A buyer’s guide to cheap headphones

What is a cheap headphone?
A cheap headphone is a headphone that meets your budget! Other than that, they are headphones like any others. The main difference is that the more expensive the headphone the more quality of sound, noise cancellation and listening experience. Although the really high end of the range is mainly used for professionals that use their ears as tools of their trade, for most of us cheap headphones are a quick solution in a tight budget.
What kinds of cheap headphones are there?
There are two types of headphones on the market and they are broken down into sub models; over ear and in ear (earbuds), which can be either wireless or wired. Cheap headphones will invariably be wired earbuds since they are the smallest and easiest to manufacture.
Over Ear headphones
These headphones have three components to consider, the frame and the pads. The frame has to be solid enough not to break, the pads have to be full enough to conform to your ear and the line should be thick enough not to tangle. A cheap headphone frame can sometimes be bothersome since its mechanisms can be loose or stuck making it hard to adjust them on your head. The pads can be too thin so they don’t cancel any noise or just not fitted on properly and fall off.
Earbud headphone
These headphones have two components to consider, the buds which should be comfortable to insert into your ear and the line which should be thick enough not to over tangle. One issue with really cheap earbuds are how they feel in the ear. They can fall out regularly or just hurt.
Brands
There are many brands offering comfortable prices, Panasonic and Samsung are but two popular names with earbuds sold below $10 and wicked audio going below $4.
Quality
Whilst trying to be good for your pocket you must consider quality of sound and sound diffusion as well as noise cancelling. Nosie cancellation comes in either passive or active, the passive is basically a pad that ensures sound doesn’t pass into your ear. Active is when the phones emit a tone that cancels out the background noises. There is no noise cancellation in cheap brands, so if you see one selling under $10 with noise cancellation, know that’s an outright lie.
Another issue with quality is quality of sound, the frequency, fidelity and loudness. The cheaper you go the less quality you will have and the sound is affected accordingly. So, you should always ask about the quality of these three issues. Frequency is important when choosing your phone, the wider the frequency range the more sounds you will hear, the cheap headphones have a very limited range with certain sub ranges cut out completely, so don’t expect to hear your music as it was played, cheap phones won’t give you that experience.
Prices
Since there are literally hundreds of names out there, we won’t go into actual naming of types, just to state that cheap earbuds can come as low as $1 but don’t expect much quality below the $4 mark. As for over headphones, they can come as low as $8, but anything lower than $10 would be a waste of money, they usually average out at $13 for good cheap ones.