Top 10 best headphones under 100 2022 Price and Feature Comparison

Introduction—————————– I love testing headphones, In-ear-monitors, earphones, earbuds, earwax (jkjk)…ya know all of that stuff. Recently I picked up a pair of Philips SHP9500S (Note the “S” refers to the new version as the original 9500 was discontinued years ago). These were originally intended as a replacement for my broken gaming headphones, but upon receiving them and testing them on music I was extremely surprised with their sonic performance (or quality of their sound). At $70 these are what I would consider to be relatively “budget friendly” headphones. What surprised me the most was that even at that price, they competed equally with headphones/earphones/IEMs upwards of 3x that price point. Now I understand that these are Open-Back headphones and aren’t suitable for everyone’s needs (more on that later) and that the sound signature/style of sound is not traditional to what people are accustomed to hearing (again…more on this later). So without further ado, let’s dig into this shall we?Build Quality—————————– Not much to say other than BRAVO Philips…At $70 I couldn’t be sure what to expect from full sized Over-Ear headphones, but I was very impressed with the quality of materials that Philips chose to use in the design/manufacturing of these headphones. The headphones are constructed with relatively sturdy plastic integrated into an almost perfectly engineered fit design. Not only does the plastic feel well constructed, but every movable joint is engineered to have some degree of resistance giving it a much more premium feel than many flimsy, loose and poorly constructed headphones. To add to that, the headphones also have a very flush design with little to no excess poke between any given part and only a 3mm offset at the most where the driver/speaker tilts forward or back to conform to the persons’ head. Last but not least, the slide adjustment points at the top-sides of the headband are made with aluminum and a plastic reinforcement plate under it (probably also to aid with sliding)Comfort—————————– I’ll makes this simple, THEY ARE THE MOST COMFORTABLE HEADPHONES I’VE EVER USED! You know when headphones claim to be “Over the Ear”, but they’re really just large On Ear Headphones…? Yea well these headphones literally are OVER the ears! Unless you have Dumbo sized ears, then your ears will completely fit inside the earpads with the padded ring all the way around your ears (The way Over the Ear headphones are suppose to be). Not only that the brilliant engineers at PhilipsSound also thought it would be great to make the padding at the top of the headphones detached from the headband. Not only does this prevent stretching damage to the the padding, but it also acts as suspension space between the users’ head and the headband adding to the great comfort! The headphone clamp force (elastic force used to keep the headphone “clamped” on to the head) is rather loose so this may or may not be good depending on your head size. While the clamp force is very pleasing and causes zero fatigue or headaches, it is important to note that they could fall off more easily when leaning forward or back on smaller heads.Sound Quality—————————-*HIGHS*- The highs are quite fantastic in that they are very revealing in terms of detail retrieval without being harsh or sibilant (piercing). I would consider them to be warmer/smoother than most headphones in the $100-200 category with Sennheiser being the only exception. In general, the highs are consistent across all genres of music in that they’re there to say hello and be present, but not overbearing and fatiguing like some headphones are.*MIDS*- This is where it’s at!! The mids on these are INCREDIBLE! Because these headphones are made to have more neutral/reference style sound signature, the mids are well presented in the body of its sound. Vocals are crystal clear regardless of your genre! I listened to everything from indie alternative, tropical house, rap, r&b, rock, you name it! It honestly doesn’t matter what you play, everything sounds super clear and in some instances it almost sounds live depending on the recording. Any instruments will be brought forward to your attention while still remaining behaved and in line with everything else at an equal intensity level (not over emphasized).*LOWS/BASS*- This is the most controversial section by FAR but hear me out…everything you understand about bass is not “incorrect” but rather “shaped” metaphorical also to the sound signatures of a large majority of headphones in the mainstream market. What I mean by this is that a large majority of headphones you’ve used have what the industry considers to be a “pop sound” aka: V-Shaped (or U-Shaped) sound. This basically means that most headphones emphasize low/bass and highs. In the case of the SHP9500S, there are lows/bass, but not in the way most of you are accustomed to. The lows/bass on these are present and impactful, but also tight with very little decay time (they don’t stick around for long). In these headphones the lows/bass are there to add to the dimension of the sound to create an overall experience rather than become the focus of the experience…if that makes sense. If you’re dead set on hearing a rumble and prefer that experience, then these are not the headphones for you. HOWEVER! If you’re interested in trying something new and hearing your music in a completely different way, then the SHP9500s are tuned to give you the opportunity to hear everything else that a “pop sounding” headphone won’t offer you.*Sound Stage*- This might be a brand new category for some of you because a good portion of you have probably only ever used earphones or closed back headphones which have a very intimate sounding experience. Even earphones/closed back headphones that claim to have a “large sound stage” are COMPLETELY different than that of an Open Back headphone. To put it simply, sound stage refers to how “open” and how real to hearing music “on stage” headphones can reproduce. The bigger the sound stage, the more life like and real it typically sounds. The SHP9500S is not the largest sounding open back headphone on the market, but it is considered to be 90% close to what open back headphones in the $300 offer and 100% competitive to open back headphones in the $150-250 range. Basically they’re REALLY good overall and EXCELLENT for their price! The sound stage is open and detailed enough to give you the experience of being in the recording room with the artists which is a super fun and exciting experience! I like to consider the sound stage to be open enough to pick out instrumental positions while still being intimate enough to sound like a private performance just for you!*Sound Leakage*- I’m not here to hide this fact…they are VERY loud! If you’re in a room with other people and you plan to play music at 60%+ on any device…everyone in the room will hear what you’re listening to clearly. These are open back headphones and nothing is there to block the sound coming in or coming out…simple as that. Don’t expect to be volume conscious with these because either way, it’s still audible from the outside. If you have your own room and or you have a secluded space to listen using these, then these are perfect! OR you can let your roommates try these, they’ll fall in love and then if you convince all your roommates to get one too and invest into a large aux 3.5mm splitter for everyone to connect to, then all of you can share the SUPERB experience…problem solved! Ohh…if you have annoying siblings and want to torture them with forcefully making them hear your infinitely better taste in music, you can play these at full blast and watch the expression on their face change from a smirk to anger! CAUTION…they may try to steal it if they get a chance to put them on and listen. (I am not liable for any stolen headphones)Conclusion—————————– at $60-70 the Philips SHP9500S is a GREAT investment! They are the perfect headphones for people looking to hear 90% of what those expensive $400+ “audiophile” headphones sound like at only a small fraction of the cost! I think that these headphones can also be a great alternative to buying speakers to watch movies or listen to music because you get a very similar listening experience to that of relatively decent speaker system (due to the sound stage) in a much smaller package that’s also portable. If you’re tired of hearing the same style of sound from every headphone and want to take a step into a completely different experience, then I HIGHLY recommend these! I promise you that if you’re looking for a fantastic experience where you’ll get to sit and re-listen to ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING to hear the difference, then THESE ARE FOR YOU!!

