Six affordable headphones with quality sound | Articles | Gadgets, gifts and accessories

Source: focuscamera.com

Are you look­ing for head­phones that don’t cost a for­tune but still have decent sound qual­i­ty, com­fort­able ergonom­ic design and mod­ern fea­tures like noise can­cel­ing and Blue­tooth? We have select­ed for you six mod­els in the price range from two to six and a half thou­sand rubles — var­i­ous types that are suit­able for var­i­ous tasks.

In terms of price, the head­phones are some­what rem­i­nis­cent of works of art: true con­nois­seurs can spend a for­tune on them, but for most peo­ple, the sound qual­i­ty of mid-bud­get mod­els will be more than enough.

You will find a list of select­ed devices below, after which we will turn to the pros and cons of each mod­el.

Inex­pen­sive lin­ers: RHA MA390 (Uni­ver­sal).

Bud­get wire­less ear­buds: One­Plus Bul­lets Wire­less 2.

Inex­pen­sive invoic­es: Gra­do SR60e.

Bud­get wire­less bills: Audio Tech­ni­ca ATH-S200BT.

Inex­pen­sive noise can­cel­ing head­phones: Taotron­ics TT-BH040.

Bud­get stu­dio mon­i­tors: Bey­er­dy­nam­ic DT 240 Pro.

RHA MA390 (Universal): Cheap earbuds with good sound and decent build.

Source: knowtechie.com

Price: 1990 rub.

Rat­ing on Yandex.Market: 4.5

Pros:

• High build qual­i­ty.
• Wide sound­stage.
• Low cost.

Minus­es:

• Some noise from the cable.

Although every­one is talk­ing about wire­less head­phones late­ly, there are still some good rea­sons to buy wired ones. Two main argu­ments: audio qual­i­ty and cost. Although you can find cheap wire­less devices on the mar­ket, they usu­al­ly sound much worse than wired ones for the same price.

In the bud­get in-ear head­phones cat­e­go­ry, you usu­al­ly sac­ri­fice sound and build qual­i­ty for price. How­ev­er, there are a few rare exam­ples where fair­ly cheap ear­buds sound good and have good build qual­i­ty. The RHA MA390 (Mod­el Uni­ver­sal) is one such exam­ple.

The Hoy­at RHA MA390 is the com­pa­ny’s cheap­est device, but it has­n’t sac­ri­ficed assem­bly, design, or audio: the head­phones received a nice alu­minum case, a braid­ed cable, and a uni­ver­sal remote con­trol (on the cable) that works with both Android and iOS. Although the RHA M390 is not ide­al, in terms of price-qual­i­ty ratio they are among the best in the bud­get cat­e­go­ry.

OnePlus Bullets Wireless 2: excellent wireless “ears” in the mid-budget price segment

Source: akket.com

Price: 6000 rub.

Rat­ing on Yandex.Market: –.

Pros:

• Mag­net­ic on/off switch.
• Good sound visu­al­iza­tion.

Minus­es:

• Incon­ve­nient car­ry­ing case and remote con­trol.

One­Plus is well known for its flag­ship killer smart­phones like the One­Plus 7 and One­Plus 7 Pro. How­ev­er, the com­pa­ny also makes some very high-qual­i­ty head­phones, one of the best exam­ples being the new Bul­lets Wire­less 2, which fea­tures in-ear reinforcing/dynamic ears on a neck strap.

In terms of audio qual­i­ty, they boast good sound imag­ing with a very accu­rate sound­stage, but bass fans might want to look for some­thing with deep­er lows.

In Rus­sia, the mod­el appeared rel­a­tive­ly recent­ly and so far only con­di­tion­al­ly fits into the cat­e­go­ry of “bud­get” devices — it is almost two thou­sand more expen­sive than the first gen­er­a­tion, but the audio qual­i­ty and increased bat­tery capac­i­ty, in gen­er­al, jus­ti­fy the price increase.

Grado SR60e: Best value for money on-ear headphones.

Source: head-fi.com

Price: 6120 rub.

Rat­ing on Yandex.Market: – (sim­i­lar but ear­li­er mod­el SR60i rat­ed 5.0).

Pros:

• Very com­fort­able.
• Excel­lent sound clar­i­ty for the price.

Minus­es:

• Lack of con­trols and micro­phone.

For the mon­ey, the Gra­do SR60e is one of the most inter­est­ing devices on the mar­ket. This ver­sion of the third gen­er­a­tion of the Pres­tige Series is by far the best and most devel­oped.

The SR60e is a mid-range mod­el that sounds much more expen­sive. The back of the ear cups is open, which pro­vides bet­ter air cir­cu­la­tion than most over-ears, but in par­tic­u­lar­ly noisy envi­ron­ments, this can be more of a minus.

How­ev­er, in terms of sound qual­i­ty, they are tru­ly the gold stan­dard for afford­able on-ear head­phones.

Audio-Technica ATH-S200BT: Wireless on-ear headphones with decent sound.

Source: pinterest.com

Price: 3890 rub.

