Phil's Superpower of Enthusiasm

[ MSRP $249.99, purchased at full price in May from Campfire.com)] [ Tl;dr:  These are fanstastic headphones. Period. For me, their use case is a little more limited but that’s more a function of how unexpectedly great the AirPods Pro 2 is, and the number of niche headphones I have for specific use cases. I commend these to the attention of anyone looking for a premium pair of true wireless ear buds, especially if they’re not already locked into the Apple ecosystem.] Scores: Cost-agnostic: 9 out of 10 Denalis Cost-sensitive: 8 out of 10 Denalis   Intro.  I’ve been intrigued by Campfire Audio for a long time. They’re a Portland-based manufacturer that is best known for pretty universally-acclaimed wired in-ear monitors (IEMs). I’ve never owned a pair, mostly because I’m not the biggest fan of IEMs for most of my use cases (preferring open-backed cans or speakers where usable, and preferring the convenience of wireless where not). When I heard that Campfire was releasing a...

[ December 2025 Pricing: $139 with updated Magsafe Case at Costco . May be cheaper elsewhere; I'm a little skeptical of some posted prices actually being the 3rd Gen and not the second.] [December 2025 update: I won a pair of these as a door prize at a conference, and I’ve been using them pretty regularly while walking Denali a couple of times a day since September. I was perhaps … uncharitable in my original review.  I stand by most of the specifics in my review, but they do sort of hit the sweet spot for listening to podcasts or NPR in an environment where you want to hear the world around you. For me, I find that walking Denali with ANC on can result in me not nearing or seeing people or dogs walking around, and that can give some folks a bit of a fright (weirdly enough, not everyone wants to be accosted by a 65-lb golden lovebug when they’re not expecting it. I mean, they’re wrong, but they are allowed to be).  As I noted in the original review, the mid-range is where th...

[MSRP $350, $150 on Amazon as of 11/13/22, paid $180 in August 2022] [ Tl;dr:  These headphones are weak in their MSRP range, but if you get them on a substantial sale, they’re great for use cases where you want some noise cancelation and a more durable headset that won’t break your heart if you lose or break them.] Scores: Cost-agnostic: 5 out of 10 Denalis Cost-sensitive: 6 out of 10 Denalis Beats Studio3 Wireless Beats Studio3 Wireless on a new ME-themed puck Intro. I bought my first pair of Beats headphones back in … 2014? I think? I was going on a train trip to Montana, and it was supposed to take something like eleven hours. I had a pair of Bose QC25s with really good active noise cancelation (ANC), but I didn’t want to deal with a cord while I was trying to sleep on a moving train. I’d been coveting the Beats Studio Wireless for a while (my car at the time had a 10-speaker Beats by Dre sound system that I’d absolutely fallen in love with), so the train trek was all the justi...

[Tl;dr: I really like the AirPodsPro Gen 2. I didn't want to. But damn, Apple figured some things out.] Scores: Cost-agnostic: 10 out of 10 Denalis Cost-sensitive: 9 out of 10 Denalis. [Update 1/20/24: after more than a year, I thought it was worth briefly revisiting the AirPods Pro 2. They're ... still great. They more or less live in my pants pocket, and when I recently thought that I'd finally misplaced them, I immediately went to Costco and bought another pair (in my defense, they were like $80 off on sale). I found my original pair, but I'm holding on to the second as a backup. The new version is identical in almost every way to the version that I originally reviewed, with the exception of having swapped the Lightning charging port on the case to a USB-C port to match the new generation of iPhones (and apparently they added some support for the new Apple VR device which will mean nothing to me). The sound is still really, really good. To the point where I've st...

[Tl;dr: The Apple AirPods Max are a really good set of headphones with a rich feature set, broad utility, and all-around good sound. They do have a few flaws, and they’re REALLY expensive. I probably wouldn’t pay MSRP for them right now given the other options out there, but they’re still a really well-designed and built piece of hardware that are easy for people already in the Apple ecosystem. Scores: Cost-agnostic: 8 out of 10 Denalis Cost-sensitive: 6 out of 10 Denalis.] Sound. The sound is deep and rich, with really impressive bass and sub-bass response for a headphone. It’s still weird to hear the low bass rumble clearly without feeling it in my chest, but the response is nimble and crisp, with very little lagging or blurring even during sections with rapid movement (like Massive Attack’s “Paradise Circus”). It even does a pretty good job of reproducing some intentionally-mastered splatter (like in Robert Glasper’s “Treal” (ft. Yasiin Bey)). That said, the bass is a little punchy...