Airports are dangerous places.

The boredom, coupled with shining over-priced shops, is a deadly mix for your credit card. Your mind seeks instant gratification, from a good cup of coffee, a glass of wine at the omnipresent oyster bar, a sweater that you don’t really need or yet another gadget.

On a boring May afternoon, on the way back from the countless business trip, and in exactly that state of mind, I stopped at a Bang & Olufsen store.

That’s where I tested and purchased the . This is a short review of them.

The reason

Boredom apart, the reason I entered the shop is because all in-ear headphones I own fail to add that feeling of emotion to the sound they produce. Such feeling is so important when listening to music that I was wondering if B&O could bring it back.

The in-ear headphones I own are:

• Standard

I like and use the Apple Earbuds for conference calls and for listening to music while in the office, but they don’t offer any type of passive isolation.

Beside my initial infatuation with the Apple in-ear headphones, they have proven to be very uncomfortable for long time use. Sadly, they have ended up in a drawer.

On the other hand the Sennheiser MM70i offer comfort and an extremely good passive noise isolation, but the music coming out of them is flat, almost soulless.

Packaging

It’s stylish, but it’s a pain in the neck to get the product out of the box.

All cables are in fact kept in place with tiny pieces of tape, that really get in the way when you’re in a hurry to test these headphones.

The box contains four different ear-tips sizes, which is a big bonus considering that the industry standard seems to be to include only three sizes. Chances are you will find the correct fit for your ears.

It’s worth mentioning that these headphones come with a classy, and really well made semi-rigid travel case. Obviously a 200 Euro in-ear headphones is a precious gadget. It can easily get damaged while on the go, so it’s exemplary that the company took the time to design such a sturdy case.

Sound

Bang & Olufsen shops allow you to test all of their products in a beautiful setting. Four different pair BeoPlay H3 In-Ear Headphones were available for that purpose, each of them with a different ear-tip size.

The moment I put them on and plugged them into my iPhone 5s, I knew I wanted them.

I’m not an audiophile but I think I can hear notes and instruments that I was unable to hear with other headphones. The most obvious result is that most of my old songs seem new to me. Undoubtedly that is a pleasant sensation.

To give you a better description, these BeoPlay give me emotions whenever I hear old songs that I have listened to a thousand times. I can hear subtle notes, whispers, thumps that I think I never heard before. It’s as if I can suddenly hear the higher-quality version of the songs I’ve owned for years.

The bass is also well defined, without giving that sense of too much that you experience with headphones calibrated toward the low spectrum.

Comfort

These Bang & Olufsen are extremely comfortable both from the mechanical point of view and with the sound they produce.

Even after walking around town for hours your ears are not tired. The auditory canal is not overwhelmed by high frequencies, which means you can listen to your favorite songs for a long time.

What’s even better is the passive noise isolation. Despite not being as good as the Sennheiser MM70i, they behave pretty well. Talking about comfort, it’s important to note that the B&Os don’t fall off your ear that easily. That can only be a big advantage for heavy city-walkers like me.

Construction

B&O boasts that these in-ear headphones are made from one piece of aluminum. From the :

The BeoPlay H3 in-ear headphones incorporate a custom-designed 10.8 mm driver and the new Micro Bass Port, so all the music on your iPhone, iPad or iPad is reproduced with dynamic and balanced full tone sound. The structural rigidity of the unibody aluminium housing also contributes to precisely detailed acoustics. Add to that 23 ventilation holes and you have headphones that deliver an unstrained open sound stage.

They are well made indeed, but two aspects of the construction leave me perplexed:

• The choice of not gold coating the plug connector
• The fact that the the cable going into the ear-tip is not fully protected from accidental tugs.

I am not sure whether a gold plated connector would make any difference with the sounds played, but I am somehow concerned about the second item of the list above. The fact that the cable that goes into the ear-tip is not protected by a plastic sleeve glued between the ear-tip and the cable outer lining is worrying. Somehow I feel that the lifespan of these headphones could be an issue.

Worth it?

Sound and style-wise, yes these headphones are worth it. I simply love getting a kick out of old songs. My hope is that this joy is going to last for a long time. At almost 200 Euro, these pair of in-ear headphones put them among the most expensive electronic accessories I own. Obviously I’d love to use them for longer than the three year warranty.