Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

If you are reading this, I am going to go out on a limb and assume that you are probably much like me in that fitness and conditioning is likely very important to you. Otherwise, why on Earth would you be contemplating dropping over 2 bills for a set of sport headphones right? Good, I commend you for your dedication to task. God knows the path we choose is not an easy one, and anything we can find to make our task that much easier is always something we are on the lookout for, be it workout gear, proper nutrition tips, supplements, fitness books and supposed "breakthroughs", and, of course, HEADPHONES! Most all of us have probably been through more pairs of "workout headphones" in our tenure than their are stars in the night sky, and all of them have had their shortcomings in one way or another. Some sound great but are dead in month, some fall out of our ears, some have cords that like to short out on us, and others are a candidate for the trash heap not long after we take them out of the packaging. Why is it so difficult to construct a set of headphones that caters to our needs? This was my question for the ages until I discovered this particular pair, and while certainly not perfect, these babies do a better job than anything else I have ever tried (and I have tried TONS). I will break down this review into a few simple categories and feel free to shoot me comments if you feel as though there is something I have overlooked. Fair ? Ok, let us get to it! Sound- Let me start by saying that if you are an audiophile these are not going to make you cream in your pants. I have numerous friends who are sound engineers and they are continually telling me how blown away they are by a particular pair or another. To me, they all pretty much sound the same in that price range. That said, I think we need to be mindful of our purposes here. We want music that is loud and engrossing enough to make us zone out and forget the 550 pound hunchback on the next treadmill over, yet isolated enough so that the hot girl doing aerobics nearby does not discover our hidden passion for Justin Bieber. This task does not require a set custom built for the president of Viacom. With that in mind, these babies do the trick quite nicely. They sound great out of the box, and believe it or not they actually begin to sound better over time as they get broken in. Even the most annoying of the gym rat subculture are just a few taps of volume away from oblivion, and that my friends, is how I define audio bliss! Fit-- This is really difficult category for me to make generalizations about since I have no idea what your head is shaped like. You could of been a stunt double in the direct-to-video remake of the Coneheads for all I know. However, suffice to say that barring some sort of rare genetic mutation at birth, you will probably not have too many complaints about how these headphones fit. They are fully adjustable, and nearly every one of my friends who I have let try these on have not reported back to me any problems (though many were hesitant to want to give them back). They also stay incredibly tight when you are doing activities that require you to lay flat (like bench press) or to contort your body in strange ways (I was talking about stretching you pervert). They are comfortable to wear, and with the added audio bliss thrown into the mix, after awhile you will forget you even have them on. I have had more than a few Saturday's when I decided to go nuts and have ended up with a 3 hour session on my hands. Even during these sadistic, psychological, alpha male trips, I have yet to feel as though they were compressing me. Maybe I am just lucky and have the perfect shaped head, or, as is more likely, perhaps the engineers at Monster actually designed these headphones correctly. I'll let you be the judge. Durability-- I have had these headphones for about 3 months now. When I first got them, I babied them to an incredible degree, but after the honeymoon was over, they have been abused like a Thai hooker. They have been drenched with sweat, dropped to the ground from a good distance, tossed in the backseat of my car when I was in a hurry, and generally used and abused like an ADHD 5 year old would his favorite toy. To date, I have seen no noticeable changes in either sound or fit and function. You can certainly tell they are not fresh out of the box from looking at them, but they seem to be no much more worse for wear. If that changes, so will this review. Functionality-- One of the biggest advantages of all of using this pair of headphones is the fact that they seamlessly sync via BlueTooth. I can't tell you them number of times I have been working out and got my headphones yanked out of my ears from the chord getting caught on a piece of gym equipment. I have even ruined a couple of pairs of headphones this way, so now you too can be like Pinocchio and rejoice that you "have no strings to hold you down". I use an iPhone 5, and it paired in seconds and I was good to go. Most of you out there are probably technically savvy enough to figure out how to use all of the functions of these headphones in under 