After finishing this most recent summer semester and acing my classes, I decided I deserved a treat for myself. I love listening to music and gaming with headphones, and my home-made ghetto-rigged speaker set has some notable flaws that can be a bit irritating. I wanted some really nice headphones. They had to be durable, and I prefer circumaural headphones. After a lot of browsing around reading other reviews and suggestions, the JVC HA-RX700’s seemed to fit the bill and by the account of others you really can’t go wrong with these. They have nearly flawless reviews on Newegg and they’re considerably cheaper than other high-end “audiophile” headphones.

Upon receiving them and opening the shipping box, my first thoughts were “holy crap, these things are HUGE!”. I’m not kidding when I say that either, these headphones are gigantic. I’ve photographed them next to a pen to give you some scale reference. These headphones look extremely cool, but I don’t think anyone would describe them as particularly “stylish”. You’re bound to get some strange looks if you go wandering around town with these monsters on your head. My friend described me as resembling the “cyberman” from the Dr. Who television series with these donned. Though style has never really mattered much for me, the only thing keeping me from enjoying these on the city streets is the fear of breaking them. So I think I will keep them dedicated to my desktop PC for now.

They are constructed from a seemingly durable plastic, but I don’t really want to test this theory by chucking them at the ground. Each earpiece is padded very well, and there is a cushioned piece of fabric that extends between the earpieces to help suspend the phones on your head. The HA-RX700’s are some of the most comfortable circumaural headphones I’ve had the pleasure of wearing. The earpieces don’t appear to be ventilated however, so if you’re in a hot room you will likely notice some sweat buildup around your ears. This hasn’t been a problem for me, even though my room has been getting quite hot during this summer.

Sound quality is exceptional. These cans present a beautiful stereo image, and cleanly reproduce all of the minute details in your music and games that you might not otherwise hear with speakers or lesser quality headphones. The frequency response seems well balanced, with no range obviously overpowering another. Bass response is tight and not boomy. Every genre from baroque to death metal sounds amazing. I read that users experienced improved frequency balance after a fifty-hour break in period. This may be entirely placebo and is certainly subject to individual perception, but I would agree the sound improves (albeit quite subtly) after a number of days listening. That’s not to say it isn’t great out of the box, but with these I believe you would be able to tell the difference between a brand-new-out-of-the-box set and one that has been used for a few weeks.

I wish they came with an inline volume controller, but it’s no big deal that they don’t. The cable is already nearly twelve feet, which gives you plenty of room to get up and walk around your desk while still wearing the headphones. If you’ve got a spare inline controller cable, excellent. With mine attached, the cable is nearly twenty feet long! This may seem a little excessive but it’s very nice to be able to wear these while on my bed without having to disconnect them from my PC, and still have slack left over. They do however come with a 1.8mm to 3.5mm stereo adapter, which is nice if you’re working with professional audio gear.

I think you would have trouble finding a better value than with these headphones. They are superior in both sound quality and comfort than some $80+ headphones I have tried. If you decide to grab a set of these, feel free to share your thoughts below!