Rat­ing on Yandex.Market: 4.5.

Pros:

• Decent sound.
• Excel­lent price.

Minus­es:

• A lit­tle tight.
• The plas­tic looks pret­ty cheap.

The Audio-Tech­ni­ca ATH-S200BT is that rare exam­ple of an inex­pen­sive wire­less head­phone that com­bines great design, con­ve­nient fea­tures, and at the same time has a very good sound.

Their func­tion­al­i­ty out­weighs a very mod­est price, and 40-hour oper­a­tion on a sin­gle bat­tery charge, in gen­er­al, is one of the best indi­ca­tors in the class. At the same time, the ATH-S200BT has some draw­backs, which relate main­ly to design fea­tures: they sit quite close­ly on the head, which can cause some users to get tired quick­ly, and besides, they do not fold com­plete­ly, which some­what lim­its their porta­bil­i­ty. The plas­tic case does­n’t look pre­mi­um either, but over­all the build qual­i­ty is top notch. There­fore, the ATH-S200BT can be safe­ly rec­om­mend­ed to any­one who wants to pur­chase inex­pen­sive wire­less on-ear head­phones.

Taotronics TT-BH040: good noise cancellation and decent sound.

Source: imore.com

Price: ~ 3000 rub.

Rat­ing on Yandex.Market: -.

Pros:

• Reli­able wire­less con­nec­tion.
• Price.
• Com­fort­able.

Minus­es:

• Dif­fi­cult to find in Rus­sia.

The TT-BH040 mod­el from Taotron­ics has not yet been offi­cial­ly intro­duced to the Russ­ian mar­ket, how­ev­er, among bud­get noise-can­celling “ears”, this is one of the most inter­est­ing options.

If you want big, full-size noise-can­cel­ing head­phones, but don’t want to splurge on pre­mi­um mod­els from Beats, Sennheis­er, or Bose, the Taotron­ics TT-BH040 is worth check­ing out. They look more expen­sive than most com­peti­tors in the class, have good noise can­cel­la­tion, and boast some pret­ty decent sound.

The Beyerdynamic DT 240 Pro are affordable studio headphones.

Source: focuscamera.com

Price: 6600 rub.

Rat­ing on Yandex.Market: 4.5.

Pros:

• Clear, bal­anced sound.
• Strong build.

Minus­es:

• Min­i­mum sound­proof­ing.

Bey­er­dy­nam­ic makes a lot of prod­ucts for audio­philes and audio pro­fes­sion­als, some of which are real­ly expen­sive. The DT-990 PRO and DT-770 PRO have gained almost cult sta­tus among sound engi­neers, but not every­one is ready to shell out 11+ thou­sand rubles for a pair of head­phones (espe­cial­ly for begin­ners).

This is where the DT 240 Pro comes into play, where Bey­er­dy­nam­ic man­ages to achieve a very good bal­ance between pro­fes­sion­al audio, excel­lent design, and a low enough price for mon­i­tor head­phones (they com­pete with some mod­els from Audio-Tech­ni­ca, such as the ATH-M40X).

The main plus of 240 Pro is the audio qual­i­ty. They don’t col­or the fre­quen­cies too much (as mon­i­tor head­phones should), while the sound is very clear and per­fect­ly bal­anced. The bass stands out well, but does not stick out, although a slight punch is heard at high vol­umes. All fre­quen­cy ranges are clear­ly audi­ble, with­out any seri­ous ampli­fi­ca­tion of indi­vid­ual fre­quen­cies.

These are neu­tral head­phones that are suit­able for pro­fes­sion­al work with sound, includ­ing as a device for mon­i­tor­ing audio dur­ing video shoot­ing, while they are much cheap­er than most stu­dio mod­els.

Results

Source: maccenter.vn

If you’re look­ing for decent-sound­ing and build-qual­i­ty head­phones, but aren’t will­ing to pay a pre­mi­um, there are a num­ber of very decent devices on the mar­ket in a vari­ety of form fac­tors, suit­able for every­thing from lis­ten­ing to music while jog­ging to pro­fes­sion­al stu­dio work.

Among wired in-ears, we chose the RHA MA390 for its excel­lent sound qual­i­ty and good build, it is also the cheap­est device on our list. In terms of wire­less ear­buds, we rec­om­mend check­ing out the new Bul­lets Wire­less 2 from One­Plus. Among over-ear head­phones, the Gra­do SR60e is a tru­ly ver­sa­tile mod­el with excel­lent sound, while Audio-Tech­ni­ca offers a very bud­get wire­less option with the ATH-S200BT. If you’re look­ing for an inex­pen­sive mod­el with good noise can­cel­la­tion, the Taotron­ics TT-BH040 offer some pret­ty good val­ue for a very small price. And among the mon­i­tor mod­els, Bey­er­dy­nam­ic man­aged to achieve an excel­lent com­bi­na­tion of price and qual­i­ty with their DT 240 Pro.

* when prepar­ing the arti­cle, mate­ri­als from the resources techradar.com, market.yandex.ru were used