I like good quality sound. I am also in a line of work which means that my headphones often fall out of my ears from pretty high up and can land in puddles of water, so I go through them like mad. In the last year I'm on about my 6th pair. That means I need cheap and good quality sound.
I went through a long lovestory with wireless headphones, mainly Enacfires. I started with their E18 headphones which impressed me for their price, however once these died and were replaced under warranty and died again, I remained with Enacfire and ordered the E20s. Again wireless and very impressive sound quality, with a charging case big enough to double as a battery bank. Nice on paper, never used it once. They died eventually so I got another pair of them which also died. Including warranty claims, I think I've gone through 8 pairs of Enacfire headphones. I can't comment on build quality because as I said, they don't live a normal life with me. For all I know they could've lasted a century under normal conditions.
Anyway, Enacfire was removed from Amazon for some reason and their own site wanted £6 for shipping, and I thought that's just taking the piss. A quick search on that Google they have now ended up with me ordering a pair of Jlab Go Airs. Initial impressions were good, the battery life was phenomenal and the sound quality wasn't bad either. The downfall was the irritating touch buttons they use. The entire side of the bud is a button and they were a terrible fit so I was constantly pushing them back in to my ear and skipping tracks / pausing/ changing volume by mistake. It was irritating as hell but I wasn't gonna get rid as I knew they wouldn't be long for this world. The charging case has a USB plug built in to it so you can plug it in very easily which is just as well, the case battery is quite small. Luckily the bud batteries could last me almost a whole day. I couldn't in good faith recommend them as they're a perfect example of shoving tech in to stuff for extra bling whilst not really caring about practicality. Also the volume wasn't very good, I quite frequently found myself loading up VLC player to play music as I could push beyond 100% volume on that.
Anyway, whilst I wait for the warranty replacement to arrive I thought I'd give something else a go. I watch a lot of stuff on youtube from an aussie chap named Dankpods who I've come to regard quite highly about these things as he's got a degree in music and really seems to know his stuff.
One set of earbuds he often mentions are the KZ ES4s. They're wired which put me off but I thought I'd give them a go anyway. Simply put, these are the best sounding earbuds I've ever owned and completely and comprehensively shit all over any set of wireless buds I've had. The cord has those shapes in them to hold the buds in my ear so they're not constantly falling out. This was a sticking point for me as they looked fiddly and uncomfortable, but the reality is that I don't even notice them and because my earholes are no longer a supporting structure, they're a LOT more comfortable too.
The cable is actually barely noticeable at all, but then I've always been used to those shitty bargain-basement earbuds that you get with phones that always have cords made from the stickiest stuff in the world so they're constantly tying themselves in knots and being a pain in the ass. None of that here thankfully. An added bonus of being wired is that the microphone is in the cable meaning I can actually use them for calls. None of my wireless headphones were suitable for calls as the mic is in my ear and asking it to hear me clearly is far too much for them. I'd always have to remove one from my ear, answer my phone and then tell my phone to use its own devices for the call. This may seem trivial, but when you're taking 50+ calls a day, it gets irritating. The flip side of this of course is that I don't have buttons on the earbuds so I can't skip tracks without pulling my phone out my pocket. Not a deal breaker but this might matter to some.
The sound stage is a lot less bassy than my former earbuds and I thought this would ruin them for me, but the sound quality is so much better that I'm actually preferring them and I'm hearing sounds in songs that I've never heard before. These are, without a doubt, the best sounding headphones I've ever owned and yes, they sound better than my £250 Astros for music (not exactly what you buy Astros for so not really a valid comparison but just adding a bit of context).
To give this a bit of context, my Samsung phone has that orchestra ringtone that Samsung uses. You'll know it when you hear it. Getting used to this ringtone with these headphones was weird as hell because I didn't realie that my phone was ringing at first, I actually legitimately stood there wondering where that sound was coming from. Herp derp.
They don't have any noise cancelling but the loops on the ears means they fit so well that I can't hear anything around me anyway. It's eery as hell at first.
Their appearance is also pretty cool, I've got the blue ones which are see-through with a red circuit board inside them, so they definitely look cooler than the shit ones you get with phones.
TL;DR - if you need cheap headphones and can live with a barely noticeable cable, these are the best £20 you'll ever spend.
I'll update this now and then but I can see these lasting me a long, long time.
