**A Comparative Review of Budget Headphones: A User's Perspective**

I tried these headphones so this one's pretty light but it's almost like really light so it makes me think that it's not that expensive. Oh I like this one I don't know the these kind of feel crappy compared to the other ones, it just feels really comfortable like I think it's just a perfect uh like size for my head maybe there's not a good seal around my head I don't know.

Not thrilled with those they're super comfortable but it feels a little heavy, it feels like if I wore these for like walking outside for like an hour I would start to sweat a lot which isn't great. I had headphones like these before and they were definitely used to like kind of shut out the world so I definitely used these headphones to listen to music and kind of shut out everything.

Yeah there's nothing I like about these, I'm not going to lie. These are lovely. With this there's no clicking, there's no nothing, you kind of just like it's like a free sort of like slider thing. I don't like that they're nice and light, not too much, a little bit of pressure on top of my head but not too much.

This one feels like it's very structured, like um it's definitely thin as well, I would say this is pretty lightweight. Like the the one right before was bulky, lightweight but this is obviously just from feeling it, I can tell that it's like skinnier. Guess like the leather feels God awful. I apologized to the first set of headphones that I was like oh this feels kind of synthetic leather, no this is that's better than this, this is sorry to this brand.

Like this is not good. Um I'd probably say the third one is the um most expensive just because I feel like the comfort is there. And then the least expensive would probably have to be like the maybe the first one third of the cheapest then the um then the second then the first then the fourth, three cost the most followed by two followed by one followed by four.

I think the second one is the most expensive after that I think is the fourth one right after that. Then I would say the first one is third place and the first one is third place and then the third one is last place in from most expensive to cheapest.

Can't run it no breaking out like a TR to be a in the streets like a wild boy. I like the second one better so the second one, felt like the this the volume was a lot more full um like I could hear um everything I think the the first one was a little bit um farther away if that makes sense.

These are these are the the these would that first pair seemed really harsh to me. This seemed um The Clarity seemed a little bit better on these. The second pair just felt more like more of an experience, like the sound quality was just better whereas the first just kind of felt like okay like there's music playing but I wasn't like jamming the same way these sound better, Basse.

Like it sounds a lot punchier it sounds like a more cleaner um base that's where I really noticed it in the song. Um but these still really good too like I mean I felt like it was a party in my head okay so there you have it as you can see when it comes to the fit of the headphones some people actually preferred the cheaper models but basically everyone felt that the Bose sounded better than the sound pets.

I didn't have my colleagues compare the headphones noise cancelling and voice calling performance or their feature sets so this is far from a comprehensive test. But the long and short of it is that I'm seeing more budget headphones like the soundbeat space that I'm able to recommend to folks who just can't afford higher-end models or simply think they're overpriced.

One thing I can't tell you is how these budget headphones will hold up over time there are no hard and fast guarantees that premium headphones will last a long time but as I said earlier they not only tend to have better build quality but they're equipped with higher quality components which can obviously make a difference in their lifespan. Also with some of these cheap headphones the performance can vary slightly from unit to unit, the quality control can be a little dubious.

All that said I do think the gap between cheaper ovar noise cancelling headphones and higher end models has narrowed in recent years though there still is obviously a gap. There's something to be said for opting for a mid-range model like the Sennheiser accum Plus or Beach Studio Pro when it goes on sale for $200 but even those models can be out of a lot of people's price range.

But what do you guys think, let me know your thoughts on budget versus premium headphones in the comments section below and be sure to call out your favorite models also hit the like button if you found this video informative at all and subscribe to this channel if you haven't already. I'm David car for CET

