I've listened to them about half an hour.
 
They are sold as extra bassy, and so they are, indeed.

 
A friend of my brother came with his Beats Solo's, and he pleasantly accepted to lend them to me, for me to give them a try. Finally, I was able to hear by myself Head-Fi'ers' nemesis.
 
 
In my opinion, they look perfect. I don't know if they are particulary fragile, I don't have had them for long enough.
 
The earcups don't rotate enough, so they press against the backside of my ears, and it's uncomfortable. They clamp a bit hard. My SR80i's feel very ligh and comfortable in comparison. The pads of the Solo's are very comfortable themsleves though.
 
First thing I noticed : boxy sound.
I should have expected this, as they are closed-back headphones. It was the same thing as with my set of AKG K 450. First bad point, even if it's appliable to every closed-back headphones (or maybe not?).
 
The bass is boomy. Boom, boom, boom. It's unpleasant. Compared to the SE215's, whose bass are like bullets in a piece of wood, hitting firmly and precisely, the Solo's bass sound like a deflated socer balloon thrown at high speed into your face.
 
Guitars from metal music don't sound good on those. They don't have the abrasive, grainy, sandy texture they should have. They sound worse than on the SE215's, and poor compared to the SR80i's.
 
Pics :
 

 
- They isolate very well with foam sleeves. Be careful when wearing them in town, look around you, they prevent you from hearing the cars.
- Over-the-ear wearing makes them keeping in place very well.
- Comfort with silicon tips is perfect. Really.
- Memory cable is practical.
- They look very, very nice. Even the cable is nice-looking.
- Detachable cable can be handy (even if it's not useful to me).
- They are very surdy.
 
- Foam tips isolate more than olives, but are less comfortable.
 
- Demands time to get used to and to find the right tips.
- The cable is a little stiff.
 
SOUND
- The sound isn't boxy as it is with closed-back headphones. It's nearly as airy as on my Grado's, excepted than the seal gives a little impression of closedness.
- Highs don't sound bad at all, as I could read on many reviews.
- Bass are gorgeous.
- They seem to profit very much from the use of my AD823-based CMoy, but maybe it's only a placebo effect. Anyway, even if it all came from the placebo effect, building said CMoy was the right thing to do. Drums sound better, and soundstage sounds a little wider.
 
Pics (enlargeable) :
 

I bought this DAP for $50, along with a 16-GB micro SD card that cost me $17. So I've got a total capacity of 18,4 GB in a DAP which is 5,5 cm long, 3,5 cm wide and 1,5 cm thick for a total of $67. Less than the third of the price of an iPod nano that has less than 16 GB of memory.
 
It does everything I expect a DAP to do : it can sort tracks by folder in addition of all other ways, it allows dynamic playlists, it can play FLAC files (even if I never use this feature), and many other. All you can wish, I guess. The only things I miss don't even come from the DAP itself, but from Rockbox : to me, it lacks a "stop after current" function, as in foobar2000, and a "clear playlist" function.
 
I rockboxed it immediately after having receiving it. Rockbox adds some useful and other funny features, like radio recording and some games like Sokoban and chess.
 
The writing speed in the Sansa's memory is around 2.70 MBps.
 
I can use it for between 12 and 13 hours before having to charge it.
 
I've never used it with the default interface, it has been Rockboxed the minute I opened the package. The interface is extremely intuitive, but the Rockbox manual is useful for "advanced" features.
 
It is very reliable : it fell on the ground several times, sometimes king of bugged, underwent countless formattings, firmware re-installations and Rockbox installations, and works as well as when I turned it up the first time.
 
And finally, as for the sound quality... well, I can't complain about it. I never spotted any lack of details or coloration compared to my GrubDAC. Even amped.
 
I truly think buying this DAP was the best thing I could do with 50 €.

