Review: Blue Sadie Headphones

Maybe you listen to music every day. But when’s the last time you felt your music—let it pluck you out of this world and ferry you to the front row of your own personal concert hall? The right album can induce toe tapping and head swaying, but an amazing set of headphones make you want to shut your eyes and ride a great melody to a new land.

With their built-in amplifier and crystal sound, Blue’s Sadie headphones have inspired me to listen to new singles and driven me to uncharted places on familiar albums. They have the uncanny ability to take a track I’ve heard for years and bust it open again, exposing its raw melodies and emotion to new air.

If you plopped a robotic head on top of Blue’s Sadie headphones, they’d look like they might jump off your desk and zip off down the hallway when you aren’t looking. The massive cans weigh just shy of a pound, with a metal frame that exposes the joints like a Terminator exoskeleton. Blue says the headphone design takes its inspiration from a Formula One racecar's suspension, but the prominent hinges that jut backward remind me more of the hind legs of a kangaroo.

Yet, for headphones this bulky, the Sadies feel surprisingly comfortable (though the weight does take some getting used to). They naturally clamp together, and cup your head like a supremely soft pair of forceps. Those big joints make the fit adjustable for all but the largest of heads and they stick in place well. The leathery earcups have a snug, glasses-friendly fit, producing enough isolation that I couldn’t hear much of anything outside the pleasantly spacious soundstage they create around my ears. There's also no question which side is left and right.

The pads do tend to get warm after extended sessions, like most larger over-ear headphones, and they’re definitely made to use at home. I get exhausted just thinking about wearing them out on the town, and they’re a little constricting when you wear them around your neck. Blue does include an iPhone/iPad friendly cable with play controls, though it’s a 3.5mm audio connector, so if you own an iPhone 7 or newer, you’ll need that handy Lightning adapter.

A soft fabric pouch for travel and several lengthy cables are also in the box, like a three-meter standard audio cable and 3.5mm-to-quarter-inch adapter—long enough to reach the couch near your stereo. The other essential cord is a one-meter Micro USB charger. You’ll need this to charge up the headphone's built-in amplifier, which gets about 12 hours of juice per session (less if you listen particularly loudly). The headphones hold a charge insanely well, because they stop playing as soon as you take them off and the cups clamp together.

That built-in amplifier and 50mm dynamic drivers are the stars of the show here. You can run the headphones in passive mode (which switches the amplifier off), and they still have a an excellent, balanced sound. But a twist of the knob at the base of the left ear cup flicks the amplifier on. With that amp turned on, the Sadies require far less power from your mobile device or your laptop. There are two amp modes: On and On+. Both of these modes boost the volume substantially, but also smooth out and enhance the sound profile of your music across the full frequency range. The effects are subtle, but that's the way it should be. You can really hear the difference on instrumental and live tracks.

I especially like On+ mode, which adds some natural-sounding bass in the tracks. This sweetening is especially noticeable in older rock songs like The Beatles' "Here Comes The Sun". Blue’s intent isn’t to Beats-ify, or bass-up, your music to all hell. Instead, the subtle flavoring just gives the tracks a little more life.

Also, other headphones that claim to beef up your audio do so by use of a digital signal processor. Blue doesn't use a DSP chip. The amplification inside the Sadies is all analog, which gives your music a warm, natural sound. The 240 mW amp also makes the headphones incredibly loud. You can crank them up high enough to hear distortion and destroy your hearing if that’s your wish, but at audible levels, things sound supreme.

Using them, I’ve found myself excitedly hopping through decades and albums, listening to countless classics all over again. Classics like Nirvana’s famous MTV Unplugged in New York, Tracy Chapman’s hopeful yet bleak self-titled debut, and The Beatles' Abbey Road sound just as good as some of my newer personal favorites like Aimee Mann’s Mental Illness and The Way by Macy Gray. The Sadie can enhance the natural instrumentation of a track like Steely Dan’s "Deacon Blues" just as well as the electronic production in "Starboy" by The Weeknd.

The Blue Sadie are the kind of headphones that will turn anyone into an audiophile. Charging the amp every so often is annoying, but even in passive mode (which is the best mode if you have your own headphone amp or other high-end gear), they elevate any track. The only real downside is the price. At $400, they definitely aren’t the most expensive set of wired over-ear headphones you can buy, but they ain’t cheap. But if you have the cash, they’re some of the finest headphones your ears may ever know.

I’d also recommend the Blue Lola and Blue Ella models. The $700 Blue Ella have added planar-magnetic drivers, which reduce distortion even more than the dynamic drivers in the Sadie and Lola models. The $250 Blue Lola is basically the same set up as the Sadie, but lacks the built-in amplifier. It won’t get quite as loud or have as much bass, but the passive mode still sounds outstanding. You’ll love the sound of all three of these models.