Phil's Superpower of Enthusiasm

  [ORIGINAL MSRP $499. Purchased for $269 + tax on Amazon in February 2025 (and $269 appears to be the new, semi-permanent MSRP).] [ Tl;dr: The Edition XS are baby Arya Stealths; they have a lot of similar characteristics, but with a lot more tradeoffs (which you’d expect for a headphone that sells for less than half the price). They’re great for loud, complex songs but struggle a little bit with quieter, more subtle tracks, where they give up some ground to the 6XX. They can be a tad bright, but my in my experience didn’t cross over into being harsh. Good, solid but impressive base, decent male vocals but maybe a bit of veiling for female vocals. At $269 they’re a great deal for a very objective tuned headphone, and I may buy a hard case and carry these as my “working outside the house” pair when I don’t want to haul the 6XX.] Scores: Cost-agnostic: 8 out of 10 Denalis Cost-sensitive: 8 out of 10 Denalis Intro.  As I noted in my review of the Hifiman Arya Stealth , I have...

MSRP $299, $260 on regular sale, $230 renewed from Amazon] [ Tl;dr:  These are great travel headphones for when you want really good noise cancelation. The sound quality is pretty good, but not what I want for a pure music headphone. They continue to be my go-to plane headphone, but I very rarely reach for them in any other context; they live in their case under my computer desk when they’re not in a suitcase.] Scores: Cost-agnostic: 7 out of 10 Denalis Cost-sensitive: 9 out of 10 Denalis Intro.  The Bose 700 is Bose’s current flagship consumer headphone and has been for at least the last couple of years. I was actually really surprised to discover that I hadn’t ever reviewed these, so this is part of a series where I go back to old standbys that I apparently failed to review early on. These are probably my … tenth pair of Bose headphones? I’ve had the QC15s, QC25s, demoed a pair of QC45s for a month, and have had a few of their wireless earbuds (Soundsport Pulse Wireless, whi...