Sebastian
You've reached the last page of our gift guide, and that means audio stuff. While I predominantly review cases for the site (along with CPU coolers, gaming headsets, and the occational laptop or phone) I enjoy a high-quality audio experience when I hear one. To this end I have been relying heavily on headphones for the past year since my son was born, and I've chosen three options for great sound on any budget.
Edifier H840 – $39.99, Amazon.com
I reviewed these headphones a year ago, and they still impress at this price point. They really sound far better than they have any right to at this price, and offer the best dynamic punch I've heard for less than $100. A close second for my favorite headphone in this price range is the Grado eGrado – though the Edifier H840's produce a cleaner, more precise sound with deeper bass. Even with fairly average construction and comfort, I still go back to the H840 as the best value in this category.
Audio Technica ATH-AD700X – $100, Amazon.com
One of the best-sounding headphones I have heard at any price, the AD700X's are also – hands down – the most comfortable headphones I've ever worn. Yes, they are huge and unusual-looking, but the big, soft velvet pads and unique suspension system provide endless hours of comfy listening. They are open-back headphones with a big, wide sound that has a sort of "airy" quality that is hard to describe. Do choose these if you love live music and favor accuracy and a "flat" frequency response, do not choose these if you require the greater bass impact of closed-back headphones.
To keep this to three main choices I jumped to the $300-$500 mark. While the Grado Presige Series SR325e are amazing for $295 (and my all time favorite price/performance "hi-fi" headphone), if you can spend up to $500 one very interesting option becomes available: the Sennheiser Momentum 2.0 Wireless, which have an MSRP of $499 (though selling for much less at the moment).
Sennheiser Momentum 2.0 Wireless Heaphones – $328.99, Amazon.com
The Momentum 2.0 are a fantastic-sounding, active noise cancelling, Bluetooth wireless enabled pair of headphones that feature aptX technology for great sound with compatible phones. I was anti-Bluetooth until I heard these headphones, and they sound incredible if you have an aptX-enabled device. The Momentum 2.0's also include a removeable 3.5 mm audio cable, and sound fantastic that way, too. The noise cancellation works well, they fold up for compact storage, and they look very good, too.
While there are dozens of worthy options from the above mentioned headphone makers and many, many more (not to mention all of the in-ear options available), I feel like you can't go wrong with any of the headphones on this page. There's still time to order up some great headphones for yourself (or a deserving family member or friend)! Use one of the above Amazon links to help out the site, and Prime shipping can ensure you get them in time for Christmas!
man the whole guide is
man the whole guide is expensive
Hey! I did put that $16
Hey! I did put that $16 infrared thermometer in there! 🙂
One of my picks was free! hah
One of my picks was free! hah
Ryan has been recommending
Ryan has been recommending more and more premium priced “things” over time :).
Podcast 149 (April 2011) – “Amazon Cloud Drive” (pretty cheap)
Podcast 150 – Free application for Android
Podcast 153 – used underwear “His lawyers briefs”
Podcast 250 or so – newspapers “papers”
Podcast 426 – $500 phablet
(Yes these are cherry picked for fun 🙂 )
Shadow Warrior 2 is a
Shadow Warrior 2 is a fantastic game, definitely agree with the recommendation. On my top five games list for 2016 for sure.
It was a hard choice between
It was a hard choice between that and Doom, but I love me some Lo Wang. The one liners and fact that it doesn't take itself very seriously reminds me of Duke Nukem and Serious Sam…
Shadow Warrior 2 is also the
Shadow Warrior 2 is also the first PC game to support HDR. The announcement came from NVIDIA, but I’ve was thinking of picking it up to see if I could view HDR from my RX480 to Vizio TV. Besides SW2 I can’t seem to find a way to test or view HDR content from PC. Microsoft/Netflix made an announcement last month, but you have to have a Kaby Lake processor or (maybe?) a NVIDIA 1XXX series card. Sigh, DRM.
https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2016/10/13/shadow-warrior-2/
Why not promote the Fury X
Why not promote the Fury X that is on sale for $299 at newegg and amazon (and probably other online shops) ?
In the Division it delivers 83% of the GTX 1080 performance for less then HALF the price. (and its quieter)
I’m mentioning this because The Division is a forecaster of performance for many future titles…
It’s not a bad deal, but I
It's not a bad deal, but I will say this: every time I plug in my Fury X here to do some testing, I am annoyed at the noise and sound that card makes…
Its true that you cant judge
Its true that you cant judge noise just from a db level, its characteristics also matters.
For example I can listen to the entire “four seasons” at 80db, but I would probably go “death” after 5 minute of skrylex.
I will know soon enough if the pump noise/coil whine is a problem in my case. (Corsair Carbide 330R)
For the noise, I can hear the
For the noise, I can hear the pump when the case is open and when I put my ear close. But otherwise, closed case and ambient noise made this the quiet video card I ever owned.
But, at idle, in the middle of the night, I think I could hear the pump. In contrast the H100 pump seem quieter… So not sure why the Fury X pump is audible, but the H100 is not.
The coil noise doesn’t seem worse of better then many GPU I used since the 8800GTS.
The noise is not my issue with the Fury X (Or performance)
But the heat sink is massive and “uncomfortably” fit even in my full ATX case. And the tubing is very stiff.
So all in all, I think the $170 4GB RX 480 is a much better all around deal. Its probably THE best GPU at the moment, even at $200
I ordered nvidia gtx 1080 🙂
I ordered nvidia gtx 1080 🙂