This Audio Technica ATH M50x review will share my findings and views on the headphones. Throughout this post, you will learn how actual consumers felt about the Audio Technica headphones. Lastly, you will also learn if ATH M50x is maintaining its popularity, which can be an indicator of the quality of the product.
About Audio Technica
If you are interested in headphones, you might have already heard the company name, Audio Technica. But, for many others, this brand name could be less known compared to Beats, Apple, Bose, and Sony. Let’s quickly find out about the company. For this, I referred to the Wikipedia page.
Audio-Technica Corporation is a Japanese company that specializes in microphones, headphones, phonographic magnetic cartridges, and other audio equipment. The company was founded in 1962 in Tokyo Japan. As I researched the firm, it seemed like the company has great track records regarding their microphone technologies and products than they do with headphones.
For example, Audio-Technica supplied microphones for US Presidential Debates in 2008 and for the Grammy Awards for over fifteen years. In 2017, the company’s Pure Digital Drive Wireless Headphone ATH-DSR9BT was awarded CES Innovation Honoree Awards.
ATH M50x Major Features
When I studied about the headphones, I was often told that the product is widely used not only by audio engineers, YouTubers, audio editors, and audio reviewers but also by non-professional people like students. This told me that ATH M50x is an all-round player for your diverse needs.
Sound
Most importantly, the sound. As Audio-Technica claims, this model is marketed as monitor headphones. The review post of Sound Guys pointed out that it is more like a general player for all sorts of purposes. I used Beats headphones which are bass-focused. ATH M50x is definitely less bass-heavy. The firm explains that the headphones will provide “Exceptional clarity throughout an extended frequency range, with deep, accurate bass response”.
In contrast, this Tech Radar review pointed out that the headphones are not neutral-sounding and may not be desirable for studio monitoring. So, if you are going to use them just for enjoying the quality sound, this can fit your needs. However, if you want a gear that can be used for professional audio checking, this may not satisfy you.
Connection
ATH M50x is not Bluetooth wireless headphones. When you buy the headphones, it includes a detachable coiled cable and a straight cable. If you are looking for a wireless version, check ATH-M50xBT. The price of the wireless headphones (ATH M50xBT) is more than twice the price of the ATH M50x model.
Design
My first impression with the design was that they looked a bit bulky and not very sleek and smooth. Instead, they more looked like the gears for professionals. If you are looking for a pretty and simple design, ATH M50x may not suit you. But, in terms of practicality, it is good that you can fold the headphones into a smaller piece.
You can choose one of the four options – black, blue, white, and gun metal. Each color model has a different price tab – gun metal is the most expensive, $169.00 and white is the lowest, $129.00. I personally think that the white model looks smart and sleek among the colors.
Photo from Amazon
Prices
The price is different by color.
- Black: $134.99
- White: $148.00
- Gun Metal: $169.00
Lastly, I will share my analysis on customer reviews on the headphones. I believe that a headphone review can be very subjective. Someone’s opinion can be different from others. It’s like tasting. Some people may find certain foods delicious while others disagree. When we evaluate subjective matters, we can harness the power of collective views.
How People Think About Audio Technica ATH M50x
When you see product introduction from a company, you will always hear great things about it. No company will reveal any weaknesses or defects of the product, obviously. So, as a consumer, it is wiser to doubt what they say and do your own research before making a final purchase decision. In this section, we will learn how actual users think about the product. How can we measure these? We can do this by using data analysis techniques called sentiment analysis.
You don’t have to be scared by the technical term. I did the technical part and you can just look at pretty graphs. In this section, I will show you two types of graphs – word cloud and customer sentiment chart. For the analysis, I’ve compiled more than 5300 customer reviews from Amazon and conducted analysis to summarize them. I will show you the result in a word cloud and a customer sentiments chart. And, lastly, I will share the headphone’s Google trend result that shows the level of interest from people.
Word Cloud
Word cloud is one of the great and fun ways to understand customer sentiments toward a product or a service. In a word cloud, you can see specific words in different sizes. The larger it is, the more people used that word to describe the product. For this word cloud, I used the titles of the reviews, since people put the essence of their opinions in the title. The 5300+ reviews allowed me to generate an interesting word cloud that let me reach a positive conclusion. Let’s have a look!
Understanding the word cloud is easy. Just follow your eyes and see what you see. You will see that most of the big words are all positive. This means that customers have had a positive experience with their product and service. People used words like “fivestars”, “great”, “best”, “love”, “amazing”, and more positive terms to describe the Audio-Technica headphones.
Among the positive terms, I think the words like “comfortable” and “greatsound” are very meaningful since they tell you the quality of this model.
Customer Sentiments
In the word cloud, we were able to observe what descriptive words people used to talk about ATH M50x. As mentioned, the word cloud is based on the titles of customer reviews, but the sentiment analysis graph was generated by the contents of the reviews. In the sentiment analysis, we will see more specific types of feeling that people showed in their review. In the analysis, you can see 10 different sentiments such as positive, negative, trust, anticipation, joy, fear, sadness, anger, surprise, and disgust.
The technology behind the chart is straightforward. The analysis algorithm holds 10 different lists – each list containing words that are mapped to one of the 10 sentiments. When this algorithm runs, it checks and matches with one of the sentiments. When matched, it is counted as one and is categorized in one of the 10 sentiments. My analysis on the positive reviews appears as below.
The chart is also not difficult to understand. You can see that the positive sentiment is ranked number one. The first rank is followed by “negative”, “trust”, “fear” and “sadness”. It does have some negative opinions, but overall, people expressed more positive sentiments than negative ones. So my customer review analysis told me that many people have a positive experience with the headphones.
Google Trend
As the final segment of analysis, let me share the trend of the model. I used Google Trend to check how frequently “audio technica ath m50x” is searched on Google over the past 5 years. Google Trend is a useful tool to measure the interest of people. The more frequently people search on Google, the more popular or trendy it is. The Google Trend (may not visible on a mobile phone) of the headphones below shows that people have constantly shown an interest in the product over that period.
If this trend continues, the level of interest is likely to go on for a time being. Please note that the trend is from the whole world. If I divide it by country, we can see that the largest interest came from Australia. To see the country rank, find the list icon at the bottom right and click it. It will turn into the rank.
If you see the list, people in the Netherlands showed the second biggest interest, followed by Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and India.
Conclusion
After reviewing this headphone, the ATH-M50x provides great sound quality at a reasonable price tag. There were mixed opinions about for sound neutrality, but overall people seem to be satisfied with the sound quality. Plus, my analysis of the 5300+ customer reviews revealed that most of the actual consumers were satisfied with the product. Thus, if you are looking for a wired headphone with professional design, I would recommend Audio Technica ATH M50x.
Useful Links
If you want to have an actual look at the headphones, please check the YouTube link.
I found two great review sources about this headphone. If you want to continue your research, please check the links below:
I reviewed a Bluetooth earbud that you can use while working out or other activities. Please check the post if you are interested.
