Archives for July 23, 2019

Starts 12pm ET: KZ ES4 Earphone Lighting Deal

If you like chasing Gold Box lightning deals, per the schedule posted over there, starting at 12pm eastern today (Tuesday 7/23/19) they will have a lightning deal on the KZ ES4 earphones.

There are multiple colors and options (without or with mic/remote), and we don’t know ahead of time which one(s) will be on sale. The price before sale is $20 for the model pointed out to in the Gold Box, BUT sometimes it points to the “root option” of the listing, and not the one that would actually go on sale.

If you don’t want to dig into the color options, you can look for it at the Headphones lightning deals (currently five pages of them)…

In comparison, these go for round $15 at Gear Best, while the situation is a bit too chaotic to quickly figure it out at AliExpress

Panasonic RP-HTX80 Closed Over-Ears for $41 [limit 3]

If you are looking for name-brand retro-styled bluetooth over-ears headphone without breaking the bank, and the “matte black” color scheme is preferred or at least acceptable, you can get the new condition Panasonic RP-HXT80 headphones for $41~ by Amazon actual with up to three pairs per customer at the sale price. This is not a lightning deal, so expiration time is unknown…

This is a closed-back over-ear model with bluetooth 4.1 but without NFC. The retro design may be a deal killer for some ~ if you don’t like that style of “outdoorsy” headband adjustments. It does not support apt-X or AAC so keep that in mind. No ANC and no 3.5mm input. They promise up to 24 hours battery life.

And as fate would have it, we have a text and pictures unboxing of this, posted around Christmas 2017.

OR if you are not afraid of The USED (no, not the band, I’m still afraid of their constant emo-whining), then you can peruse the various color schemes at Amazon Warehouse Deals to find the right color and condition combination where prices start at $30~. The link I posted here shows the lowest price per color. To see the detailed listings for each color, click (or open in new tab/window) the small blue link titled “See all offers for this product”…

Beats Studio 3 Wireless Closed Over-Ears (BT/ANC) for $280

Beats and Bose, they break my audiophile bones lame some forum audiophiles, but if you are not part of The Lament [there’s even a music album with that name ~ unrelated to audiophilia ~ although I haven’t analyzed the lyrics with a fine-toothed comb)…

… then you may be interested to learn that the new condition Beats Studio 3 Wireless (ANC/bluetooth closed over-ears with the W1 chip) is on sale for $280 in various colors at various Apple-blessed retailers such as B&H Photo and Amazonia

This of course is now a highly-contested battlefield at the $300-ish price range, with Bose and Sony battling it out and many other audio and electronics brands trying their hand, trying to strike gold. After all, Sony was able to hit the ground running with their WH-1000X series breaking out of the shadow of the ZX-series and the “Extra Bass” the average consumer was mostly familiar with Sony-wise…