The Sennheiser RS 185 are comfortable, easy-to-use and have an improved sound over the RS 175 and RS 165. Their open design enhances their sound quality, but it also makes them less versatile than the already limited use of the RS series. They're leaky, they barely block any ambient noise, and you need the stand for the headphones to work, so they won't be practical for commuting or sports.
Our Verdict
The Sennheiser RS 185 are good home theater headphones, but they're not very versatile. The stand transmitter limits their use outdoors, and since the 185 are open-back headphones, they struggle even more in loud environments. On the upside, they're comfortable and have a good sound for critical listening.
-
Low latency connection.
-
Good sound quality.
-
Poor isolation and high leakage, by design.
-
Limited range and usability.
Good for neutral listening. They have a well-balanced sound and a more spacious Soundstage than the RS 175 or 165, thanks to their open back design. However, they also tend to sound a bit sharp on some tracks and their Bass may sound slightly muddy. Overall they deliver a good audio reproduction that should satisfy most listeners.
Not suitable for commuting and traveling. Like the rest of the RS series, you must have the transmitter in range for them to work. That and the fact that the RS 185 are open-back makes them even less practical to use anywhere else but at home or at the office in front of your TV or PC.
Not intended for sports. They have a fixed transmitter, and they're bulky and unstable. Also, you have to be in range of the transmitter which is very limiting for sports.
Subpar for office use. They have a decent line-of-sight range, and they're comfortable and easy-to-use. However, they're a lot leakier than any of the previous models, and they don't isolate because they're open-back headphones which make them unideal for quiet or loud offices.
- 5.5 Mixed Usage
- 7.8 Neutral Sound
- 4.8 Commute/Travel
- 4.6 Sports/Fitness
- 5.5 Office
- 6.2 Wireless Gaming
- 4.8 Wired Gaming
- 1.8 Phone Call
Changelog
- Updated Nov 21, 2019: Converted to Test Bench 1.3.1.
- Updated Nov 21, 2019: Converted to Test Bench 1.3.
- Updated Aug 21, 2019: We've udpated the Line In input in the Base/Dock Box as we had incorrectly listed these headphones had a 1/8" jack.
- Updated Feb 16, 2018: Converted to Test Bench 1.2.
- Updated Aug 10, 2017: Converted to Test Bench 1.1.
Compared To Other Headphones
See our recommendations for the best TV headphones and the best over-ear headphones.
The Sennheiser RS 175 RF Wireless and the Sennheiser RS 185 RF Wireless are very similar headphones in design, but the 175 are closed-backs while the 185 are open-backs. This means that if you are looking for TV headphones to watch movies and TV shows without bothering your household or to block out ambient noise, the closed-back RS 175 will be a better option. However, the RS 185 have a better sound quality, but they don’t block noise and leak quite a bit, which won’t be ideal in a noisy environment. The RS 185 also feel a bit more premium and better-built, and you also get an RCA input that the RS 175 don’t have.
For watching TV at home, the Sennheiser RS 185 RF Wireless are a better option than the Dolby Dimension Wireless if you don’t want to purchase an aptX-LL dongle. Their dock acts as a transmitter, which gives you lower latency for watching video content. However, they're open-back and won’t isolate against your household noise, which the Dolby Dimension Wireless ANC feature can help with. The Sennheisers have great audio reproduction, but you’ll need batteries to power them and they aren’t as well-built and comfortable as the Dolby.
Test Results
The RS 185 have the same form factor as the rest of the RS series from Sennheiser. They come with a TR transmitter stand that also acts as a dock and a charging station. The RS 185, however, has open ear cups and different padding on the ear cups which makes them look slightly more premium than the RS 175 and RS 165. They also have additional buttons for Level and Balance control that are not on the rest of the RS series and a copper/brown color scheme instead of the typical black and silver of the other models. Overall, they're kind of bulky headphones not meant for outdoor use, so they won't be the most fashionable headphones, but their simple and utilitarian design will work for most.
The RS 185 are comfortable headphones with better padding than the RS 175. They have the same spacious ear cups but the padding on the RS 185 is covered in a soft suede-like fabric that feels nicer on the skin. Unfortunately, they also have the same issue of pressure being poorly distributed around the ear cup. After listening to them for a while, you might start feeling a little soreness between your ear lobes and your jaw. It's not painfully uncomfortable, but it's not ideal either.
