(bright upbeat music)
- Hey everybody, David and David here
from payetteforward.com and upphone.com.
And in this video, we're going to talk about
the best on-ear headphones of 2021.
Not as many of these as the earbuds or the over-the-ear,
but we picked out some of the best and we gave 'em a review.
- Yeah.
So for these reviews,
we paid out of pocket for all of the headphones
that you see on the table.
We also listened to eight songs,
and judged each pair of headphones
for specific things in each song.
You could read more about that in the description below.
And we also judged the quality of the construction,
the comfortability, durability of the case, et cetera.
So really, we think that we can give a pretty fair
cross section of what's available in the On-Ear market,
which simply is just not as big as David said.
- Yeah. - As the Over-Ear.
- Yeah, we also bought all these headphones ourselves.
You know, other people, they might just get the headphones,
or have them for free.
They're not thinking as much about price.
Price is always on our mind,
and that came, you know, this turned out to be
more of a value category in my opinion.
So, if you want to skip right - Mm hm. Yeah.
- to the review, you know, our top picks...
Timestamp's in description.
If you wanna watch our highlights from the reviews
of each of these headphones,
we'll dive right in.
- Yeah. It's pretty funny.
- Beats Solo Pro On-Ear headphones.
These are active noise canceling,
whereas the Solo3 Wireless are not.
One thing that we've been doing is
just kind of comparing the color on the box
to what's actually inside.
Well, I gave these a 10 out of 10
for color matches to the box.
10 out of 10.
Nice soft case, not very sturdy.
- It's like a pajama pant case.
- This case is not impressive.
This is not a Pro case.
- It's like an erector set.
I might hurt myself on this.
- I wasn't impressed at all.
- I thought they were awful.
Far and away the worst $300 headphones
that I've ever tested.
- I think the solo wireless are better than these.
I like these headphones cause I used them
and I wear them to the gym.
I'm curious to hear you insult these.
In terms of Over-Ear. (laughs)
The ear pads are a little bit smaller.
I feel like these are just really, really great.
(headphones clicks)
Really great.
- Well, I'll tell you what,
I think that these are extremely comfortable.
They're very light.
I like that feature.
- They fold up nice and small.
- I love that.
I love the little snappy fold.
- I think Beats can get sometimes a little,
a little bass heavy.
- I thought it was a little bass heavy,
but it wasn't overpowering.
It has such good 3D space
that it's able to get away with that
because it puts the bass over here,
and you can just like hear
all the different parts of the track.
Excellent headphones
and definitely a good choice by David Lynch,
- Jabra Elite 45h the boxes have been letting us down
in terms of color.
Here the color matching.
I think they did a pretty good job.
- Perfect.
- It is not as comfortable as I was expecting.
These are very loose.
I thought like they could fall off.
- No it's plastic. - No it's plastic.
- It's plastic - It looks like metal.
What do you think?
- I thought they were acceptable.
I thought that they were very bass heavy.
I didn't think they sounded good.
- This headband is, is really not comfortable for me.
You got to even press up in here.
It's kind of jagged up in here and a little bit of
Skullcandy Riff wireless On-Ear $50.
All right. So,
(high-pitched rubbing sound ) (laughing)(soft music plays)
no case,
the action figure packaging
There is no padding on the top of the headband.
- Okay.
- So I think these are a little bit of a surprise for me.
- Me too
- At $50. I don't think they sound that bad.
The bass is overpowering.
- I was very pleasantly surprised by the sound of these.
We spent like 50 bucks?
- $50.
These are half the price of the Jabras.
I mean,
- Their price is good - Take these, take these
take these
Next up we have the Sony WH-XB700.
I feel like these are not as blue as I was thinking,
based on the box, like a duller or darker blue.
These just feel very light.
I don't know if it's cheap.
They're light in size.
They're very comfortable.
There is no case,
extra bass.
(headphones crackling)
I thought the bass is a little bit much
on the Daft Punk song.
- Yeah, that's what I heard.
- A little bit much on the Beck song.
Just a little bit much of that song.
Yeah, that's exactly what it was.
- And then-- - But in terms of definition,
I thought that they were pretty excellent.
- With only five headphones,
we're not going to do a top three and a bottom three
like we did it for the Over-Ear and the Earbuds.
So we're going to go five to one, our least favorite,
two our most favorite. His favorite.
- Yeap. Offensive.
The Beats Solo Pro, terrible.
I thought that these were extremely uncomfortable.
They like hurt this part of my ear.
Like the tip of my ear.
There's like an electronics problem with these things.
It's not that they're broken. Trust me.
