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Earbud Headphones

At the low end of the headphone food chain resides the earbud. Most people have come to know and ignore them. They can be uncomfortable, tough to fit, and the cheap ones sound excruciating. BUT they are handy, unobtrusive, and gosh-darn cheap. Our gripe with them is that they usually sound a variety of shades of "REALLY bad" depending on how they fit in your ear, and because the fit is so totally hit-and-miss, we don’t really enjoy recommending them at all. We’ll try to give it a fair shot though.

Both the older, now-discontinued Sony EX71 and E888 were commonly recommended earbuds in the earphone world, and we’ll add that the upgraded Apple iPod earbuds are passable too. We’ve found the incredibly inexpensive Sennheiser MX300 almost as good as the aforementioned buds but with slightly better ergonomics and fit characteristics. Going up a few bucks, the Sennheiser MX560 earbuds offer slightly better sound quality. The Sennheiser MX660 model adds a handy volume control slider built-in to the cord, perfect for listeners who don't want to klutz with the volume control on the player source. So unless you’ve got one of these earbuds mentioned previously -- in which case it’s probably not worth the mostly lateral jump -- we think the MX560 earbuds will do you quite right at their nice price. They are also perfect for youngsters-at-heart who always lose or break the things.

It’s truly worth making a giant clarification here: earbuds are NOTHING at all like ear canal headphones (ECH)!! ... ECHs are somewhat expensive to incredibly expensive, awesome-sounding headphones, while earbuds mostly basically suck. Also, ECHs provide excellent ambient noise-blocking/isolation properties while earbuds typically do not.

All that being said, the hot new earbud brand is the Yuin PK1 and PK2 series, easily the best earbuds we have ever heard, period. Pricey? Yep, but a headful of great sound quality is always worth a bit of an investment.

If you are looking for superb alternatives to earbuds, check out our Replacing Cheap Headphones guide, or surf the Ear Canal Headphone, Clip-On, Street Style, or Earpad Headphones HeadRoom Selection Guides.

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