Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I recently bought both these and the Shure e3c in-hear headphones (which cost about six times as much). The Sonys are for the gym (where they will surely take a beating and eventually need to be replaced) while the more expensive Shures will be used for my daily commute on public transportation (a generally less violent activity). I really enjoy both headphones, but they are sonically worlds apart. The Sony headphones are a bit easier to insert and sit more comfortably in the ear than the Shures, whose cables have to be looped up and over each ear, newscaster-style. When it comes to ease of use and physical comfort, the Sonys are simply better. Sonically, it is hard to say one set of earphones is objectively better than the other. The Sonys feature a very prominent bottom end while the Shures have tighter bass response and much more mid-range clarity. I would say the Sonys have been engineered to sound "hot" (lots of bass and treble) while the Shures were designed to sound more neutral. In places where a sense of energy is more important than nuance (e.g., at the gym or out jogging) I'd recommend the Sony earphones. For longer periods of more introspective, careful listening, the Shures can't be beat.