5 min, but to those of you who are not, it does come with instructions. As for me, I do not think I have bothered with instructions for any tech device or gadget in a solid 5 years. The headphones are rechargeable and last about 25 hours or so on a full charge. I normally charge mine about once a week and have had no problems. It does also come with an adapter to run wired if need be, which is handy when you are either forgetful or stupid. I normally keep this in my glove box of my car in case of emergency and I am stuck at the gym with no audio. A fate worse than death in my book. Summation-- Really, what more do you need to know? These sound fantastic, stay put while you are working out, do not have a glass jaw, and are technologically solid. They solve 99 percent of your audio related gym problems, with the only real drawback being their fairly high price tag. While I an certainly understand being hesitant about dropping hard earned cash on an item like this (I am a cheapskate also), ask yourself how much longer do you want to endure your gym audio situation sucking? I finally found my way off of that merry go round and I hope that you will too. Now comes the truly hard part. Once you are properly outfitted to workout, you have to actually go workout. These bad boys will make that process much more bearable, but the desire to hit the gym has to come from within. Got questions? Shoot me a comment and I will get back to you when I can. Update----------------April 7th 2014 After a tad over 6 months of owning these, I thought I would stop by here and report back on my experience. In short, not much has changed from my original assessment. I have managed to go through 3 different girlfriends in that time period, but in contrast to the ex gf's, my Monsters have yet to be unfaithful to me or nag at me for drinking too much. After being jerked around by companies selling sport headphones for the entirety of my athletic life, it is nice to have some stability, as opposed to having to keep a pair of headphones "on deck" anticipating the inevitable failure of the current pair. Hell, I was so frustrated with one company in particular a couple of years back (who will remain nameless) that I was half considering abducting their CEO and fed-exing him naked to the Taliban. I am a little surprised that the powers that be at Monster have not lowered the price on them though. They have been out now for going on a year after all. However, as a guy that also has more than a casual interest in home and car audio, I know from experience that anything you buy from Monster is not going to be inexpensive purchase. They sell all of their stuff at an elevated price point, which I would normally be pissed about, but when the performance is exemplary, it softens the blow on my psyche and wallet. I might be cheap, but I am not a person that is hesitant to pay for quality. Especially for an item like this one that I am going to be using nearly every day. I think Monster has really hit a home run with these headphones. I hope the company continues to carry this particular line so it can offer others a way to make their workouts easier. Some people claim to have some kind of spiritual epiphany during exercise. As for me ? My goals are far more narcissistic, at least by modern PC notions. If the desire to look good physically makes me vain or an awful person, then so be It. I doubt I will lose sleep over it. The only major change I would suggest is to offer some different options as far as color. I mean seriously, lime green? Am I going to the gym to lift or suiting up for a gay pride parade in the Castro district of San Francisco? Update ----- 12/04/2014 Wow, where does the time go? It's been now a year since I purchased these and they are still kicking out my loud EDM music as I grunt and sweat my way through the sociopolitical wasteland I call my local Planet Fitness. I have noticed that Monster has far more competitors for this type of device now than they did back in 2013, but competition is always a good thing. Competition keeps companies making devices like these stay on their A game, just as competition keeps me hitting on this Yoga instructor I see every other Thursday even though she has shot down every muscle head with the balls to approach her in the last year. {Note: She will be mine eventually}. Really, I do not have a whole hell of a lot to add to this review. The rubberized ear piece on my right ear cup has started to crack a very minor bit, but considering how much abuse I have dished out to these headphones over the course of the last year, it is astounding they are not in a million pieces sitting in some landfill by now. I guess I sort of take for granted these days what a huge milestone having a pair of workout headphones for a year really is. I would say my previous personal best for workout headphones prior to owning these was in the 1-2 month range at the absolute most. Even if these things died on me tomorrow, I would still feel they have far exceeded my expectations when I originally purchased them, though my hope is they will stay with me into 2015 and beyond. Like most gym rats, I am a creature/slave of habit and routine.