Way Better Earbuds Than Those That Come With Portable Players
Earbuds are the small headphones that commonly come with portable players. They seat in the concha (the cupped area around the ear canal in the center of your outer ear) and are usually very efficient so they can be driven by iPods and portable players. Many inexpensive earbuds are known to sound pretty poor and, because of their small size and no seal in the ear canal, woefully lacking in bass; but we've carefully selected a few very good sounding earbuds here that make great upgrades for your stock earbuds.
The best inexpensive earbud we've found is the nicely styled in black and chrome Sennheiser MX 580, a good sounding earphone that's much better than most stock earbuds. Yuin is well known in headphone enthusiast circles for making great sounding headphones in unusual categories. Rather plain looking and expensive for an earbud, the Yuin PK2 sounds way better than an earbud should and works very well with portable players. Seriously sounding like a solid mid-level headphone, the Yuin PK1 is simply an extraordinary earbud. However, the PK1 is a relatively inefficient earphone and won't reach high volumes with portable players; but put a portable headphone amp like the HeadRoom Total AirHead between your iPod and the PK1, and you'll be stunned by the musical experience.
We've listed our top picks below but you can click here to see all earbud headphones.
