Audiophiles or not, if you enjoy having music in your every day, you're probably thinking of getting some decent earpieces to boost the experience like me. The problems are my budget and being unsure of what features I really should look out for.

 

What earphones or headphones are you using? Are there any over or underrated characteristics I should be aware of?

I like the KOSS UR20 model. They're cheap at about 15 dollars (US) and very comfortable, as well as having pretty good sound quality. The one strike against them I have is that the wiring in them seems to go bad. I had 1 pair that lasted me a couple years, then it kept having problems where you'd have to fiddle with it to get the sound to play out of both ears. The connection was going bad. So I bought another pair and took the old one to work. It still works, albeit it requiring fiddling. Unfortunately the new pair seems to have almost completely stopped working in the last few days.

 

So, take that for what it is. They may last a few months, they may last a couple years. But that's the only issue they've had. But since they're quite cheap, I can take that. I'm gonna order a new pair on Friday.

I used to look for headphones with noise cancellation under the impression that it's important for my ears' health, but I would only use it on airplanes or trains anyway, and that didn't happen a lot. So I'm still doing research on noise isolation. It's so easy to get confused as there are so many options and price ranges!

@Zack T I wanted to get a wireless one, but I suppose it can never beat those wired. I was browsing something which can do both (I think it was by JBL, I don't remember the exact product name), but then I saw comments that sound quality is unsatisfactory, so I skipped that one.

 

@North I'd love to have noise cancellation as well, but I read that the feature actually distorts the sound and is very expensive.

I'd steer clear of Skullcandy's line. I've owned two pricey pairs from them and both fizzled out in less than a year. The experience turned me off the brand completely.

I'd steer clear of Skullcandy's line. I've owned two pricey pairs from them and both fizzled out in less than a year. The experience turned me off the brand completely.

Thanks for sharing! From my research so far, I like JBL Tune 600 BT best. It's not cheap, but there are so many features packed in that I will most probably use for years later that it will be a fine investment (as long as the machine doesn't break, of course). Any thoughts on that device?

Don't mess with Beats by Dre either. Read articles before that they're just super expensive average headphones.

 

Also I'll add in my headphones are not broken after all, it's the actual connection port on my computer that had troubles. My headphones still work great on my phone or alternate ports. So that's nice.

I can't tell the difference between the sound that comes from the fancy, high-end headphones and the sound that comes from the headphones in the Primark discount bin. I find bone conduction headphones uncomfortable, but just about anything else is fine if I'm only listening to music or audiobooks.