I don’t want something in my ear canal for hours, and this design of pads that sit right on the ear are horrible. Is there a bang-for-the-buck model for $50 or under? I’m not an audio nerd, and I don’t need to pay $200 for the last 15% of performance.
Good sound, great battery life (40+ hours), really comfortable and they come with a detachable wire for use with non-bluetooth devices.
I tried lots of different and expensive options but these are 95% of the headphone functionality you’ll ever need for about 10% of the price of the big boys.
The only drawback is size, they are large and obvious so you may look silly out and about although I used mine on the streets of London, particularly hipster-rich Shoreditch and Hoxton so of course I was still the least ridiculous person in sight.
Iv’e had the Jabra Moves for a year. Sometimes they are a little glitchy when I first turn them on (they sound like a skipping CD), but within 30 sec or less they are solid. Other than that I have no complaints. I got a pair for my dad, and he loves his too. THey aren’t perfect, but IMO they’re well worth $60.
I have a headphone mania (hugely expensive phones, dedicated tube headphone amps, high-end DACs, and so forth), so I get these questions a lot.
I usually ask two things:
Can you handle in-the-ear phones? On-the-ear? Over/around-the-ear? For example, I can’t handle on-the-ear phones because they squeeze my ears against the temple pieces of my glasses. This a downside with no upside. Mine have to be in-the-ear or around (circumaural).
Do you want open or closed phones? Open let external sounds in, which might be a practical or safety issue.
These two questions usually knock out 60% or so of the options. The hybrid BT and wired units are very attractive as an inexpensive option.
I went through a bit of this not too long ago; I spent $80 for a pair of Skullcandy bluetooth headphones and while the sound was good, the cups aren’t quite fully over-the-ear, unless you have baby ears, which would be fine except I also wear glasses and the cups press the temples tightly against my head and that gets uncomfortable and eventually painful after a while (longer than about 30 minutes).
So I spent $45 on a pair of August EP650 bluetooth headphones that, to me, don’t sound much different from the Skullcandy, and are fully over-the-ear so they are much much more comfortable to wear for extended periods of time. And they fold up too. Not that that makes them significantly much more compact, but it helps a little.