Left to right: iRiver iMP-550 phones. Sharp MT170 phones. Sennheiser MX500.


And what's the break-in period for these?

I've never used any of them, but I would think there would be differences that mostly came down to the drivers the companies used.

I noticed that Kenwood, Sharp, and Panasonic all use the same cheapo earbuds with their pmdp's, it's funny...haha

bangraman: Yes, you certainly should, as the first two are MX300 oems - whereas the MX500 is... uhm, well... a MX500.

D-EJ915: There are also quite a few flash and cd based mp3 portables under various brands that use apparently identical earbuds. Actually, I suspect that - like with notebooks, for example - there are only three or four big far eastern manufacturers left that supply various brands with more or less customized oem units.

Greetings from Munich!

Manfred / lini

it wouldn't be bad if they were good, but since they are bad, it just looks terrible ...oh well, it's not like we promote them here, and I'm going to eventually get new 'phones...ugh, to much to buy.

As lini pointed out the first two are MX300 and the ones to the right are MX500.
Comparing the stock iMP500 buds (MX300) to MX500 showed that the 500s are a bit more refined and opened with better detail. The difference is however not huge, noticible though. I haven't look at the specs but it appeared that the MX300 was a bit louder with the MX500 volume set to max.