Shure has been a fixture in studios for decades. So it should come as little surprise that the SRH440 skews more towards a neutral tonal balance. But while the similarly signatured 280 sounded dull, distant, and tinny with certain genres of music, the Shure's sparkling highs, well-balanced mids, and...

Well built; Decent isolation; Clean, articulate sound that hits a sonic sweet spot; Ear cups pivot and fold into a portable package; Come with detachable 9.5-foot coiled cable and travel pouch; Great value

Heaviest of the bunch; Exposed driver cables made me a little nervous; Not really comfortable for more than short, hour-long listening sessions; Noise isolation not as good as the Sennheiser or Destiny

Playback was suitably impressed when we reviewed Shure's SRH840 headphones last year. The 840s set a benchmark for under $250 headphone performance, though of course Grado ‘phones, for very different sonic reasons, also hold a warm spot in our value-oriented hearts.

Below the SRH 840s in the product range, Shure offers the SRH 440s, a hybrid set that's half-portable, half-fixed. Shure is continuing with their rather offbeat product positioning - this is a set of monitoring headphones positioned...

Transportable monitor headphones; Incisive; clear-cut sound; Very good soundstage and instrument positioning for closed-back headphones

Lack of balance -de-emphasized midrange and too much bass; Not light enough

It always pays to check your mixes using a decent pair of headphones as you'll often hear nuances that are missed when listening through your main monitors. Shure's new SRH 440s feature 40mm neodynamic drivers optimised for general listening and monitoring and have been finetuned to deliver accurate...

Shure's SRH range of professional headphones claims to be the first choice for "music obsessives." Well, as far as the SRH440s are concerned, we would position them slightly further down their pecking order.

These headphones are great. The bass response is excellent. Despite the fact that these don't use any sort of frequency interference to noise cancel, I don't here a thing but the music I listen to when i'm wearing them. I also think they are fairly comfortable, even for several hours at a time.

Yes, I would recommend this to a friend

Good Value; Great Sound

None

These are nice headphones. The response is balanced (no boomy bass) and perfect for reference listening or monitoring while tracking audio. The detachable cable is a smart design, and they fold to a reasonable size. These are not perfect, but no headphones are going to be.

Balanced sound; Comfortable; Detatchable cable; Lots of value for price

None at this price

Them bottom line is the sound. And they sure are the BEST I've heard. I can see myself using these phones for a long time. The highs, mids and lows are very even. I actually hear things on these phones that I didn't hear before.

These headphones are decent. Nothing great. Widely available and retails for around $100 I liked them from a sound standpoint, however from a portability/durability standpoint, I couldn't justify keeping them. I generally listen to most of my music either on the commute to work or in the office.