Bought these for my son and he says they are very good for gaming and sound really good. He was surprised.

Let me preface this by saying that I bought these mainly for the noise cancelling, to use both to focus when working/watching media on my PC and to mitigate external sound when sleeping. I actually don’t really listen to music that often and can’t say much about the audio quality beyond “it’s acceptable”. I do have many things to say about the other two use cases though.When using it on the PC :As long as you plan to use it by BT you should be fine. I had some trouble getting it to connect at first but I blame that on my PC being old (Win 7), I made it work somehow by using a newer BT dongle, the fact that it somehow works at all on such an old setup is a plus to me, whether this was intentional or not. There’s two inconveniences though :1.- Even though you can connect by 3.5mm, the product listing doesn’t tell you anywhere that NC or EQ features are not supported during this mode. What’s worse, apparently the feature WAS supported a few years ago, but it got disabled by a firmware update somewhere down the line because of some bogus reason (the fact that more expensive models that came after this still support the feature is kinda fishy too). If you were an old user, this was a choice, whether you wanted to update or not, but new buyers will find that the product now ships with the latest firmware when you buy it, so you’re stuck with it. I wouldn’t blame you if you just assumed NC should work over 3.5mm, as it is a normally a standard feature in this price range, even worse, a lot of the reviews out there on the product are from the time when the feature was available, so people deciding to buy without doing research or based on old information are in for a bad surprise. As it is now, when you use 3.5mm the logic part of the headphones is completely turned off and only the speakers work, so you’re left with the regular unfiltered sound, and to put it frankly, the audio quality like this is terrible and not worth it, do not buy these if you plan to use 3.5mm at all, you’ll be sorely disappointed.2.- Speaking of NC and EQ, those features have several options that can be adjusted to your liking through a phone app. This is a good thing as the default config may not suit everybody’s use case, what’s not so good is tying these adjustments to a phone app only. Why do I have to switch over to my phone when I want to adjust a setting on the fly instead of being able to do it directly from my computer? What if something happens to my phone or the app stops working/gets pulled from the store sometime in the future? A PC app would have been a great alternative, and being able to modify some of the options just by using buttons would have been even better.When using as a sleep aid :This is gonna be a very picky and niche use case, but sometimes, I may be woken by unexpected noise in the middle of the night, at that point I like to be able to grab my NC headphones and put them on as soon as possible, without having to think too much about it or turn on the lights, to be able to go back to sleep. This product fails in that regard in several ways.First, the case that they ship with : The headphones only fit in when you fold them inwards a specific way, taking them out and unfolding them is a bit cumbersome and I wish they would have given you a bigger case in which the headphones fit normally without doing this. I think the idea is to make it so it takes less space when packing them or something, but the case is fairly big as it is, so if you want to save space you’re probably gonna take them out of it anyways. Should keep the folding ability but make the case itself bigger so you don’t need to store them folded.Turning on the thing is also unnecessarily complicated, the power button is same size and shape as every other button, and you have to hold it for 3 secs to turn it on, again, not the fastest or easiest thing to do in the dark. My generic brand headphones from similar price range but much older have a single slide toggle switch, it’s size and shape are different from the other buttons and turning it on just takes a flick, I would much have preferred something like that.Once the thing is actually on, turns out it will turn itself off after a few minutes if it’s not paired to anything. So if you want to just use the NC by itself, though luck, you better have your phone nearby with BT turned on so you can connect to it, even if you don’t play anything on it. Again, not the fastest thing to do when you’re on