The Bose IE2s are $99.99 and have quite a bit of bass. They're actually pretty reminiscent of early Bose products - where the audio quality was the focus, and staying true to the research and build quality were what mattered.
Overview:
While there are better headphones you can get for $100, the Bose IE2s are still very nice. Bose is also very, very well marketed so if your brother wants to impress his friends while still having like a 4.6/5 audio quality experience, these are probably for him.
Pros:
Strong Base
Normally crisp highs, can get staticy at times
Ridiculously comfortable
Stupidly secure
Warm sound
Full ranged base (for headphones)
Cons:
Mids can become masked by the base
Mids are of meh reproductive quality
Because of the StayHear tips' design, a proper seal is difficult to achieve
Cord isn't anything special as far as build quality goes. It's thick enough, and seems pretty strong, but the connection to the jack (3.5mm, fits iPods and everything else, in headphones you only ever need a 2.5mm jack for older phones, as most phones have gone to 3.5mm nowadays) seems to be not the strongest. It seems almost as if Bose stayed to their modern corperate direction here, and tried to cover it up with the striped design.
Information and other stuff to consider:
*Single dynamic driver
*Like all other Bose products, no frequency response data available
*I've had these for, roughly two weeks now. As zune keeps track of your plays I can say from a statistical standpoint that these have been burnt in for at least fifteen hours now (200 plays, 4min song average) at various volume levels.
*These headphones will be repulsive initially based on two things (if you go this way they may be :O worthy for the second option)
**The StayHear tips are one of the weirdest feeling things I've ever stuck in my ears. The "wings" that hug the bowl of your ear just feel...odd. Rest assured, they are very secure, and I've yet to have them come out without me trying to take them out (even when shoveling snow, etc).
**For the first, oh, I don't know... seven hours or so, before they're properly burnt in, they will have a massive bass presence, and your brain will almost certainly focus on that aspect of music more. Now, either I've just gotten used to it, my taste has changed, or their sound changed when they finished burning in, but there is certainly less bass (now it's more of a just-enough-and natural-sounding bass).
*My family also has had a $1000 Bose 3 speaker system in our living room since 2004 (it was bought when I was 8, and I'm not sure of the model or any of that) I've heard other Bose products before, and these sound as if you have a full speaker system in your ears. They have massive sound for their size.
*They are not noise cancelling, don’t expect them to be.
*They have a ‘lifelike’ sound, in that they are extremely powerful sounding, and definitely have presence. They can also recreate [the sound of] cymbals clearly (which is a test I often put audio equipment through) which many -$50headphones can’t do (especially the god-awful ones that come with a PMP).
*Many people rage Bose because they’re educated, and know Bose is not the best, even though they advertise that they are. Bose also uses cheaper internal parts, and shiny “ooh that looks expensive” material on the outside: as such their profit margins are huge.