With a quick glance around any study hall or busy hallway at FHS, you would immediately notice the amount of white Apple EarPods protruding from students’ ears. Despite their obvious popularity, are these headphones worth the price? While most students got these headphones free when they purchased an Apple device, are there other headphones above or below the $30 price point of the Apple EarPods that may be worth the investment?
To test this, I chose two other headphones in vastly different price ranges. The first pair is a brandless pair of headphones I purchased from the Five Below bargain rack for 99 cents. These plain-black headphones are as simple as they come with no in-line microphone and a standard 3.5 mm headphone plug.
The other pair of headphones I chose were Bose SoundTrue in-ear headphones coming in at a substantial $129.99. These headphones feature an in-line mic and 3.5 mm headphone plug, but also feature three different size ear tips, a carrying case and clothing clip.
All three headphones accomplish the same job of connecting to your media device and playing music; however, do their extra features make them worth the price? To determine this, I surveyed FHS students after allowing them to listen to the same 40 second clip of “Killer Queen” by Queen on all three pairs of headphones. To make sure the students were not influenced by knowing the type of headphones used, I put in the headphones for them and did not tell them the order which they listened in until the test was over.
The two variables the students rated the headphones on were “comfort” and “sound quality” because it doesn’t matter how great a pair of headphones sound if they’re painful to wear or vice versa. The students rated the headphones on a scale of one through ten with one being the lowest possible score and ten, being the highest.
The results of my survey offered some insight to my initial question of “are there other headphones above the $30 price of Apple Earpods that may be worth the investment?” However, we tend to find patterns when there are none present, especially when we all have a bit of underlying bias.
The 99 cent headphones scored surprisingly well, with an average comfort score of five and a sound quality of four, compared to the scores of seven and six for the Apple Earpods respectively. The Bose SoundTrue scored significantly higher than the 99 cent headphones with an average comfort score of eight and a sound quality of eight. These scores follow the pattern the prices set but not as drastically as one might expect.
However, the outliers may tell the best story of the quality of the headphones. For example, on multiple occasions, students surveyed complained about the almond-shaped Apple EarPods while they praised the simple-circular design of the 99 cent headphones. Other students had complaints about the Bose SoundTrue headphones sounding muffled and rating the Apple EarPods significantly higher, despite the much smaller driver in the $30 Apple EarPods.
These three headphones are a fraction of the amount of in ear headphones on the market today. Both Apple and Bose produce wireless headphones which may be more fitting to those with an active lifestyle. If in-ear headphones are not your taste than on-ear or over-ear headphones may be more to your liking, while they are typically more expensive and less portable these types of headphones excel in noise isolation and range.
The interesting thing about headphones is that they are not “one size fits-all” in terms of comfort and enjoyability. With every human having incredibly unique ear shapes and sizes, it’s important to find headphones that fit and sound great to you, rather than choosing the most expensive or most popular kind.