bed.Lastly, and this is a minor gripe, the device has an LED status light to indicate whether it’s ON, in pairing mode, etc. For some reason the thing is perpetually blinking regardless of state. I can understand for pairing mode, but why not just make it solid when it’s actually connected? If I take off the headphones and lie them around on my desk and forget about it, I can’t tell from a quick glance if they’re ON or OFF, I have to stare carefully for a few seconds to see if the blinking comes on and what color it is to know what’s going on. Annoying.”Better sleep” function :This is a feature of the app, it is not highlighted that often but a few reviews mention it, as one of the few people that could make use of it, I will give my thoughts on it : It’s basically a white noise machine, you have a few white noise loops to choose from and you can adjust the volume of each one individually so you can mix and match to your liking, so for example, you can have loud rain with faint sounds of birds in the background or vice versa. You can also set a timer for how long this will play for. It’s a handy feature but nothing exceptional, the stock noises are limited and may not be of everybody’s liking, the loops also feel kinda short. I find myself using mostly the rain only. If you’re into this, chances are you probably already have your own long white noise loops saved on your phone anyways, which would work just as well.Good things :Putting all that negativity aside, I do think the hardware itself is very good at this price range. The NC has 3 different settings and is worth trying them all out to see which one works better for your environment, it won’t silence everything a 100%, but it works much better than my previous cheapy headphones, and I doubt you can get much better NC at this price range. The headphones are comfortable and I have no problem sleeping with them or wearing them for hours. Is hard to tell how well the build will hold over time, but after a month of usage, nothing has broken yet. The battery is LONG and I only have to charge it once a week if anything. Although it’s not something I was even aware when I bought the product, turns out it has a built in mic and it’s surprisingly good quality, I have been able to do many long voice calls with it with no complains about the quality from the other party so far.Overall, despite the poor user experience and having to adapt to its many quirks, I do find this product useful and plan to keep using it in the future. I just hope when/if I upgrade sometime in the future, that the newer products on the line don’t suffer from the same usability problems.

I don’t much care for the controls on the earbuds themselves, but they paired up just fine and have perfectly acceptable sound quality for me. I’m no audiophile, but for my podcasts they’re good earbuds. They sit pretty comfortably in my ear holes, too.

Noise canceling is 3-4 stars. Sound quality is 4 stars. Build quality is 1 star. The foam ear cushion came off after one use by my wife. I was able to get it back on. But I’m not sure if it will stay on. I also own the $348 Sony model WH-1000XM4 which I use. After 2 years and very heavy daily use, this model still works great. Maybe her unit was a lemon, but I’d get the $348 model.Update:My wife called Sony and was immediately connected to a customer service rep. They are sending her new headphones! Very good response….”Sony No Baloney”! Upgraded from 2 stars to 4 stars

These are really great head phones. They are comfortable (don’t squeeze my head), connect to WiFi seamlessly and without issues, come with a nice case, and the noise cancellation is decent. They’re not super expensive so I don’t expect them to be perfect (and as an FYI, anyone complaining: noise cancellation is only supposed to work on lower frequencies of noise, such as traffic drone or engine sound on an airplane. It’s not going to drown out the noise of your neighbor’s screaming baby or barking dog, or people talking). They were perfect for my intended use: listening to instrumental music at work to keep me focused.But 3 months in, the volume on the left side is lower than on the right. Happened out of the blue one morning when I turned them on. I don’t carry them around with me everywhere, and if I do take them with me, they’re always in the (hard cover) carry case. No idea what happened. It’s not terrible terrible, I can still listen to music while working, but it’s not great either 🙁

There is no on or off button and you just have to wait till it goes off. Wastes battery life too much.

