Digital Trends

Somewhere between the chintzy OEM earbuds that came with your last MP3 player, and a $400 pair of Ultimate Ears, lies the venerable midrange category. It seems to be growing like a wildfire lately, as existing PMP (portable media player) owners figure out that their players sound 100 percent better with a pair of earphones that weren’t manufactured for 17 cents somewhere in China, but don’t want to spend more than the price of the player on an upgrade. Klipsch’s $80 Image S4 headphones are an outgrowth of that swelling interest in audiophile quality on a budget, stepping quality down a notch from its previous efforts to a price any PMP owner can afford. Are they worth it, or do you get what you pay for? We popped them in to find out.