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enso whenever I do a review of a pair of Premium ovar headphones from Brands like Bose Sony and beats I always see a lot of comments about how they're way overpriced at $300 or whatever price they are and how dumb people are for buying them when they could get a perfectly good pair of headphones from less well-known brands for way less there's certainly a lot of Truth to that but I thought it would be a good exercise to compare some budget and mid-range headphones to those higher-end models to see exactly what you're getting at various price points and how everything Stacks up and to spice things up I'm going to have a few of my colleagues do a blind trial of a few budget and premium headphones to see if they can tell the difference between the two and I think you'll find the results pretty interesting so let's jump right into the comparisons okay when it comes to budget versus premium headphones you've obviously got to start with the design first and foremost when you're looking at a budget model you're going to get a pretty generic design these are reference headphone designs that come out of the same factories in China and you'll see see a bunch of models on Amazon that kind of look alike I've got a few of my favorite budget models here all of which cost less than $100 this is the one more sonof flow which cost around $65 on Amazon and kind of looks like an old Sony model another model that I like that gets high marks from Amazon users is the $99 sound core by anchor space one and speaking of another headphone named space I don't know what it is about the space name but headphone companies seem to like to use it this is the new sound pets space that only costs around $55 and reminds me a bit of an audio Technic headphone the edifier 820 NV plus is also a good value for around $65 all the models I have here have active noise cancelling and they're all decent headphones that are relatively comfortable to wear with memory foam ear pads and they sound pretty good for their modest price points do they look and feel a little cheap yeah they do they're not made with high-tech Plastics and are short on metal Parts some like the soundcore space one can be a bit bulky looking however the space one is one of the rare sub 100 models that has ear detection sensors that pause your audio when you take the headphones off your ears and resume playback when you put them back on I should also point out that a lot of budget headphones don't come with any sort of case the one more Sono flow does include a nice hard case but the sound piece space doesn't and the sound core space one includes a simple carrying pouch battery life for all these over-ear wireless headphones tends to be really good across the board so that isn't a factor what you do get with a more premium headphone like the wh1000x mark 5 that's a Sony or the Bose quiet Comfort Ultra headphones is a distinct Custom Design along with better build quality and higher quality components also the headphones can end up fitting your head a little bit better and offering a little more Comfort over longer listening sessions the Sony 1000x m5s and Bose QC Ultra headphones also deliver Better Sound noise cancelling and voice calling performance as as well as a few bonus features and more natural sounding transparency modes to be clear the bows and Sony cost about five times as much as some of these budget models I'm showing they certainly aren't five times as good and maybe not even twice as good but they are at least 25 to 35% better before I get into those blind trials I was talking about I'll just add that there are some mid-range models that cost between $1200 these include the Sony CH 720n which lists for $150 but sometimes goes on sale for as little as $100 and the new Sennheiser entum plus which lists for $230 but should dip to less than $200 later this year accent plus is the slight Step Up model from the accent and the step down model from the flagship momentum Wireless 4 the higher-end MW4 looks similar but has larger drivers that deliver slightly better sound 10 hours more battery life and a total of six microphones instead of four as for the Sony ch 720n and it's lighter than the flagship 1000 xm5 which makes it very comfortable to wear but it looks and feels significantly cheaper doesn't come with any sort of carrying case and both its sound and noise cancelling though good are a step below the XM 5S but enough about what I think let's have some fun and blindfold a few of my colleagues here in the New York CNET office and see if they can tell the difference between budget and premium models they're all right they're a little clampy I'm feeling a little clamped I like the cup it feels nice and soft I do not like the plastic around here like it's just it just feels very cheap it feels like it's mid not mid like bad it just feels like I don't know if it's very very expensive if it's really lightweight it doesn't move as much uh on my head and yeah it feels very comfortable this one definitely feels like more expensive the cushions are actually a lot more comfortable in my opinion all right these are immediately more comfortable than the last pair this is the type of leather I like feeling and then this this hard piece up here quite freaking nice actually I think the um the ear muffs better like it's softer um than the first one that we just tried hm so this one's pretty light but it's almost like really light so it makes me think that it's not that expensive oh I like this one I don't know the these kind of feel crappy compared to the other ones it just feels really comfortable like I think it's just a perfect uh like size for my head maybe there's not a good seal around my head I don't know not thrilled with those it's super comfortable but it feels a little heavy it feels like if I wore these for like walking outside for like an hour I would start to sweat a lot which isn't great I had headphones like these before and they were definitely used to like kind of shut out the world so I definitely used these headphones to listen to music and kind of shut out everything yeah there's nothing I like about these I'm not going to lie these are lovely so with this there's no clicking there's no nothing you kind of just like it's like a free sort of like slider thing I don't like that they're nice and light not too much a little bit of pressure on top of my head but not too much this one feels like it's very structured like um it's definitely thin as well I would say this is pretty lightweight like the the one right before was bulky lightweight but this is obviously just from feeling it I can tell that it's like skinnier I guess like the leather feels God awful I