Razer Pro Tone 250 earphones

Misuse these and you'll end up yelling "What?" at people during conversation and have to explain that you're not trying to be Dave Chappelle.

On the right ears, these low profile clip-style earphones can create some incredible sounds. They’re Tardis earphones -- they create a lot more sound than you were expecting. Not just loud, but unexpectedly rich sound too.

Let’s just make sure you understand the kind of volumes that these things will reach if you mistakenly set your MP3 player to eleven. They’re loud enough that they’ll not only impose your music on any fellow commuters within sight, they’ll also slice through your MTBHAiR (mean time before hearing aid is required) rating like a chainsaw through jelly if you decide to use them at obnoxiously loud levels.

We had mixed results with the clip system, until we eventually found the correlation between the comfort level and the ears of whoever was wearing them. The bigger your ears, the less comfortable the earphones will be to wear, and the more sound will spill from the bottom of them, making them sound tinny and loose. Vulcans need not apply.

Once you listen to them, and if your ears agree with the design, you’ll find a strong, immediate sound with surprisingly bass heavy response. They deal with most genres very well, but we found that vocals were a little more pronounced than they should be.

At higher volumes, guitars stick out more than they should, but they don’t obscure the rest of the soundstage, which is still clearly audible in the background. They work well with most rock tracks (the older and less engineered the better), work very well with hip-hop and really shine with electronic music.

But amidst their presence lies a weakness: because they are so close to your ear, they sound uncompromising and direct. For this reason and their natural response, live recordings sound phenomenal. Even the slightly scratchy high end doesn’t seem to be that much of an issue when set against the rest of the clearly presented bass and midrange.

They’re a little expensive, but you do get a lot of well presented sound in a small package.