Archives for July 2023

Prime Day 2023: Top Selling Over-Ears

Today (July 12 in 2023) is the second and last day of the 2023 incarnation of Prime Day!

OVER EARS
If you are curious what’s happening in the world of headphones, both in terms of offers and in terms of what others are buying, here are the Top-Selling Over-Ears over there.

As you can expect, the list is dominated by Beats, Sony, Bose and various budget brands such as this well-reviewed (4.4 out of 5, 13,290 ratings) KVidio bluetooth over-ears for $20 in five color options. Despite the price, it has Bluetooth 5.3 which makes you wonder why some of the big audio brands are still on Bluetooth 4 while charging an order of magnitude more for theirs 🙂 It folds, plays via 3.5mm as well, promises up to 65 hours, USB-C, etc!

The first open-back headphone in the list appears at #31, it is the Sennheiser HD 599 SE for $80, a pretty good price, thus the high chart position ~ considering the normies buy cheap and Beats and Bose and Sony and JBL and Apple proper and Anker and such 🙂

Sennheiser is also at #37 with the HD 450SE bluetooth over-ears for $80. And that’s it for the audiophile name-brand products in the Top 100. One open back and two Sennheisers 🙂

ON EARS
The On-Ears category is more of the same, with Beats and Sony and JBL and cheap brands dominating among the name-brand products. Yes, the good old Sony ZX-110 for $10 is charting high at #10. I never got around to writing a review for this, but I believe this headphone was tuned (intentionally or not) for usage in coffee shop background noise 🙂

A few of over-ears also appear in the second half of the Top 100, [see meta note below], the Sennheiser HD 350 BT, the Bose QC 45, the Beats Studio 3 🙂

At #79 we find another old friend, the lightweight Panasonic RP-HT21. Per the Amazon listing, I bought this almost exactly ten years ago!

And shortly after that we have another lightweight, the good old Koss KPH-7 for $6 in the black color scheme. This one I bought eight years ago.

Meta: On the Lists
Before you freak out looking at the list, note that Amazon’s categorization is a big mess, you will find non-canon products (eg truly wireless and such) in the listing. There’s too many 3rd-party sellers listing their products everywhere, intentionally or not 🙂

That’s why I’m not mentioning the open-back category, it’s fully of kinda bone conduction and random truly wireless 🙂

July 11, 2023 Filed Under: headphones

Massdrop has its own Prime sale (200 options)

Massdrop (yes, I’m still calling them that) is having its very own Prime sale featuring exactly 200 products, including plenty of audio-related items.

In this post, I’m rounding up some of the offerings. This is a sampling, not a comprehensive listing!

OPEN BACKS
+ Koss KPH-40X Utility lightweights for $29

+ Hifiman HE-X4 planars for $89
+ yes, you can dabble into planar over-ears for under $100

+ Sennheiser HD 58x Jubilee for $149

+ Hifiman HE-4XX planars for $149
+ Hifiman HE-5XX planars for $169

+ Sennheiser HD 6XX for $199

+ Drop+ Dan Clark AEON for $369

+ FOCAL ELEX for $599

+ Sennheiser HD 800 S for $1425

CLOSED BACKS
+ Hifiman HE-R7DX for $79

+ Drop+ Dan Clark Audio AEON for $449

+ Drop+ MR Speakers Ether CX for $649

IEMs and TW
+ Etymotic ER3-SE or ER3-XR IEMs for $95

+ Akoustyx R-220 IEMs for $149

+ Beyerdynamic DT 177X studio for $349

+ Campfire Dorado 2020 IEM for $499

DAC/Amps and such
+ DROP + SMSL HO150X LINEAR head-amp for $169

Head-Accessories and such
+ various gaming headsets (not listed here)

+ Kanton H2 headphone stand for $30
+ that’s too cheap for Massdrop? 😉

+ Craighill headphone stand for $80
+ Barrett Creative Lamina V2 stand for $90

Etc
+ FFT Audio Light for $140
+ if you are mesmerized by shiny lights that go with the flow of the music!

+ lots and lots of keyboards and their new category of PC/gaming accessories
+ I’m glad I avoided the keyboard fetish special interest, because it looks like a never-ending and very expensive hobby 🙂
+ this is not a keyboard blog, so I won’t mention them here 🙂

July 11, 2023 Filed Under: store sale Tagged With:

Philips X3 Open Over-Ears for $140

This offer is open to all Amazon customers! A 3rd-party seller (Phototech) is offering the new condition wired open-back over-ears Philips Fidelio X3 for $140 with the order fulfilled by Amazon, so Prime members get free 2-day shipping.

Amazon’s own price is higher. Phototech is a frequent seller of the Fidelio line.

As to which one of the Fidelio X-series headphones to get, or whether to get them, well, head on over to your favorite headphoolia websites, forums, blogs and vlogs for never-ending discussions 🙂

July 11, 2023 Filed Under: headphones Tagged With: ,

Prime Day 2023 is here with surprise Sennheiser hot offers!

Prime Day 2023 is here and there are five pages of Headphone deals including the usual suspects of popular with consumer options like Bose, Beats, Sony, AirPods and such.

But the big surprise of the day is a Big Sennheiser SALE including:

+ open over-ear HD 560S for $150

+ open over-ear HD 600 for $283~

+ open over-ear HD 660 S2 for $400

+ open over-ear HD 599 SE for $80

+ closed over-ear HD 450 SE Bluebooths for $80

+ also various truly-wireless and a couple of RF-series TV headphones

+ IE 200 In-Ears for $100

+ to purchase most of the offers above, you must be a Prime Member, thus the Prime Day name
+ if you want to buy any of these offers, fear not, you can jump in and buy anything you want as long as you start a 30-DAY free TRIAL of Prime!

July 11, 2023 Filed Under: headphones Tagged With: , , , ,

Lowest price sale of select Monoprice audio products

If you are fond of Monoprice audio products or their many audio cables and assorted accessories, they are currently having a Lowest Price sale of select products, including a few headphones, speakers, a couple of DACs, and all kinds of audio cables and assorted accessories.

Please note that I’m not familiar with the price ranges of the various Monoprice products, so I can’t trust-but-verify they are the “lowest price sale” as the Monoprice website states.

July 5, 2023 Filed Under: store sale Tagged With:

Tuesday: Denon AH-MM400 Closed Over-Ears for $129

Happy Independence Day to all and especially fans of wood material type of headphones! Good until 7/4/23 at 11:59pm eastern time (or earlier if sold out), one of the deals of the day at B&H Photo is the new condition wired closed-back over-ear Denon AH-MM400 Reference headphones offered for $129. The “Reference” is part of the model name 🙂

It comes with two cables and a case and an adapter. They have five customer reviews over there, three of them from audiophile-sounding custaomers – they mention Chord Mojo, Fidelio, Fostex, Fiio, AH-D600, Oppo, etc 🙂

July 3, 2023 Filed Under: headphones Tagged With: ,