[size=11pt]Distorted guitars sound nicely abrasive. Listening to Immortal's At the heart of winter is like cleaning your ears with sandpaper. It's even more pronounced with the L-cushes. And I love that.[/size]
 
[size=11pt]The « stage » sounds somewhat flat, as if the band or anything was « projected on a screen ». It's not flatty flat, but we're far from the HD600's presentation, for example (I know they are different headphones from different price ranges, it's just for the comparison).[/size]
 
[size=11pt]What happens when I switch from the S-cushes to L-cuches :[/size]

1. [size=11pt]the volume lowers and I have to turn it up,[/size]
2. [size=11pt]the bass and mids lower more than the highs, thus the highs are brought out,[/size]
3. [size=11pt]because the drivers are farther from the ears, the « stage » sounds a tad wider – but remains somewhat « flat ».[/size]

[size=11pt]Plus, I just can't wear the L-cushes with my glasses, and, even without, I find them less comfortable than the S. So, as for me, $36 (here in France) are too much for what the L-cushes provide. At least I can tell what the L-cushes actually do on the SR80i.[/size]

The AKG K 450 is the first higher-than-SHS3200-end pair of cans I had (and at that time it's the only one). I wanted to be able to listen to good sound in the bus without hearing uninteresting conversations, so I started to search for good budget closed headphones for Christmas. After having spent four hours searching, comparing and reading reviews on Head-Fi.org ("Wow, this is a good site, I should keep it in mind..."), I decided that it had to be the K 450.
 
This will be rather a pragmatic review, because I don't master English very well yet.

 
Value: I wanted a very portable pair of "cheap" (60 € on Thomann) cans. I didn't wanted headphones I would have had to wear around my neck all day long. The K 450 isn't very expensive, and is carried very easily. The case takes up in an Eastpak The One bag, which is very handy, and it is quite tough. There are two cables in the K 450 packaging: a 50-centimeter long one (that is, in fact, 54.5-centimeter long [this is very important]) and a 110-centimeter long one. The 50-centimeter one is quite handy when you can put your source into your chest pocket. On the other hand, the 110-centimeter isn't long enough. Pluging it in you computer prevents you from moving freely, otherwise you pull on it, and it's quite fragile, as I could read on reviews. The headphones themselves looks (and are) pretty tough.
 
I have a problem with mine: the cable inside the headband is badly placed, and when I collapse the cans, the cable gets "hurt". This will cut it at last, I think.
EDIT : It has happened. The cable has cut down. I sent the 'phones back to have them changed.
 
Apart from this, even after one year of daily using, none of the cables cut, and the sound is still very good, maybe even better than at the origin (burnt in?).
 
Features: The K 450 come with :
   • Two detachable gold plated cables
   • A gold plated 1/4" > 1/8" adaptator
   • A gold plated 2,5 mm > 3.5 mm adaptator
   • A nice carrying case

 
Sound: I haven't had the opportunity to compare the K 450 with many other headphones or earbuds. All I can say is that it sounds better than Philips SHS3200 and than Panasonic RP-HTX7 (okay, these are cheaper, but I never had the chance to listen to more expensive headphones, so I compare with what I know). Sound is more... pure, more precise (you hear interferences very well). The K 450 sounds very well to my ears.
 
Edit : (Thanks to Lorspeaker) : After having listened to them carefully, I realized that I felt the bass instead of hearing them. I just EQed down the bass a bit, and it was better.
So yes, there are a lot of bass in these cans.
 
There are crappy distortion stains on Metallica songs from Death Magnetic. I don't know what component of the drums makes that noise, but it sounds crappy. Maybe it's 320 kbps MP3's fault, but I don't think so. Otherwise, even at high volume (20 out of 30 with my YP-K3), the sound is very pure.
 
I won't speak about the soundstage very precisely, because I've never heard cans with good soundstage and I don't know what it is. All I can say is that sound seems to come from very very close to you ears. Sometimes it is even right inside your skull (listening to Andy McKee with these is pretty surprising, it's like being inside his guitar).
 
 
Comfort: The K 450 clamps a bit hard, and it becomes a little uncomfortable from about one hour of listening, especially if you wear glasses (take them off, or it will really hurt).
 
 
So, as a conclusion, I will repeat the title: these are very good budget portable closed cans.