The RS 185 have an efficient controls scheme, but it's slightly limited. Like the rest of the RS series, they can not take calls or play/pause your music. However, the buttons provided are responsive and offer functionality for volume control, L/R balance, and a level button to toggle between automatic level control (ALC) and manual Level control (MLC). MLC can be directly adjusted with the dial on the stand.
The RS 185 like the RS 175 and 165 are not portable headphones. They're quite large they don't fold, and you need the stand for them actually to work. You most likely won't be carrying them around on your person.
The RS 185 use slightly more premium materials in their build quality than the RS 175 and 165. Like the previous models, the headband is fairly flexible and reinforced with a thin metal frame. The ear cups are also decently dense and don't feel as cheap as that on the RS 165 or 175. However, when compared to some other headphones in their price range, they do not feel as sturdy, or durable.
The RS 185 are not the most stable headphones. They're decently tight so they won't move much during casual listening sessions but unfortunately, their ear cups are heavy and sway a lot under physical activity. This means they won't be good headphones for sports or working out. Also, they need to be in range to their charging dock so sports in general with these headphones is impractical.
- Sennheiser RS 185 Headphones
- TR 185 transmitter
- Audio cable
- Optical cable
- (EU) power adapter
- (UK) power adapter
- (AU) power adapter
- (US) power adapter
- 2 AAA NiMH rechargeable batteries
- Manual
Good Consistency performance. Unlike the closed-back RS 165 and RS 175 that perform quite poorly in terms of Bass Range consistency, the open-back RS 185 shows only 4dB of variance at 20Hz across our 5 human subjects, which is good. They also have a decent consistency in their Treble Range performance.
Very good Bass Range performance. Low-bass is extended down to 20Hz, which is excellent. However, the response shows a bit of tilt towards high-bass with up to 4dB of overemphasis at 150Hz. The makes the sound of these headphones slightly boomy.
Very good Mid Range performance. The only remark here is the slight bump in low-mid, which is the continuation of the high-bass overemphasis, adding a bit of a muddy quality to the reproduction.
Decent Treble Range performance. Low-treble is overemphasized by about 5dB which makes these headphones slightly bright and forward sounding. The dip in treble has a subtle negative effect on the detail and articulation of vocals/leads and the peak around 10KHz could make these headphones a bit sharp on overly-bright tracks.
Poor Isolation. Due to the open-back design, these headphones don't isolate any noise below 1KHz. Above that, they achieve a mediocre 15dB of isolation which is typical of most open-back headphones. In our testing we also noticed that the RS 185 may be using a noise gate to suppress the self-noise produced by these headphones, which made measuring it quite difficult. However, due to the speed of the gate, the self-noise of these headphones shouldn't be an issue for most users.
Poor Leakage. The significant portion of leakage on these open-back headphones is spread between 200Hz and 20KHz which is quite a broad range. The overall level of the leakage is also relatively loud.
The RS 185 like the 175 or the 165 have a good battery life. They lasted about 22 hours and also use rechargeable AAA batteries that can be charged with the stand. Unfortunately it takes more than 8 hours for a full charge which is very limiting, but the charge time is heavily dependent on the capacity, age and wear of the rechargeable batteries. On the upside, you can always just swap out the AAA with new non-rechargeable batteries which may be less cost effective but has 0 charge time.
Recommended Articles
Comments
Sennheiser RS 185 RF Wireless: Main Discussion
Let us know why you want us to review the product here, or encourage others to vote for this product.
- 21010
Outside of validating latency between RCA and Optical, I honestly think this review wasn’t bad, just the referenced scale compares it to high end portable Bluetooth headphones, and they get docked points for not being that As you pointed out a lot of these views are clarified in the text review. It’s just unfortunate that there isn’t a realistic means to compare these headphones directly against their competitors …. If there even are any. Over ear, open back RF headphones are spectacular for content consumption and gaming as long as you’re in an environment that supports that format.
That’s a fair critique about the RCA and Optical connections here. I don’t want to leave you hanging on other current options on the market. It occurs to me that depending on how you watch and stream media, I think another avenue worth exploring is gaming headsets. If you have a PlayStation or Xbox console, or if you use a PC as your entertainment hub, you get a greater selection of wireless headphones with low latency to choose from if you look at gaming headsets. Using the apps for Netflix (and other streaming platforms) on a gaming console (or PC) would allow you to get more options for wireless headphones. Of course, that’s a moot suggestion if you’re connecting directly to the TV. Anyway, I just thought I’d mention that as a possibility if it’s of any use.
