Last weekend I spent a small fortune on this beautiful piece of technology. I’ve been wanting to get them for a while now and when they went on sale, I did. Having owned them for a few days I thought I’d give a review for anyone who might be interested in purchasing a pair.
First I’ll just let you know that I am one of those people who has music on 24/7 and don’t mind paying a premium price for some good quality headphones. If you don’t listen to music very often or have music files that are around 2 megabytes, then these won’t be worth your while. If you have low quality mp3s then headphones won’t make a difference. That said, if you have music files that are 192 kbps+, or better yet, lossless music files, you will likely notice the difference in sound quality, especially if you like bass. After listening to them for less than a day I never wanted to go back to my old headphones.
In my opinion, these are one of the most aesthetically pleasing headphones on the market, but of course aesthetics are personal preference. They come with two separate cables, one with the iTalk Control which works great with my iPod touch (I have not experimented with other devices). Its convenient that the cable is removable, making them easy to store. Also, in case the cable breaks, your headphones are perfectly safe. The headphones are foldable and come with a carry case for practicality. While they are considered portable, they can’t compare to a normal pair of in-ear earphones on this front.
These headphones are on ear headphones and while they’re decently comfortable my ears do start to get a little sore after having them on for the majority of the day. I have also read on numerous customer reviews that they are delicate and poorly crafted. I kind of have to agree with the latter as the construction does seem flimsy but whether they are durable or not I can’t say for sure. Opposite to what some reviews say, there are videos on YouTube showing them as being able to withstand a great deal of force.
Overall, I’m pretty pleased with them. Price-wise they will generally run you $199.99. There is no doubt a premium behind the brand but I didn’t mind paying the extra $50 or so. When I got them they had been on sale for $139.99, so if you have some money to spare and love listening to music and care about sound quality, I would recommend them, especially if they’re on sale. If you’re tight on cash then they might not be the best idea since there is in fact other good quality headphones out there that will cost less; and if you’re someone who frankly doesn’t care too much about sound quality or listen to music often, well I don’t think you need me to tell you not to get them.
I’m a bit of an audiophile, so I’d like to toss in my recommendation for good headphones; the Sennheisser HD 555
http://www.amazon.com/Sennheiser-HD555-Professional-Headphones-Channeling/dp/product-description/B0001FTVDQ
You can find them for 99 dollars usually, and they sound like 300 dollar headphones. You can actually mod them by taking out a Styrofoam pad to make them sound like their 595 counterparts:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvQ8PzBrHXE
15-28000Hz range *drool*
Though I will concede they are a bit bulkier than the beats solo headphones. They’re probably better for libraries/planes/home.
Hmm, those seem pretty nice. I had actually considered the smaller Sennheiser headphones when I was looking at headphones. In the end I still went with the Solos mainly for appearance reasons and the fact that they were on sale, though still slightly pricier than the Sennheisers.
It appears that they have active noise cancelling. I think I neglected to mention that the beats Solos don’t actually have active noise cancelling but it still blocks out a fair amount of noise.
I’m inclined to agree with you that the price and sound quality would be better than the beats Solos
Appearance-wise I will forever think that Beats look better, but that’s again more personal preference =P