Final Impressions after about 40-50 hours of burn in:
First I'll go over the pictures quick
The case in picture 2 is pretty much useless. It a soft black felt that closes with a magnet. It holds your headphones but I wouldn't use it to protect them.
The buds themselves are made out of aluminum with (supposedly) real leather wrapped around it.
The amount of earbuds they give you is great. You gotta have some pretty weird ears for not one of them to fit you correctly. It took me a couple minutes to try all of them out, but I eventually found a great fit.
The control talk is great. I don't use them with a phone, but I do use them with a ipod classic 6g. It works great. press the center button once to pause, twice to move forward a track, and three times to go back a track. There are also + and - buttons to increase or decrease the volume.
They feel well put together, I don't think I will have a durability problem.
I got the white because I like white,and I want them to stand out. (I do live in Jersey right) ha ha ha
There is also black available if you want a more traditionally looking headphone, but the shiny aluminum still makes them pop.
There is also pink if you wish to buy some for one of your lady friends. (or if you want pink headphones i guess)
The colors I am referring too are the cable, control talk, and the non silver parts of the headphone you see in the picture.
One thing that isn't in the picture is that the headphone jack is L-shaped. I know thats important to some ppl.
Onto sound quality:
When I first pulled them outta the box and started listening to them, they sounded a bit muddy with rock.
But after I burned them in they sound great. They manage to give great bass when listening to hip hop, but I'm still able to listen to everything from Blink 182 to Ozzy and not have the bass stand out too much.
I listen to mostly 80s and 90s hip hop (NWA, Ice-T, Public Enemy, Wu-Tang, Tupac, Biggie, Eminem) and they are the best in ear headphones I've ever used with these (yes, I've tried the thinksound rains and sennheisers and etc.) and they do sound the best.
If you listen to purely rock though, you probably wouldn't like these.
As I've said before, I'm not an audiophile so I'm not gonna embarass myself by trying to go into too much detail about highs, lows, etc. All I can say is that the highs definitly stand out more than the lows, but not a lot.
Biggest problem:
The biggest problem I have with these headphones is the weight of the cable. Between the control talk feature (which is on the left cable about 5 inches below the bud), and the solid aluminum piece where the two cables meet to form one. makes it heavy. I am interested in trying to run with these. While I personally use my ipod shuffle and cheap apple buds to run, I willl probably try these out once just to see if they will stay in my ear with all the movement.
Cost:
They cost $150. The thing that most audiophiles say about the beats lines are that they are overpriced. They are overpriced, I am aware. But I like the looks of them, so I find it ok to pay 150 for them. If you listen solely to the sound quality, I'd say they are about 100 dollar ear buds. I've never listened to 300 dollar earbuds, so I honestly don't know the difference, and don't know if I could tell the difference. But they certainly look sexy, and sound great in my opinion.
What I use them for:
I use them mainly for taking the train and subway into NYC everyday. They do a great job of blocking out sound, and of course leak out very minimal sound.
Overall:
Overall they are a great headphone. While they are pricey, monster/diddy puts it best on the back of the box calling it a "fashion accessory." They are a fashion accessory. They sound a lot better than I thought they would, and I am actually quite impressed by them. So between the great sound and even better looks, I will definitly be keeping them.
