AudioMX HB-S3 Bluetooth headphones

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Good Bluetooth headphones

I was sent these AudioMX HB-S3 headphones for review and I think they are very good. They have very good sound, they are well made and comfortable and they are a good contender in a crowded market in this price range.

They are very nicely packaged with a standard mini-USB charging lead, a jack lead for wired connection, a nice carry-pouch and a very good User Manual in good English.

The headphones seem solidly made and robust, and I like the design, which is classic and unfussy. Functionally they are very good. They fold for ease of transport and storage, they are light and very comfortable and the ear pads are pretty soft.  The grip is quite tight and although I find them fine for prolonged listening, if you don't light your headphones with a strongish grip you might find these a little over-tight. they may be a little tight for some people. The controls are on the right hand earcup and are very well set out and easy to use. They are the usual you'd expect: on/off and volume + and – buttons, plus separate skip forward and back buttons (a feature which I like).  The power button also serves as pause/play, and there are standard phone controls, clearly set out in the manual, with a perfectly decent microphone. The sound seal is good with little leakage and they do a good job of keeping the world's noise out.

Bluetooth pairing is very straightforward. I found both the battery life and range good. Wired connection via an ordinary jack lead works perfectly well: I notice no difference in sound quality between the two modes. It is very handy to be able to connect to non-Bluetooth devices, and the headphones work in wired mode without having to be switched on, so if you do run out of charge it's a useful fallback, too.

Sound quality is very good: well balanced with a firm and full bass. Trebles in most music are generally bright and clear, middles are rich and the articulation is good. I have a playlist of test tracks which I use to test audio products and these performed very well on modern music: classic rock like the Stones or The Who sounds great, they are very good for acoustic music and they respond very well to the deep bass in Sorrow by The National and in London Grammar's Hey Now, for example.

To my ears, they didn't perform quite so well in classical music. They struggled to articulate individual orchestral instruments, high strings and brass sound a little muffled, choral music can be a bit mushy and so on. I can't really explain this, but I have sometimes found it with other headphones, too. However, I got none of these effects with rock, pop, Americana or any of the other modern stuff I listen to, and if you're not going to be listening to classical music, it won't be a problem.

Overall I think these are very good headphones at this price. They are functional, neat and comfortable and the sound is very good (with the provisos about classical music). They seem solid and durable and they are very portable, too so if you're looking for a set of Bluetooth and wired headphones, I can recommend these.

Amazon page HERE