Very entry level headphones, certainly not meant for the affectionado. Decent in terms of looks but that�s about it.
The GHP – 400S is your typical supra-aural (resting over the ear) foldable headphone. It features closed cans which have an interesting jewel-like design on the outside. When you view it from different angles, you can see different facets of the jewel design shimmer. The head band is pure white and is adjustable. The sliding mechanism is not the best we’ve seen, but quite passable. The quality of the pad material is surprisingly decent. The 1.5 meter wire is most welcome if you happen to be using the headphone with your PC, but if you’re using it on the go, it may prove to be a bit of an overkill. Overall build quality gets an even 5 on 10.
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Comfort is very important especially when talking about supra-aural headphones. Since such headphones rest on the pinna (outer ear), they’re at a natural disadvantage. The pinna is particularly sensitive to pressure for most people. The GHP – 400S is quite comfortable though. The product packaging has a cryptic graph which tries to depict the pressure at different head-band lengths (we’re guessing). It shows 190 gram-force at a length of 17 cm. The cans rotate 90 degrees making
Performance
We fired up the old iPod Touch 3G to test this headphone with a series of our test tracks. The tracks included sweeps and different genres encoded at different bit rates (from a few 192 kbps tracks to majority lossless or 320 kbps) to simulate a typical usage scenario. This headphone is frankly one of the more low end ones we’ve received. The mid frequencies are muffled. Though there is a good amount of bass, it’s not very tight and tends to drown out other instruments – Angel by Massive Attack emphasised this very significantly. Distortion creeps in only post the 80% mark, which is a bit of a saving grace. Overall the texture of sound is like it’s emerging from a hollow environment, not tinny, but muffled and radio-like. We couldn’t really say if a particularly frequency range was repressed. Its safe to say thought that the frequency curve of this device would look completely skewed and downward sloping from the bass end. There is almost no sound isolation, but since they’re loud enough, you can drown our any ambient noise.
Our Take
Summing up, in the extremely entry level “kaam chalao” segment, these may emerge as the better performing of the lot. This in no way implies that they’re a good pair of headphones. Go for them if you like bass, don’t care too much about detail, and want a different look. Priced at Rs 680 we’d say they’re still not value for money and only a small step up from picking up unbranded headphones off the street. A price of Rs. 500 might be more justified.
Quick Specs:
Sensitivity – 107 dB
Impedance – 32 ohm
Cord Length – 1.5m
Type – Supra-aural
Ratings:
Features: 6
Build: 5
Performance: 5
Value: 5
Overall: 5