Review: RHA MA650 Wireless In-Ear Headphones

Most of the time, it doesn’t pay to try and make something look more expensive than it actually is. Squeak around for the day in a pair of pleather leggings and try to tell me that I’m wrong. But I’m happy when a company can work it, and the RHA MA650s are a great example. From the minute you open the box, the RHA MA650s look, feel, and most importantly, sound like a much more expensive set of headphones.

Unlike, say, the AirPods, the MA650s are what we like to call “neckbuds”. The in-ear buds have wires that are attached to a smooth, black rubber tube that runs behind your neck. The earpieces are made of very fancy-looking brushed aluminum. They also click together magnetically if you remove them and leave them dangling from your neck.

For the best fit, RHA includes ten sets of tips, one of which is foam! I have a hard time with fitting in-ear buds, but I did find a tip size that worked for me.

Describing the neck piece as “a black rubber tube” makes it sound a lot less comfortable, but that's what it is. The volume control is separate from the neck piece, which has the power button, a small LED battery status indicator, and a USB-C charging port. The headphones come with a USB-C charging cable that is, unfortunately, too short to charge while wearing them. But both the headphones and cord fit neatly into the included small mesh pouch.

The headphones have an advertised twelve hours of battery life. You can check the power status by peering at the battery bar on your phone, or by pushing the power button. The headphones will round the battery life to the nearest twenty percent. After four hours of constant play, the battery life still registered as 80 percent and I began to wonder if the headphones were rigged.

After twelve hours, the battery life still registered at 40 percent and I began to fear that the battery would never die. I got up to fourteen hours of constant play before I decided to charge them for a phone interview. A brief hour’s charging got the battery back up to 80 percent. I started to run them down again, but before I could do so, realized that sitting through another fourteen, or sixteen, hours of podcasts would mean losing my will to live. You win this round, RHA.

In short, the battery on these headphones is very impressive and running them down is a losing battle.

The headphones have an IPX4 rating, which means that they can resist having sweat dripped on them; I ran and lifted weights at the gym while wearing them and they didn’t fall out. A microphone let me take phone calls, and when I listened to my recorded interviews later, the voices were crisp and clear.

Bluetooth is notoriously wonky, but these 'buds only blipped out on me once (while on the phone trying to write an expense report...go figure!). I paced about 75 feet away from my phone before they lost me, which meant that I could leave them in my bag while I worked out and run small errands around my house and still remain connected.

The custom-designed drivers inside these in-ear headphones sounded great to me; well-balanced and clear. Well, almost great. Mid-range to higher pitches can sound a little prickly, for lack of a better term; I noticed it most with bluegrass fiddles or trumpets, but electronic music also set my teeth on edge a little. But for pretty much anything else—hip-hop, Pearl Jam, or podcasts—was faithfully reproduced.

I have a hard time spending a lot of money on headphones. Yes, you use them for hours every day and higher-quality ones can immeasurably improve your listening experience. But, like sunglasses, they fall prey to so many ordinary stresses and it’s hard to protect them.

I lose them, drop them in mugs of coffee, or find my toddler sucking on them when I leave them on my desk. I can barely make myself shell out for a set of replacement Apple EarPods.

But I can stomach paying $100 for just the right amount to pay for this level of all-purpose quality—headphones that sound great while walking my dogs and taking phone calls, as well as enjoying hours and hours (and then even more hours) of Turnpike Troubadours, while trying to run out the Battery That Will Not Die. Losing $100 might sting, but worth the risk, in this case, for what you get. If a slightly tinny upper sound register doesn't deter you, this might be a great pick for you, too.