- 21010
Hi there, I’m sorry that the review doesn’t meet your expectations. It’s a rather old review that hasn’t been updated to our current Test Bench 1.8, which would include test benches in between that improve things like latency testing. To your point, it’s true that we’re bumping up against the limitations of our testing and scoring with RF headphones for TVs, and these days we try to contextualize the performance scores more clearly in the text. The scores aren’t meant to replace the review’s writing and we anticipate that specialized headphones won’t score perfectly, and ideally, that’s accounted for in the text. We’re interested in improving our work, so what kinds of tests do you think would be more useful to include? What kinds of details about how headphones are tested would you like to see in our reviews? You’re right that the market for RF headphones is pretty limited these days. Manufacturers seem to have begun shifting towards solutions like the Sonos Ace Wireless, which integrates with the brand’s home theater setup. Thanks for your feedback.
Outside of validating latency between RCA and Optical, I honestly think this review wasn’t bad, just the referenced scale compares it to high end portable Bluetooth headphones, and they get docked points for not being that As you pointed out a lot of these views are clarified in the text review. It’s just unfortunate that there isn’t a realistic means to compare these headphones directly against their competitors …. If there even are any. Over ear, open back RF headphones are spectacular for content consumption and gaming as long as you’re in an environment that supports that format.
- 21010
What is this trash tier review? These are not travel headphones, they are not outdoor or activity headphones. They are stationary, open back, sound stage media consumption headphones. It’s like if you started doing reviews on TV’s and monitors by the same standard. This is dumb. The lack of information around testing is also so absurdly sub par that It’s insulting to see this was ever published. Latency 55ms? Were you using a 30 foot RCA cable? Did you test with the Optical cable at all? Why is 22 hours of battery life for wireless monitors that use a dedicated docking station a negative? These are not leaving your house with you. 0 points for BT and 5 points for wired? These are by design, and not bad design choices. These are not BT headphones. To digress for a moment, I don’t think this is ONLY an issue with this review. I’m sure there are other wonderful devices that have terrible reviews on this site simply because every pair of headphones need to be compared to each other regardless of their intended use case. Show me an RF based open back pair of headphones that supports up to 100m range and 24 hours of usage with a better sound stage than these and I’ll eat my words… I am on a mission to find an update/replacement for my Rs-185’s that I have had for nearly 8 years, but they are still above and by far the best option on the market.
Hi there, I’m sorry that the review doesn’t meet your expectations. It’s a rather old review that hasn’t been updated to our current Test Bench 1.8, which would include test benches in between that improve things like latency testing. To your point, it’s true that we’re bumping up against the limitations of our testing and scoring with RF headphones for TVs, and these days we try to contextualize the performance scores more clearly in the text. The scores aren’t meant to replace the review’s writing and we anticipate that specialized headphones won’t score perfectly, and ideally, that’s accounted for in the text.
We’re interested in improving our work, so what kinds of tests do you think would be more useful to include? What kinds of details about how headphones are tested would you like to see in our reviews?
You’re right that the market for RF headphones is pretty limited these days. Manufacturers seem to have begun shifting towards solutions like the Sonos Ace Wireless, which integrates with the brand’s home theater setup. Thanks for your feedback.
- 21010
What is this trash tier review? These are not travel headphones, they are not outdoor or activity headphones. They are stationary, open back, sound stage media consumption headphones. It’s like if you started doing reviews on TV’s and monitors by the same standard. This is dumb. The lack of information around testing is also so absurdly sub par that It’s insulting to see this was ever published. Latency 55ms? Were you using a 30 foot RCA cable? Did you test with the Optical cable at all? Why is 22 hours of battery life for wireless monitors that use a dedicated docking station a negative? These are not leaving your house with you. 0 points for BT and 5 points for wired? These are by design, and not bad design choices. These are not BT headphones.
To digress for a moment, I don’t think this is ONLY an issue with this review. I’m sure there are other wonderful devices that have terrible reviews on this site simply because every pair of headphones need to be compared to each other regardless of their intended use case.
Show me an RF based open back pair of headphones that supports up to 100m range and 24 hours of usage with a better sound stage than these and I’ll eat my words… I am on a mission to find an update/replacement for my Rs-185’s that I have had for nearly 8 years, but they are still above and by far the best option on the market.