Grado Prestige Series SR80e Headphone Review

Equipped with cord that measure 178 cm from the plug to Y-Junction where the cord splits to either ear. The SR80e headset is fairly lightweight and each earpiece has a comfortable 8 cm diameter foam earpiece.

With 3 cm of adjustable travel on each side, adapting for various head sizes is beyond easy. Grado Labs has done an exceptional job at keeping the design of the headset exceptionally minimalistic and simple.

Placing this headset on you feel the comfort immediately, the SR80e sits very comfortably over your ears, not putting too much pressure on any particular area. Giving you basically the perfect fit, so the headphones don’t budge if you move your head around much – also not being too tight as to give uncomfortable pressure. The leather headband is soft and smooth, further adding to the comfort of these headphones.

TECHNOLOGY X AUDIO TESTING

Let’s take a deeper look inside the headphones. To test the SR80e headphones we used, AudioCheck, a simple, and free, tool used to test various ranges and tones of headsets and loudspeakers.

Our results were spectacular! Bass extension reaching lower than 20 Hz and treble extensions hitting 18 kHz shows the outstanding sound quality of this headset. A dynamic range test allowed us to hit 66 dbFS (decibels below full-scale) which is pretty good for an open type headphone, this test would have proven better on closed or in ear type headsets that are noise cancelling.

There was no rattling when we ran the quality test and this once again compliments the structure of this amazing headset. Driver matching, wiring and binaural tests were run and all came back with great results. Overall, running Audiocheck’s benchmark program came back with outstanding performance for the Grado SR80e Headphones.

REPORT ANALYSIS AND FINAL THOUGHTS

The Grado Prestige Series SR80e Headphones come in at $99 on Amazon, which gives us phenomenal quality for headphones under $100. Grado provides a one year warranty with their headphones as long as there are no signs of abuse or misuse, which can be considered short, but with today’s technological advancements most of us will have upgraded by the time this warranty expires.

If you’re looking for great sound on an honest budget the SR80e is perfect, for coming in under $100 these sound outstanding. We have a very broad spectrum of musical interests here at Technology X and we are happy to say the SR80e headphones keep a consistent and sharp sound, whether it be through acoustics of country, deep based hip hop or complete ranged rock. We did find that the bass provides a soothing experience that appropriately complements the music genre playing, but you might find that it will not be able to provide the immersive bass required for the classical genre. When listening, we found the treble and bass to accurately compliment the mid-range. As we know, the mid-range is where Grado has proven in the past to be exceptional. The best way to describe the output of the SR80e is very open sounding. We found that the escalation of sound has very little effect on the quality of the SR80e’s – something that is important and brings the SR80e up a notch above some others in the under $100 price range. You don’t want to lose quality to volume and Grado ensures that they don’t.

Overall, the Grado Prestige Series SR80e are probably the best headphones we have ever had the privilege of reviewing that can be purchased for under $100. As a matter a fact, we would be willing to stretch that to under $150 with ease. These are one of the best headphones you could possible purchase, whether on a budget or just looking for great sound. For these reasons, we award Grado Labs our Gold Seal of Approval for the SR80e!

Check Out Grado SR80e Pricing On Amazon!