Monoprice MP80 Aluminum In-Ear Earphone, Balanced Armature Driver And Dynamic Driver With Three Tuning Nozzles

This IEM earphones are very stylish looking with a gunmetal gray aluminium housing and transparent detachable cable. In the box you also get several sets of ear tips in silicone (including a set of flanged ones in medium, which didn't fit securely in my apparently small ear canals) and foam (not memory foam from what I can tell), as well as tuning nozzles (essentially the part the tips are stuck onto), a tie clip, and a leather style carrying case. The cable also comes with a velcro tie which can be useful in avoiding it knotting into a mess when stored.The sound is very clear and has incredibly details highs. I found that jazz and modern electronica/jazz sounded pleasing and wonderfully detailed, but with music that needed more of a low end the treble could overwhelm the sound a bit and become a little unpleasantly harsh if I tried to up the volume to get more out of the bass. The foam eartips help flesh out the bass and warm it up, but the silver tuning nozzles really amp up the bass and turn the sub-bass from a pleasant touch into a real thump. Combined with foam tips the sound is much warmer and 'fuller' feeling. You lose a little of the crystal clear sharpness of the more treble-centric default sound but certain music really benefits from the adjustment, I can also have the volume up a little higher with the highs being too piercing.The cable is detachable (so if you don't like it, you can always replace it, or even turn these into Bluetooth earphones), and both thin and a bit short. That makes these light, but it does limit your distance to whatever they're plugged into. I found they also pick up noise a little easier than some others with a bit thicker cables. For just being plugged into your phone or music player they're absolutely fine though.I've heard favourable comparisons between this IEM and one's twice its cost, which I can't attest to. But the sound is pleasant and punchy and the detail absolutely rivals £100+ headphones. Combine that with a fair amount of customisation possible for the sound signature as well as premium features like a detachable cable and you've got a supremely strong earphone for the price.

This IEM is a gem. It has a very comfortable fit: the tips insert deep into the ear canal and hence allow for an excellent seal. Like the Shure earphones which they seem to be imitating, the MP80 comes with three interchangeable nozzles, with different sound characteristics. I have only tried the middle-of-the-road gun metal nozzle--it was more than good enough. The sound quality is superb, as is the soundstage. Many earphones are limited in their range and their drive--connect them to a headphone amp and they sound as if you've been distanced from the music by a cavernous hall. Not these. The housing accommodated the drivers solidly. I have used these on my daily run, and I didn't have to fiddle at all to maintain the seal; they stayed in no problem. And they are just so pleasant to listen to. I commend them heartily.

Edit: This was originally a three star review but it's being dropped to one star. Why? The MMCX socket in the left earpiece broke in two days, rendering the headphones useless. Avoid.Let me get this out of the way - these aren't bad headphones. They're okay. However, they also really don't do anything to differentiate themselves from other options in the same price range, and from a standpoint of sound quality (the ultimate measure of a set of headphones) they're a bit behind the best.Good-Good build quality and cable-Decent detail and clarity-Good end-to-end extension-Good accessory kitLet's start with the good. The build quality is pretty decent - the shells are well machined, there are no sharp edges, and the cable is pretty good. The MP80 is comfortable to wear, though can only be worn in the cable-over-ear configuration, but this is my preference. Isolation is good but not great.The accessory kit is also decent, with a full set of standard silicone tips, two sets of memory foam tips, one set of double flange silicone tips, a shirt clip, and a rather nice leatherette case.Sound quality is... acceptable. Decent for the price, but not outstanding. End-to-end extension is pretty good, with bass that digs down very deep and treble that extends well in to the 13-15k range. Detail retrieval is also pretty good in the mid-range and treble, but behind the best in this price bracket. Sibiliance and harshness is rarely, if ever, an issue.Tuning is strongly v-shaped, regardless of filter used, though the silver (bass) filter greatly increases the amount of bass present. The other two filters just decrease the bass by a small account compared to the mid and high ranges. It's an exciting, "fun" tuning and good for things like rock or pop, but lacking for any sort of vocal music, jazz or classical.Soundstage is okay. It kind of exists in that nebulous area of "not great but not terrible" that 90%+ of IEMs reside.Bad-Overblown bass with poor texture.-Plastic-y timbre-Standard tips are mediocre and don't seal well.From a sound quality perspective, the biggest issue is the bass. Once you get a proper seal (see below), bass is always very strong, and tends to dominate the sound signature. Only the black treble filter comes close to a balanced V-shaped tuning, with the silver and grey filters very bassy. It's not particularly good bass either - lots of impact, but little texture or detail. Bass is also focused much more on what might be considered the mid-bass range - 100hz-250hz, and starts to drop off significantly below 50hz. It also tends to intrude on the midrange, interfering with lower male vocals in particular.The second negative is the timbre in the middle and high ranges. When I say "timbre", I mean that vocals and some instruments tend to have a somewhat hollow, plastic-y quality, and some cases very metallic. It must be said, though, that this sort of timbre issue is often prevalent in less expensive hybrid and balanced armature headphones. While the MP80 isn't as bad as some hybrid sets I've heard in this area, it's also worse than others.The final major issue is with sealing. The silicone tips, to be frank, just don't seal well with the grey and black tuning nozzles. They seal fine with the silver nozzle, but that nozzle is physically larger in diameter. It turns out that you need to push the tips down almost all the way to the bass of the nozzle for them to seal to get proper sound. They also tend to work themselves off after a while, breaking the seal and greatly decreasing the bass. The memory foam tips are a little better, and the double-flange tips are *much* better in this regard, but still problematic.TL;dr - A middling set of headphones. They're far from the worst set in this price range, but equally far away from the best and don't really excel in any one area. For that reason, I just can't recommend them.

These sound good. The sound can be tuned a bit with the changeable filters, I prefer the bass filter. Highs, mids and bass all seem to be good. These produce a fairly flat sound so are not for bass heads, you will find them lacking there, even with the bass filter.The cord took some getting used to. I probably won't get corded iems again.My $30 Seahf AWK F150 earbuds (no longer available from Aliexpress) sound better. Those things are amazing.

I got these to go the gym with, they stay in well enough while exercising and they sound pretty good. They do have a fairly different sound than my computer headphones (AKG k712 pro), although I mostly attribute that to them not being perfectly positioned (can't expect ear buds to remain completely still while exercising).So yeah, if you're looking for a fairly good/stable pair of in-ear headphones, I'd recommend these.