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Provides: High performance in-ear audio playback
Developer: Monster Cable Products, Inc.
Minimum Requirements: Any audio device with a 1/8” inch mini-jack
Price: $179.95
Availability: Out now

It’s not too hard for many of us to justify spending $180 on headphones. If you’re like me, you use them constantly. I’m lucky enough to have a job that’s conducive to listening to music for pretty much the whole day, but only if my tastes aren’t be forced upon my coworkers (especially the stuff in Japanese).

At home, my wife likes to wind down by watching people try to buy houses on TV. I like to play video games. Rather than spend the time in separate rooms, I just throw on a pair of headphones and pretend to hear her when she makes some comment about their house vs. ours (“We couldn’t afford it,” tends to always apply).

Spending this much time with my ears plugged up, sound quality is obviously important to me. But for anything from around $100 and up, you’re going to get decent enough sound for a pair of headphones. Instead, you start considering things such as comfort, fit, accessories and construction. This is where Monster succeeds with their Monster Turbine High Performance In-Ear Speakers.

Before we get to all of that, though, let’s do talk about sound. It’s stellar. Monster calls these “in-ear speakers” instead of “in-ear headphones” because they feel the sound is that good, and it’s not far from that. The audio is clear and full with impressive (but not muddy) bass for both music and games; sometimes annoyingly so, but that’s my own fault. Remember when you thought a 128 kbps bit rate was fine for your MP3s? You’re going to be paying for that with these headphones, becuase you’ll definitely hear all of the imperfections. It’s a fair trade-off, though, because you’ll also hear bits of your music that are lost on cheaper headphones.

Monster offers this diagram to show why the Turbines sound this good:

There are other reasons, however, such as the fit of the eartips. You get a total of five pairs in two designs, and instructions on how to use them. Yes, there is a proper way to fit ear tip headphones to get maximum comfort, sound quality and safety. The benefit to noise reducing headphones is that you can keep your audio at a lower volume because outside noises are blocked. For this to work, a proper fit is key, and I found I actually got the best fit by using different sized ear tips. My right ear canal is apparently larger than the left, or maybe just shaped differently.

One other seemingly insignificant thing I really liked about the Monster Turbine High Performance In-Ear Speakers was the left/right channel banding. It’s often dark where I use my headphones, and many companies hide the “L” and “R” in ways to make the channels difficult to distinguish. Monster threw a blue band around the left speaker, red around the right, making it quite simple tell which speaker goes in which ear even if the only light in the room is that of the TV and the Nintendo DS screen. It’s small touches like this that let you know they’ve been doing this for quite some time, and that they’re listening to their users.

The other bonuses are what you’d expect at this price level. The carrying case is a nice touch, and the tangle-free cable design is helpful (although the cable itself still feels a bit flimsy and picks up outside noise as it rustles against clothing and such). You also get a lot of superfluous documentation from Monster and packaging so toughtfully put together you’ll almost feel guilty throwing it out.

As we always point out when reviewing headphones at this price level, yes, there are $20 headphones out there. If you’re happy with them, perfect; stick with them. But if spending between $100 and $200 for a quality set of headphones is as normal to you as buying bottled water, then give the Monster Turbine High Performance In-Ear Speakers a try. You will get your money’s worth.