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Home > Gadget Reviews > Master & Dynamic MW60 Wireless Headphones
Master & Dynamic MW60 Wireless Headphones
What's Hot: Premium quality materials, precise machined components, comfortable design, superior audio clarity and performance. What's Not: The headband length isn't very long.
Reviewed November 9, 2015 by Tong Zhang, Senior Editor
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More and more audiophiles find themselves playing their favorite music on the go from their phones, tablets or laptops. Getting lossless digital music is relatively easy. Finding a pair of wireless headphones that can meet the standard of high quality wired headphones has been challenging. High wireless compression rates often muddied sound clarity and in some cases cut certain frequencies out completely. Master & Dynamic tackled the wireless headphone performance enigma and the result was their popular MH40, which came out last year and made a head start in achieving top sound quality for audiophiles in the wireless headphones space. But they reached a new height with this year's MW60. Design The Master & Dynamic MW60 Wireless Over Ear Headphones took the MH40 and made it more solid and luxurious. The metal core has been strengthened with an exterior casing that's made with stainless steel and coated with a PVD coating for better durability and it facilitates the brushed silver or gunmetal look. The foldable hinges and the piston-style length adjustors are well machined and heavy-duty. The joints have brass bearings for longevity and smooth action. The 45mm Neodymium drivers sit in oblong ear cover frames and are protected in milled aluminum with anodized finish. The MW60 features jewelry-like treatment including a laser etched serial number on the driver plate and an enamel filled logo on the aluminum cover. Outside the metal frame, you'll find cowhide leather covering the exterior of the headband and the ear cups, a change from the MH40's design that makes the MW60 look better appointed. Softer lambskin leather wraps around the memory foam ear pads that are removable. At 12.4 ounces, the MW60 is heavier than the Beyerdynamic's MMX300 that has a much bigger form, but the design is comfortable enough for long listening sessions. The length adjustment isn't very long, but most people should be able to find the right length. The MW60 folds into a surprisingly small package that can fit anywhere in your backpack, gear bag or even a mid-sized purse. The MW60 comes in two color options: silver with brown leather or gunmetal with black leather. The MW60 is also available in a Zero Halliburton aluminum travel case for the ultimate in protection, if the included canvas travel case isn't up to your standards.
The Master & Dynamic MW60 Wireless Over Ear Headphones offer tactile controls that are easy to use while you're wearing them. The well-machined metal play/pause and volume buttons live on the back of the right ear cover, and the power on/off and Bluetooth slider lives on the left along with two small LED lights for indication of power on/off and Bluetooth pairing. The headphones have built-in Bluetooth 4.1 supporting AptX, AAC, MP3, SBC and FastStream audio codecs, and it can connect with two devices simultaneously. There's also a built-in omnidirectional mic for voice calls. We paired the MW60 with a variety of smartphones, tablets, laptops and desktop machines, and in these tests, the headphones paired and connected with all easily. The headphones offer a Micro USB recharging port and a 3.5mm audio jack on the bottom of the ear cups. Audio The custom 45mm Neodymium drivers offer 5-25KHz frequency range and 32 ohms impedance. They're covered by photo etched stainless steel grilles and are set in silicone driver plates. The sound quality reflects the precisely machined system that produces the highest clarity and powerful tuning we've heard on wireless headphones. If you want the short version of our verdict on the MW60's audio quality, here it is: they're simply the best sounding wireless headphones we've tried to date. We tested them against both wired and wireless headphones including products from V-MODA, Sennheiser and Beyerdynamic; and we found the MW60's audio performance noticeably better in clarity, tuning and volume than those headphones. The MW60 brings both extreme clarity and brightness to treble in the way that serves more than one music genre well. In the masterfully recorded and engineered Cowboy Junkies' album The Trinity Sessions, the vocal sounds bright and bass is expansive. The clarity in the Mining for Gold track is so good that you can hear the ventilation in the background. In the Sweet Jane track, the bass is powerful yet never muddy and the vocal extremely clear and bright. The dynamic range is so full that you really notice the subtleties in each and every channel of the track. Listening to Joni Mitchell's Miles of Aisles using the MW60, it sounds like Mitchell is singing beside you yet from across the room all at once. The brightness of the vocal doesn't erase the space of a sound stage setting in this Live album. Not many headphones, let alone wireless headphones can achieve that, beyond high-end professional recording studio gear. If you're an audiophile with a sharp ear, you might notice the compression between wired and wireless playing methods on the MW60. That said, this is the smallest sound loss we've experienced on Bluetooth headphones. In all Rock and Folk songs we tested, treble, vocal and mid to high range all had an extreme semblance of realism without sibilance even in bright cymbal pieces.
The clarity and the excellent stereo separation play well in instrumental tracks, movie FX and gaming audio. Playing Ry Cooder's Dark Was the Night on the Paris, Texas soundtrack album, the MW60 manages to showcase the characteristics of each string on the resonator guitar clearly and fully. A trained acoustic guitarist will be able to hear every technique through the headphones. In Haruto + Junko Yoshida's Trumpet + Piano, the trumpet sounds buttery smooth via the MW60 and the piano bright, realistic and full. The clarity, brightness and the special tuning of the MW60 also work very well when you play high quality movies and well-mastered games. Don't be surprised if you hear FX that you simply missed using other headphones. What about bass? The MW60 has both extreme clarity and booming power, though it never artificially emphasizes the bass unless the tracks were engineered as such. In Something More Besides You by Cowboy Junkies, you can hear each piece of the band clearly and the bass sounds both clear and powerful. In Take the Power Back by Rage Against the Machine, the lows from the kick drum and bass guitar sound both clear and haunting. If you're into Hip Hop and Rap tracks that have overwhelming bass, the MW60 has enough bass power to bring it out, though it puts more weight on clarity and balance than amplifying the bass. |
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Battery Life The Master & Dynamic MW60 has a built-in Lithium Ion rechargeable battery that's rated for 15 hours of continuous playtime. In our tests, the headphones lasted for at least 10 hours of continuous play. If you're on the road and the battery on the headphones runs out, you can continue to play via the 3.5mm AUX port for even better and louder sound. The MW60 comes with a heavy-duty woven charging cable, a 3.5mm three ring audio cable and a leather cable box for easy storage and carrying. The headphones take about 3 hours to recharge.
Conclusion The Master & Dynamic MW60 headphones are one of those headphones that are not only the tool for playing music but also the reason you want to listen to music for hours on end. The premium materials, comfortable form and the benchmark audio performance will make the MW60 either the trailblazer of high-end wireless headphones for more products in this caliber to come, or the one-hit wonder that will stand on the podium alone for a while. We hope it's the former role that the MW60 will play but either way, you're getting the best audio experience on a pair of wireless Bluetooth headphones that are well worth the price of admission. For those who play loud music via their headphones in an office, you should know that the MW60 does let some sound leak through, but only when you turn up the volume and sit with someone close for them to hear your music. These headphones are for audiophiles on the go. If you safeguard a few music pieces that qualify as "soul trembling" to you from headphones that might not give you the desired experience, feel free to bring them out with the MW60. You'll not be disappointed. Price: $549 Website: www.masterdynamic.com |
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