Sennheiser HD 600/565/580/650 Ear Pads

With postage you end up paying about £45ish for these which frankly, is a complete rip off. Are they good pads? sure, they have improved sound over my old worn pads a considerable amount and comfort is better without my ears touching the foam inside the cup. However, I have no idea where my money has gone. The pads are literally just pads, nothing too different from say, HM5 pads, which are £12 for a pair and just as good. Just foam and velour. Unfortunately, due to the propriety fit of these, you can't use any other pads.

Overall: Am I happy with the pads? Yeah. Am I happy with the pads for £45? God no, not a little.

My 7 years old Sennheiser HD-650 was beginning to show signs of age, the foam net pads were wore through and it started to become uncomfortable to wear. I contemplated buying a new headset but the HD-650 is just perfect for me and I couldn't justify buying a higher-end one and definitely didn't want to buy the same one.

I could have just changed the foam pads (they are 2€ each, item 394412) but decided to get the whole ear cushions (this item) and head pad (item 118473) and boy did I made a good choice !

I didn't realised how much the original pads (both ears and headband) had worn down and with these new ones it's a whole new world, I can finally regain the original over-ear feature and confort.

It's not cheap (I ended up paying a little over 50€ for the complete kit) but if it can revive my 300+€ headset to its former glory and give me 5+ more years of heavy use, it's money well spent.

PROS
- Quality : identical to original one, good build quality
- Easy to install : took me 2 minutes to switch without tools

CONS
- Price : could be cheaper especially if you buy the whole kit (ear pads + head pads)
- Durability : the pad foam could last longer before losing its firmness

I am a heavy headphone user, often wearing them daily for hours at a time.

The Sennheiser ear pads feel great and don't have any pressure points, but the foam's thickness degrades significantly over the course of a year.
This is a bit disappointing because having to pay 15% of the headphone's price in earpads per year are kind of expensive running costs for a headphone.

Sound quality does degrade when using the HD650 with worn ear pads, I can only assume it's similar for the other models. So using really worn down pads is usually not an option.

My total score would be higher if these were to be had for 10€, but Sennheiser doesn't seem to agre...