Denon AH-C621R review

Finding a pair of affordable in-ear headphones that are suited to a wide range of music can be hard, but that’s the aim here. Here’s our Denon AH-C621R review. See also: Best budget headphones.

Denon AH-C621R Price

While Denon make some headphones that are pretty pricey, these in-ears are much more affordable and come in at a reasonable £79. That’s some nice change leftover from £100.

That puts them in competition with rivals such as the  Yamaha EPH-M200 and Onkyo E700M, the latter we found pretty impressive and are £5 cheaper.

Denon AH-C621R Design and Build

It’s hard to make in-ear headphones stand out from the crowd and sometimes efforts can go too far. Denon has stuck to its somewhat understated style and we like it.

The AH-C621R headphones look good without adding unnecessary garish elements. They are made from die-cast aluminium and resin making them lightweight – 6.6g not including the cable – and come in either black or white colour options.

Like most in-ears being made these days, each earphone has an angled shape to help it fit your ear better. Denon touts something called a ‘Radial Cascade Damper system’ to prevent cable noise when it rubs on clothes, but we haven’t noticed anything dramatic on that front.

What’s outstanding is the amount of ear-tips supplied in the box. It’s typical to get three sizes but Denon give you five different sets to choose from. There are XS, S, M and L sizes plus a pair of Comply TX400 tips.

The latter are essentially memory foam material, like earplugs used for sleeping, and are not only very comfortable but create an excellent seal in the ear canal. That results in above average noise isolation when compared to regular silicon tips.

The AH-C621R headphones have a three-button in-line control designed for use with iPhone – you can still play and skip on Android – and there’s a microphone for hands-free calls. All pretty standard for a decent pair of headphones.

Also in the box is a spring loaded cable clip which you can attach to clothing to stop the weight of the cable pulling on the earphones.

Denon doesn’t include a pouch here which is a shame. Instead, the round holder in the box is supposedly a ‘carry case’ but it’s pretty awkward to use.

Denon AH-C621R Sound Quality

Inside the die-cast aluminium and resin housing are 11.5mm drivers – not a bad size but we’ve seen bigger. Size isn’t everything though and the AH-C621R have a low impedance of just 16 ohms so can be driven very easily. The headphones are suitably loud at around 50 percent volume on the OnePlus 5 which is nice change from the usual 90-100 percent.

Denon says special ports to the front and rear of the housing help equalise air-pressure on either side of the driver to minimise distortion. Well the headphones don’t sound distorted to us, even at high volume.

These headphones have a huge 6-40,000Hz frequency range, so can cope with Hi-Res audio but don’t carry logo – not on the box anyway.

With that large frequency range, Denon has tuned these in-ears with a flat EQ, or frequency response, which means they don’t favour any particular range too much. This is unusual in today’s bass heavy music culture and is done to appeal to as many listeners and styles as possible.

Although the tuning is relatively flat, these in-ears have decent responsive bass so there are no worries there. As we mentioned earlier, they put out an impressive volume level without having to crank you phone to full blast, which also helps the bass.

The mid-range is also solid and you’ll hear vocals like Adele with great clarity. There’s not much top-end to speak of but enough that the headphone don’t sound like something’s missing. It’s unusual to find flat tuning but overall these headphones still sound good, even if there’s nothing outstanding within the profile.

What this does is makes them suitable for a wide-range of music so you can listen to pop, rock, classical and other genres without one being favoured over the others. So if you have broad taste in music then these will be a good choice of in-ears.