DL Awards 2015 Nominees: Best Headphones and Best Earphones

Best Headphones

Focal Spirit Classic

The sleek aluminium finish and dark brown tone give the Spirit Classic a premium feel. The memory-foam earcups are plush and adapt to your ears over time. They also help block out a chunk of the ambient sound. In our earphones and headphones group review last week, this pair of headphones fared well, with a clean and balanced sound quality.

Plantronics BackBeat Pro

With Bluetooth audio streaming and active noise cancelling, as well as convenient features, such as buttons and dials on each earcup to control calls and music, the BackBeat Pro is more feature-packed than most headphones. The headphones perform best when playing vocal-driven music.

Samsung Level Over

This pair of plush headphones offers active noise cancelling and Bluetooth audio streaming. Its two-tone colour scheme is classy and the sound quality is dynamic, thanks to its larger-than-usual sound drivers. Indeed, its 50mm drivers are the largest among the headphones picked for this award category.

Sennheiser Urbanite XL

The Urbanite XL did well in our listening test last week - with a full-bodied sound, as well as a balanced delivery across bass, mids and highs. It also makes an understated fashion statement with its clean design. It has flat cables to prevent wire tangle and can be folded inwards for better portability.

Sony MDR-1ADAC

This offering from Sony is the only pair of headphones here with a built-in Digital-to-Analogue Converter (DAC), which aims to provide an upgrade over the DACs found in phones and other portable audio devices. It has a full sound which goes well with electronic, dance and hip-hop music.

Next: Best Earphones

Best Earphones

Sony XBA-A2

With its three-way driver system, the XBA-A2 delivers clear highs and a deep bass. In the last issue of Digital Life's earphones and headphones review, we found its sound to be neutral and balanced. It delivers a spacious soundstage which provides an excellent sense of position, making it easy to locate all the different elements within a recording.

B&O PLAY BeoPlay H3

Crafted from a single block of aluminium and available in four classy anodised colours, this pair of premium earphones looks and sounds good. It fared well in our listening test, with a warm and full sound that has an overall balanced quality.

Jabra Sport Pulse

This pair of sweat- and shock-resistant wireless earphones differentiates itself from other fitness models with a built-in heart-rate sensor, freeing users from having to wear a cumbersome heart-rate chest monitor during workouts. Jabra has developed a companion app for fitness tracking, but the Sport Pulse can also be used with training apps such as Endomondo, RunKeeper, Strava and MapMyFitness.

Beats PowerBeats 2

True to the Beats brand, the PowerBeats 2 is stylishly designed and has a bass-focused sound. This pair of earphones is sweat-resistant and features ear-hooks to keep it in place during workouts, making it a great choice for the style-conscious athlete.

Klipsch R6

Our listening test found this pair of well-designed earphones to have a warm and bold sound signature, making it great for loud and brash genres, such as punk rock and heavy metal. It also fits well and offers a good seal.

All reports by Oo Gin Lee, Sherwin Loh, Trevor Tan, Vincent Chang, Ebel Tang and Joshua Chen. For a chance to win and to vote, go to www.straitstimes.com/2015DigitalLifeAwards

This article was first published on Dec 17, 2014.
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