You're going to get the dunce cap.
- Yep.
- All right.
The problem with these, the noise canceling feature,
when it's on,
you hear the krrrr.
The music and the sound on your phone gets gets quieter than
when it's off.
So I had it on and I was,
we were listening at higher volumes than usual.
I think for the most part,
we were around 60% when we're testing the headphones.
These were up to like 80%?
- Yeah
- So that I turned off
the noise canceling and got blasted out.
Oh!
- Louder!
- And I was like, what the heck is going on here?
- (chuckles)
Okay. These are trash.
Not a fan.
And I think that the $300 price tag is ridiculous.
Trash.
- Yeah, one thing we both like about the basis of these
is I think they fold well and at least they are portable
- Yeah.
- That's fine.
These also didn't come charged.
Didn't come charged.
That's making into notes.
- Yeah. Just a disappointing pair of headphones.
Number four,
- Number four.
- The Jabras, - The Jabras
- Yeah.
- Yeah
Passable.
- I gave these a two out of five.
I gave those a one out five.
Yeah, and is.
- I think they could probably do better.
I didn't find these very comfortable.
They're only $99 and compared to the Jabra Earbuds,
Jabra Earbuds. These are, these actually work.
- They are passable.
There's a lot of bass and not much else.
Thought it sounded pretty good on the Beastie Boys track,
but everything else was just kind of flat
kind of a two out of five experience,
but it's only a hundred dollars.
I know that a hundred dollars
is actually a lot of money to people,
- Yeah
- But that's like what happens
when you have $300 headphones on the table.
So.
- Yeah, I mean, if you're looking for a value option,
I think we both agreed that these Skullcandys,
- Number three, alright. - Are better.
These are half the price of the Jabras.
I mean,
- Their price is good. - Take these,
- They came to this like really cheap plastic
and I'm like, all right.
(high-pitched rubbing sound) (laughing)
- The build quality is not good.
- Right.
- But they are $50.
There's a lot of bass, but is alright
- I thought the quality was better than the Jabras.
Very good audio I wrote.
- Right now, a Skullcandy headphone is in first place.
(laughing)
- I didn't see that coming.
- The number one, number two,
David and I kind of disagreed on it.
Here's your number one.
- Yeah.
- So let's talk about the Sonys.
I thought that these sounded a little bit better
than the Beats.
Why I would put it in number one is the price.
So these are $130 whilst the Beats are $200.
I didn't feel like there was enough of a sound upgrade
if any, to justify that price.
But the Sony's, the build quality
is better even compared to the XM4s.
These are kind of cheap plastic.
- Yeah. - Yup.
Just a little bit disappointed that
the blue is definitely a little duller,
than on the box,
whereas the, the beats sounded good,
but I wasn't the hugest fan for $200.
I think he could do better.
- Yeah. I mean, I, these are my headphones.
I use them,
I've been using them for I don't know a month now.
And I like them a lot. They're comfortable.
Perfect. They're perfect.
As you said, the cheap plastic,
I just felt like it wasn't comfortable for Sonys really.
- I know the build quality wasn't as good. I repeat this.
- Yeah, I mean, and in terms of sound quality,
I think they're, they're roughly the same.
They connect really well to the iPhone as well.
- I felt like the Beats cause they're Apple,
they felt very sort of like a loudness issue,
just sort of optimized sounding.
Whereas the Sony sounded more like Sony headphones,
a little bit flatter curves.
They have a very smooth, like quality to them.
You're not going to really get that great sound quality
on an, On-Ear headphone design
compared to the Over-ear
or the Earbuds. So
- So I think what you need to do with this is,
- Yeah,
- If you're looking for On-Ear headphones,
you gotta think about what you want to pay.
If you're on a really tight budget, Skullcandy.
If you're looking for something in the middle range, Sony.
If you wanna go maybe
a little bit higher end you - Stylish?
- Yep. Stylish - Stylish, good quality Beats?
- Beats,
- That's how I've been looking at the On-Ear tier.
The Over-Ear video.
- If you like sound, these are not the headphones for you.
(chuckles)
- A lot more options to choose from.
If you're looking for something really crisp,
really three-dimensional sound check out that video.
- Yep.
- And if you want to spend some more money,
check out that video.
- Yeah.
- And it's also pretty funny than bad ones.
Okay.
- Thanks for watching this video.
Give it a thumbs up if you enjoyed it.
Leave a comment down below if you have any other questions
or if you have any thoughts on headphones.
Don't buy the Beats, Solo Pro or the Jabras,
and subscribe to this channel.
- Yeah
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