I'm wearing these right now, listening to "Pitch the Baby" by Cocteau Twins as I write this. These are simply some very good headphones, especially for the low price you can get them for (for some reason, the White SKU is cheaper than both the Gray and Black SKU's, but it's whatever.)
The build quality is pretty nice, nothing on these feels cheaply-built and they seem to be very durable as a result.
Aesthetically, they look sexier in person than they do in the images on this site. There is a metal material on the outer cups, with the SONY logo engraved in them. Really gives it this classy, stylish look and feel to it. The contrast of white and light gray is also a nice look.
Comfort-wise, they are very comfortable, although it will take a day or two for the headphones to "meld" with your head shape. The first day I got these, they would become pretty tight after an hour or two, and they'd squish my glasses into my skin, which became annoying. They don't really do it anymore though, so that's nice. They are relatively light-weight as well, compared to the bulkier MDR-V55's. A tad heavier than the ZX-100/300 series headphones as well.
Sound quality is very high. The sound that these produce is very clear -- you'll hear things you never heard in your music before with ease. The various frequencies are VERY well-reproduced and are balanced appropriately, so there is no overbearing muddy bass extension or anything. No frequency range will overpower any other range. Combine that with the powerful Sony-engineered 40mm drivers, and you get a very relaxing, soothing, accurate sound that can please even the most snooty audiophiles out there. These can get fairly loud as well, which is a plus.
Will these beat $300 headphones out there? Hilariously enough, sometimes yes. The kind I'm talking about are the ones that are overpriced to hell & back, and ride on nothing more than brand name (yes, these are technically brand name as well, but you know what I'm talking about.) I don't wanna name any names, but y'know the types, kinda like the ones that get marketed by a certain over-rated music producer or something...
All in all, these are easily worth the asking price and then some. These sound much better than the ZX-100/300 series cans, and beat out some more expensive sets as well. Stop reading this and just add these to your cart.
**UPDATE 7/11/2014**
Just wanted to add more to this after having these for several months. As I mentioned before, these can be rather tight on your head when you first get them, but after a few days or weeks, they loosen up drastically and the pain sensation stops completely. If you are worried about comfort, I'd say it's not too big a deal. For me, the only reason it happened is because I wear glasses, and the cans were pinching the glasses' supports against my ears/head too much. That doesn't happen anymore, however.
I'd also like to say that these are some very honest-sounding headphones, so your source will be very important as to the sound quality you'll hear. For example, I tried one portable stereo system, and the sounds were nice, but that particular stereo drastically over-extends the bass, which easily muddies out the mids and highs. I'm not a big fan of that, so I tried them in another, higher-quality stereo I had, and was blown away. The sound was extremely crisp and clear on the CD's I was listening to. Even on some of the mix-CD's I made from lossy mp3 files from ages ago, many of which were low-bitrate (i.e. poorly-encoded 128kbps mp3 and the like), I could easily hear artifacting and distortion. On the higher-quality stuff, and native studio-made CD's, I could easily hear elements of the music I never could before. The quality is superior to what I usually experience with my desktop PC's onboard integrated Realtek chipset.
I would recommend that if you do a lot of listening on the desktop, you should invest in a decent soundcard; ASUS makes plenty of good ones with their Xonar series of sound cards. For people on laptops and such, perhaps look for some external USB DACs. You won't regret it. I got these cans for $47 months ago, and for that price, they were a complete steal. You can't go wrong.
One more thing, these aren't marketed as noise-cancelling phones, but they do a pretty good job at that as well. All I can say is that if you're listening to anything that isn't whisper quiet, you will NOT hear anything in your immediate environment. Even when wearing them without listening to anything, they will cancel out a good deal of background noise.
Thanks for reading!
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