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...

[Non-RX MSRP $316 in shiny black with green lenses, I paid … substantially more for prescription in shiny black.] [ Tl;dr: I’m genuinely surprised by how much I like these. Are they great, audiophile-grade headphones? Nope. But that’s not their use case, and not what they’re designed for. For what they’re designed for, they’re surprisingly excellent.] Scores: Cost-agnostic: 8 out of 10 Denalis (for their use case) Cost-sensitive: 6 out of 10 Denalis (for their use case) Intro. Years ago, I made a lot of fun of one of my friends for wanting the original Bose headphone sunglasses . I didn’t see the point of combining the two products; I had long been committed to Oakley for glasses, sunglasses, and prescription sunglasses, and while I owned and enjoyed a number of pairs of Bose headphones, I didn’t understand why someone would want to tie themselves to a combined product. Fast forward to this year, where I found myself with some FSA funds that I needed to use, and in a world where I ba...