Koss's KEB79 earphones are not cheap, but they provide impressive quality for the price.

They're well built, not quite as weighty as the iSkin earphones we looked at a while ago, but nicely solid, and come with a very short cord that's suitable for connection to a breast-pocket phone or music player. An extension cord is supplied, along with a carry-pouch. The earphone cord contains a mute button that allows you to carry on conversations without taking off the earphones.

As is normal with in-ear buds, two sets of silicon earpieces are supplied, allowing you to fit the phones to your ear. The cord is longer into one ear, as it's designed to be wrapped around the back of the wearer's head.

Testing them on various kinds of music revealed an affinity with modern beat-heavy music, something modern headphones seem to be biased towards – while the KEB79s are not as bassy as the aforementioned iSkins, they are happier with bassy music.

Older music, such as folk or classical, doesn't come through quite as well but it's still perfectly listenable, and several steps above the level of the earphones included with almost any music player. It's true that you can pick up in-ear models for much less than the £50 asking price of the KEB79s, but you're not going to find anything like the quality for much less.