Very, very good sound for peanuts!

I bought the Sony MDR-V300 because of it's low price ($39) and it's good ratings on epinions and elsewhere. I needed a replacement for my Sennheiser HD450 pair which, after 8 years of great service, is just falling apart. I am trying to review them objectively, but that's hard because I do compare them with what I am used to.

The V300 looks very nice and feels very nice.. it puts very little pressure on my ears and fits perfectly; they cover the whole ear, even though they look kind of small. The cushions are great and isolate pretty good from the outside. My HD450's were not that comfortable, and would
hurt my ears after wearing them for 3+ hours.

The earpieces hang on hinges which allows for perfect adjustment to your head shape as well as listening to just one side; just flip the earpiece around and press it against your ear; no problem.

The sound of the V300 really surprised me... they sound much better than the HD450's. Very nice sound throughout the frequency range. I used some classical stuff as well as drum'n'bass, and while I am not an audiophile, I can honestly say it sounded very very good. Computer games sound great as well.. deep bass and crisp treble. In fact, it's kind of dangerous because now I crank up the volume even more because the sound distortion is much less than with the HD450's at equal volume levels.

The cable definately is long enough to hook up to a soundcard in the back of a computer, and it seems of high quality; it's rather thick. I doubt it would be so thick if it wasn't for an improvement in transmission quality because thicker equals more expensive to manufacture.. so that's good unless you really hate cables.
If I have one negative thing to say, then it is that the cable is not detachable which was a nice feature on my old Sennheisers, so if you damage the cable.. replacing it will be difficult. Also, the cable goes to both earpieces, not one and then over to the other one through the frame.. that could've been done a little nicer.

I am sure that you can find better sounding headsets, but I am also sure they will set you back at least $80 whereas I only paid half of that.
Good pair of headsets!