Gadgetory

this is the backbeat 500 series headphone a stylish $80 on your model that Plantronics hopes will appear to younger users who don't want to pay top dollar for Beats products it comes in three colors white grey and dark gray that looks more like black and is comfortable for an on-ear headphone and sounds quite good for the price usually Bluetooth headphones in the sub $100 range suffer from mediocre sound quality but I was pleasantly surprised that the backbeat 500 sounds as good as it does for the price it's not in the League of higher-end over-ear models like Plantronics own backbeat pro 2 but it's a pretty well-balanced headphone with decent detail and relatively punchy meaty bass it clearly seems designed to compete with beats solo 3 Wireless which lists for $300 but costs around 220 online that beats offers great battery life it's rated at 40 hours but this Plantronics backbeat 500 is pretty solid in that department with 18 hours at moderate volume levels you've got volume controls on the right ear cup along with track controls and I also liked how there's a separate dedicated button for accessing Siri Google now and Cortana voice assistance as a headset the backbeat 500 works pretty well but doesn't have the dual noise cancelling microphones of some of Plantronics higher-end headphones a carrying pouch is included and if you want to listen in Wired mode you can use the included headphone cord well it isn't all that groundbreaking there are other on your headphones that look similar the well-designed backbeat 500 series is ultimately a good value and an excellent budget alternative to beats pricier bluetooth on your headphones I'm David Carnot for cnet.com thanks for watching