend, but also tangle-proof. Based on my experience, the microphonics characteristics of the Sennheiser CX 6.00BT are similar to most earphones I have used in the past. During usage, like all in-ear monitors, rustling noise is inevitable -- and with the CX 6.00BT, it is no exception. It does a fairly decent job at things rubbing against it such as your T-shirt, but if the cable is loose and it is swinging into a foreign material, you will hear more noise. Microphony can be reduced by adjusting the sliding cable guide.
Overall, I found the Sennheiser CX 6.00BT's build quality to be good. With all this in mind, how will it perform? As always, we have the entire Page 3 dedicated to presenting our auditioning results.
Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. Physical Look - Hardware
3. Subjective Audio Analysis
4. Conclusion