apologized to the first set of headphones that I was like oh this feels kind of synthetic leather no this is that's better than this this is sorry to this brand like this is not good um I'd probably say the third one is the um most expensive just because I feel like the comfort is there um and then the least expensive would probably have to be like the maybe the first one third of the cheapest then the um then the second then the first then the fourth three cost the most followed by two followed by one followed by four I think the second one is the most expensive after that I think think is the fourth one is right after that then I would say the first one is third place and the first one is third place and then the third one is last place in from most expensive to cheapest can't run it no breaking out like a TR to be a in the streets like a wild boy I like the second one better so the second one I felt like the this the volume was a lot more full um like I could hear um everything I think the the first one was a little bit um farther away if that makes sense these are these are the the these would that first pair seemed really harsh to me this seemed um The Clarity seemed a little bit better on these the second pair just felt more like more of an experience like the sound quality was just better whereas the first just kind of felt like okay like there's music playing but I wasn't like jamming the same way these sound better Basse like it sounds a lot punchier it sounds like a more cleaner um base that's where I really noticed it in the song um but these still really good too like I mean I felt like it was a party in my head okay so there you have it as you can see when it comes to the fit of the headphones some people actually preferred the cheaper models but basically everyone felt that the Bose sounded better than the sound pets I didn't have my colleagues compare the headphones noise cancelling and voice calling performance or their feature sets so this is far from a comprehensive test but the long and short of it is that I'm seeing more budget headphones like the soundbeat space that I'm able to recommend to folks who just can't afford higher-end models or simply think they're overpriced one thing I can't tell you is how these budget headphones will hold up over time there are no hard and fast guarantees that premium headphones will last a long time but as I said earlier they not only tend to have better build quality but they're equipped with higher quality components which can obviously make a difference in their lifespan also with some of these cheap headphones the performance can vary slightly from unit to unit the quality control can be a little dubious all that said I do think the gap between cheaper ovar noise cancelling headphones and higher end models has narrowed in recent years though there still is obviously a gap there's something to be said for opting for a mid-range model like the Sennheiser accum Plus or Beach Studio Pro when it goes on sale for $200 but even those models can be out of a lot of people's price range but what do you guys think let me know your thoughts on budget versus premium headphones in the comments section below and be sure to call out your favorite models also hit the like button if you found this video informative at all and subscribe to this channel if you haven't already I'm David car for CET thanks for watchingso whenever I do a review of a pair of Premium ovar headphones from Brands like Bose Sony and beats I always see a lot of comments about how they're way overpriced at $300 or whatever price they are and how dumb people are for buying them when they could get a perfectly good pair of headphones from less well-known brands for way less there's certainly a lot of Truth to that but I thought it would be a good exercise to compare some budget and mid-range headphones to those higher-end models to see exactly what you're getting at various price points and how everything Stacks up and to spice things up I'm going to have a few of my colleagues do a blind trial of a few budget and premium headphones to see if they can tell the difference between the two and I think you'll find the results pretty interesting so let's jump right into the comparisons okay when it comes to budget versus premium headphones you've obviously got to start with the design first and foremost when you're looking at a budget model you're going to get a pretty generic design these are reference headphone designs that come out of the same factories in China and you'll see see a bunch of models on Amazon that kind of look alike I've got a few of my favorite budget models here all of which cost less than $100 this is the one more sonof flow which cost around $65 on Amazon and kind of looks like an old Sony model another model that I like that gets high marks from Amazon users is the $99 sound core by anchor space one and speaking of another headphone named space I don't know what it is about the space name but headphone companies seem to like to use it this is the new sound pets space that only costs around $55 and reminds me a bit of an audio Technic headphone the edifier 820 NV plus is also a good value for around $65 all the models I have here have active noise cancelling and they're all decent headphones that are relatively comfortable to wear with memory foam ear pads and they sound pretty good for their modest price points do they look and feel a little cheap yeah they do they're not made with high-tech Plastics and are short on metal Parts some like the soundcore space one can be a bit bulky looking however the space one is one of the rare sub 100 models that has ear detection sensors that pause your audio when you take the headphones off your ears and resume playback when you put them back on I should also point out that a lot of budget headphones don't come with any sort of case the one more Sono flow does include a nice hard case but the sound piece space doesn't and the sound core space one includes a simple carrying pouch battery life for all these over-ear wireless headphones tends to be really good across the board so that isn't a factor what you do get with a more premium headphone like the wh1000x mark 5 that's a Sony or the Bose quiet Comfort Ultra headphones is a distinct Custom Design along with better build quality and higher quality components also the headphones can end up fitting your head a little bit better and offering a little more Comfort over longer listening sessions the Sony 1000x m5s and Bose QC Ultra headphones also deliver Better Sound noise cancelling and voice calling performance as as well as a few bonus features and more natural sounding transparency modes to be clear the bows and Sony cost about five