Was looking for great sounding wireless headphones primarily to enjoy music, also occasional calls/zoom, with/without noise cancellation, that does not break the bank – and this Jabra fit the need perfectly. Sounds very clean and well balanced, without overwhelming bass taking over like many others in a similar price range. The bass is just right – not too much, not too little – and the details come through beautifully. Much better sound compared with my old Bose QuietComfort 25 (wired), Anker SoundCore Q30 in similar price range, and even compared to Plantronics and Beats – both 3x the price – it sounded better than the Plantronics (too tinny) and held its own against the Beats (heavy bass). The only reason it’s not 5 stars is because the set may not sit comfortably on everyone as it’s not at all configurable/adjustable for fit.

Let me start by stating that I do not claim to be an audiophile, I am not a sound engineer or even a musician. I am just a guy looking for a comfortable pair of closed-can headphones for recording my amateur podcast that will ideally be versatile enough that I don’t need multiple pairs for different activities.Honestly, I was reluctant to order these because I personally think they look ugly, and while they’re highly rated, there are enough reviews about the ear pads peeling or flaking after a short amount of time that I am worried about the build quality. This was further emphasized when I pulled it out of the box to find this very minimally packaged headset. The ear pad material definitely feels thin and cheap to where it’s not hard to believe that they may peel or flake after a year of use. They do sell replacement ear pads ranging from $14-$28 online. The positive is that this minimally put-together headset means that they are the lightest studio headphones I’ve ever used, and this lightness I believe plays a huge role in their comfort.The band is a stitched leather material that could potentially be real, with a light amount of padding, over an obvious metal bar. It is one of the wider bands I’ve used, combined with its lightness, means that it’s gentle on the top of the head. The clamping pressure was noticeable but calmed after a bit of use, however, this band is reminiscent of one of those slap wrist bracelets, as it kind of wants to coil itself up. The band extends far enough to wear them with most hats at its max extension.The cups have the right amount of pad cushion to fit comfortably over your ears. As mentioned earlier, they do seem incredibly cheap and I have concerns that they will need to be replaced regularly.The cans do flip and the band folds, resulting in a reasonably small footprint for travel or storage.The coiled cable is hardwired into the can, continuing the trend of cheap engineering, but the coating feels thick and it feels durable enough, considering you cannot replace it if it is damaged (the most common thing to be damaged on headphones). The cable isn’t short, especially if you consider the extension from the relatively loose coil, but it’s not the longest either. My tower is on my desk, and I could plug it into the back without a problem, but it would hinder my movement, and if it was under my desk, I do not believe it would be long enough. Thankfully, I plug mine into a DROP 02 AMP + GRACE SDAC that sits under my monitor.What these headphones lack in aesthetics, packaging, and potential quality, they really make up for in sound. I put these side-by-side headphones that cost twice as much, and these still came out clearer. I tested them in virtual meetings while listening to multiple genres of music, an audiobook, editing my podcast, and gaming. Not only do these create a clear realistic auditory experience while listening to people talk, the lightly elevated lows create enough bass to be enjoyable while listening to music. They are even louder out of the box than any other pair of headphones I currently own or have tested them against. I find they are perfectly acceptable outside of the box, but for testing purposes, I did EQ them to oratory1990’s settings in EqualizerAPO + PEACE.In the end, I’m not sure you can find a better quality sounding closed-can headset at this price point. They truly are incredible when tested against other models in and above their price range. Not only do they sound great, but they are also some of the most comfortable headphones I have used. My only concern is the build quality, which is a bit of a shame because while I love to find these low-price gems that outshine more expensive competitors, I really would have paid twice as much for a matching quality build… but who knows, maybe they’ll continue to surprise me there too. And if they do, I will return to this review to give them the full 5 stars they deserve.Headsets the MDR-7506 defeated: beyerdynamic DT 770 PRO, AKG K371, Sennheiser HD 280 PRO, RODE NTH-100, Fostex T40RP mk3.