Zune Thoughts - Daily News, Views, Rants and Raves

What do you get for headphones for under $65? Let's compare two options, one of them twice as expensive as the other. Is that a fair comparison? $65 is affordable for most people who purchase something capable of digital audio playback, so I think it's fair game. I was using my set of Ultimate Ears' Metro.fi 2 earphones ($62.99 from Amazon.com) this morning, and I decided to throw the Zune Premium Headphones into the mix - you know, the ones that come with the Zune 80, but not the Zune 120 - and I was quite disappointed with how poor the Zune headphones sounded. I normally wouldn't criticize free headphones that come with a player, because it's always my advice to toss them and buy a good pair of headphones, but in this case the premium headphones are a product normally sold separately for $39.99 MSRP (retailing for $30 from Amazon) so I think they're fair game for comparison - especially now that there's no modern Zune that includes them. Read more...

Here's a contest for regular Zune Thoughts readers: I've got a pair of black Ultimate Ears super.fi 3 Studio earphones, courtesy of the fine people at Ultimate Ears, and they're looking for a good home. These are the same type of headphones that I reviewed last year, and although the bundled headphones with the Zune are surprisingly decent, these blow them away.

To win this pair of headphones here's all you have to do: post a message telling me about the worst sounding headphones you've ever used, and what device/product they came with (or if you were unfortunate enough to buy them yourself). Remember I said this a contest for regular Zune Thoughts readers? That's because I'm going to close off this contest at some random point in time later today (don't worry, it will be near the end of the day). If you haven't posted here before, your first post needs to be approve by us, but rest assured I'll approve all the posts before I do the random drawing. Get to it!

UPDATE: I closed the contest today at 5:52 pm my local time. The winner is yoda16. Congratulations, and thanks for participating everyone. I had a good chuckle reading some of your comments - it really is amazing what a difference earphones can make! If you're looking to buy your own Ultimate Ears headphones, take a browse through our Amazon.com affiliate store (your purchases help support Zune Thoughts).