Product review: Heavys H1H headphones

Despite being a music lover, I wouldn’t consider myself an audio nerd. I grew up with money sitting more than tight, so all I ever owned when it came to headphones were usually rather cheap in-ears. Up to this day, I mostly use a pair of Sony in-ears for about 10€ that I usually stock up on in advance because their quality is decent and the price is fine. The most expensive headphones I’ve ever owned so far were a B-stock Razer Kraken Kitty bluetooth headset. And then I was bombed with ads for Heavys H1H headphones with Motionless in White shells. Target marketing works and they caught my attention. Since they’re kinda pricey it took me a while to finally make the move and order them. I’ve been testing them now for about a month and here’s what I think of them.

Price, discounts and shipping

I bought my Heavys when they were on sale. Heavys offers quite a few sales throughout the time, so generally speaking I feel like you hardly ever have to buy them at full price. The website currently says they’re normally 315€ and, with a discount you can get them for 285€ right now (which seems to be rather constantly the case). The artist shells vary, my MIW shells were on the cheaper side for 29€. When I ordered mine, I got quite a big discount and bought the bundle of both headphones and shells for 210€ plus the protection against loss, damage and theft for shipment for 6,95€. So all in all it was quite a discount. Bonus points for Heavys because the final price includes shipping and all taxes, there’s nothing I had to pay extra. Hence, it’s definitely worth checking for discounts from time to time.

I ordered the headphones on a Saturday night and they were shipped from China the following Monday via DHL Express. It took them about 5 days to arrive (unclear if the bank holiday that affected parts of Germany that week caused a delay or not because they arrived at customs in Leipzig and Saxony wasn’t affected by the bank holiday, but my federal state was…).

The packaging was pretty much the exact same size it needed, no waste on packaging materials. They came with a protective case, a USB-C to USB-C charging cable and an aux-cable that allows you to connect them with devices that do not allow bluetooth. The original shells felt nice and of a good quality. However, the Motionless in White shells look a bit cheap to be honest. The MIW-shells are some of the cheaper ones in store. The design is nice, but it’s a very shiny finish that looks and touches like the design is just printed on some foil that was stuck on the shells. I don’t know if that’s the standard. It doesn’t really feel like you could peel off anything and there are no bubbles, but still it doesn’t really look as high-quality as I would’ve expected.

The fit

I am a relatively small person with, as I would think, a relatively small head. I was a little worried that the headphones might be a little too big, but they aren’t. The smallest setting fits my head quite well. The headphones are pretty heavy. One could’ve assumed that, given that apparently there’s several speakers inside. I was still surprised about the weight. It can be a bit much if you wear them for a long time. However, I haven’t had a moment yet that I felt they were getting uncomfortable. There’s not too much pressure on the ears, not even with my glasses on, so that’s pretty nice. My girlfriend, whose head is a little bigger than mine, wore them as well and didn’t complain much either. No idea what they’re like for people with bigger heads though 😅

On the right side there’s a power button where you can also switch on the noise cancelling mode and there are buttons for play/pause, forward and rewind. The play/pause-button is also a volume controller at the same time. To be honest, I still struggle finding the right buttons and switches from time to time. There’s also the plug for the aux-cable. The left side is where you can attach the charger and there’s a bluetooth switch.

Functions & sound

I’ve been testing them for about a month now. Connecting them to a bluetooth device was simple, they can be connected to (at least?) two devices at the same time, however I don’t quite always figure out which one’s currently playing. I’ve had it once that I was listening to music on my laptop while scrolling through Instagram on my phone and suddenly the music from my laptop stopped entirely even when I was looking at posts without any sound. No idea if that’s supposed to be like that. Other than that, it worked fine so far most of the time.

To be honest we start giggling each time I switch them on or off or activate the noise cancelling because they speak to you in this super low voice that is just absolutely over the top. Slightly amusing. But yeah, they tell you when they’re connected – and the noise cancelling mode is apparently called „hell blocker“, which makes me cackle even more. It’s almost cute.

I decided to test them first listening to Ategnatos by Eluveitie via TIDAL. After all, Heavys were designed to fulfil the needs of metalheads and they’re advertised basically claiming that you’ll hear what you haven’t heard before, so I thought: Why not test them with a folk metal band that has a ginourmous amount of folklore instruments at hand? After trying them for the first time, I claimed that I heard the hurdy-gurdy better than ever before. But after switching to different, cheaper headphones I started questioning my perception. Actually, I thought, there wasn’t that much of a difference.

Until I continued testing. I got to review the upcoming Future Palace album for a magazine and when I first listened to the album with my Heavys and later on used a different pair of headphones, I definitely noticed a difference. As I said, I’m not exactly an audio nerd, so I can’t elaborate on what is different – but the sound is fuller. Definitely. There’s a bigger range where my cheaper headphones might’ve cut off or compressered frequencies. It’s great fun to listen to music that has a lot of bass with Heavys – that’s where they have their time to shine. So in hindsight I can’t really judge if maybe playing the Eluveitie stuff from TIDAL had an effect on the performance of my Heavys, because I noticed the difference as soon as I listened to the digital download of the Future Palace mp3s.

So … yeah. I admit they make a difference. I admit that I love them. They’re comfy and soft and nice to the touch and the sound is pretty damn good. I also tried the noise cancelling during some of the German world cup matches when people in the neighbourhood good exceptionally loud while watching football. It worked – I didn’t hear much, although I wasn’t even listenting to music, but rather some ASMR vids on Youtube.

They’re not really made for sleeping with them, or doing sport. (Although I wore them while jumping rope, I didn’t lose them and it didn’t necessarily get uncomfy except that they are REALLY fucking heavy…). But all in all I am convinced and I am happy that I bought them. I enjoy using them a lot.