times as much as some of these budget models I'm showing they certainly aren't five times as good and maybe not even twice as good but they are at least 25 to 35% better before I get into those blind trials I was talking about I'll just add that there are some mid-range models that cost between $1200 these include the Sony CH 720n which lists for $150 but sometimes goes on sale for as little as $100 and the new Sennheiser entum plus which lists for $230 but should dip to less than $200 later this year accent plus is the slight Step Up model from the accent and the step down model from the flagship momentum Wireless 4 the higher-end MW4 looks similar but has larger drivers that deliver slightly better sound 10 hours more battery life and a total of six microphones instead of four as for the Sony ch 720n and it's lighter than the flagship 1000 xm5 which makes it very comfortable to wear but it looks and feels significantly cheaper doesn't come with any sort of carrying case and both its sound and noise cancelling though good are a step below the XM 5S but enough about what I think let's have some fun and blindfold a few of my colleagues here in the New York CNET office and see if they can tell the difference between budget and premium models they're all right they're a little clampy I'm feeling a little clamped I like the cup it feels nice and soft I do not like the plastic around here like it's just it just feels very cheap it feels like it's mid not mid like bad it just feels like I don't know if it's very very expensive if it's really lightweight it doesn't move as much uh on my head and yeah it feels very comfortable this one definitely feels like more expensive the cushions are actually a lot more comfortable in my opinion all right these are immediately more comfortable than the last pair this is the type of leather I like feeling and then this this hard piece up here quite freaking nice actually I think the um the ear muffs better like it's softer um than the first one that we just tried hm so this one's pretty light but it's almost like really light so it makes me think that it's not that expensive oh I like this one I don't know the these kind of feel crappy compared to the other ones it just feels really comfortable like I think it's just a perfect uh like size for my head maybe there's not a good seal around my head I don't know not thrilled with those it's super comfortable but it feels a little heavy it feels like if I wore these for like walking outside for like an hour I would start to sweat a lot which isn't great I had headphones like these before and they were definitely used to like kind of shut out the world so I definitely used these headphones to listen to music and kind of shut out everything yeah there's nothing I like about these I'm not going to lie these are lovely so with this there's no clicking there's no nothing you kind of just like it's like a free sort of like slider thing I don't like that they're nice and light not too much a little bit of pressure on top of my head but not too much this one feels like it's very structured like um it's definitely thin as well I would say this is pretty lightweight like the the one right before was bulky lightweight but this is obviously just from feeling it I can tell that it's like skinnier I guess like the leather feels God awful I apologized to the first set of headphones that I was like oh this feels kind of synthetic leather no this is that's better than this this is sorry to this brand like this is not good um I'd probably say the third one is the um most expensive just because I feel like the comfort is there um and then the least expensive would probably have to be like the maybe the first one third of the cheapest then the um then the second then the first then the fourth three cost the most followed by two followed by one followed by four I think the second one is the most expensive after that I think think is the fourth one is right after that then I would say the first one is third place and the first one is third place and then the third one is last place in from most expensive to cheapest can't run it no breaking out like a TR to be a in the streets like a wild boy I like the second one better so the second one I felt like the this the volume was a lot more full um like I could hear um everything I think the the first one was a little bit um farther away if that makes sense these are these are the the these would that first pair seemed really harsh to me this seemed um The Clarity seemed a little bit better on these the second pair just felt more like more of an experience like the sound quality was just better whereas the first just kind of felt like okay like there's music playing but I wasn't like jamming the same way these sound better Basse like it sounds a lot punchier it sounds like a more cleaner um base that's where I really noticed it in the song um but these still really good too like I mean I felt like it was a party in my head okay so there you have it as you can see when it comes to the fit of the headphones some people actually preferred the cheaper models but basically everyone felt that the Bose sounded better than the sound pets I didn't have my colleagues compare the headphones noise cancelling and voice calling performance or their feature sets so this is far from a comprehensive test but the long and short of it is that I'm seeing more budget headphones like the soundbeat space that I'm able to recommend to folks who just can't afford higher-end models or simply think they're overpriced one thing I can't tell you is how these budget headphones will hold up over time there are no hard and fast guarantees that premium headphones will last a long time but as I said earlier they not only tend to have better build quality but they're equipped with higher quality components which can obviously make a difference in their lifespan also with some of these cheap headphones the performance can vary slightly from unit to unit the quality control can be a little dubious all that said I do think the gap between cheaper ovar noise cancelling headphones and higher end models has narrowed in recent years though there still is obviously a gap there's something to be said for opting for a mid-range model like the Sennheiser accum Plus or Beach Studio Pro when it goes on sale for $200 but even those models can be out of a lot of people's price range but what do you guys think let me know your thoughts on budget versus premium headphones in the comments section below and be sure to call out your favorite models also hit the like button if you found this video informative at all and subscribe to this channel if you haven't already I'm David car for CET thanks for watching\n"