While these are not the most expensive headphones out there, they're not exactly cheap either. The quality for the price is very good. If you're interested, watch for sales as these do go on sale from time-to-time. The headphones are comfortable with a reasonable weight. I feel fine wearing them for a long time, though I sometimes take them after a while as your ears/head start to feel warm after being sealed in by the ear-muff-like design. The padding on the headband and on the ear pads is pretty comfortable. The over-the-ear style is great for blocking out outside noise to a degree. The cord is easily removeable so that you can more safely pack the headphones for storage/travel (and it also allows you to buy and use cord if you damage the cord, that way you don't need to replace the whole headphone set). The sound quality is pretty good with a good range and decent bass production. There are more expensive headphones out there that produce better sound, but chances are that if you are not already used to those, these will sound quite good to you. The main point is that they deliver the right quality for the price. I have used the lower-tiered HD 280 at work for over a year before I bought these HD 558s. I've had it for a few months. I've never had any problem with either of them breaking or wearing out or anything, but then again, I'm not too rough on my stuff. I do carry this around in my backpack, and they had held up fine so far. One annoying thing is that the cord has a 6.35 mm jack. This is the larger "studio" kind of audio jack. It won't fit your phone, Nintendo 3DS, etc. However, it does include a 3.5 mm adapter, which will fit pretty much every device you have. The problem is that using the adapter makes the plug at the end of the cord a lot larger which is kind of annoying when you're using it with a protable device, like a phone or 3DS or something; it tends to get in the way. It's not an issue when you use it with something like your laptop. It does look like Sennheiser sells a replacement cord that has the 3.5 mm jack on it for $13 on their website. I'm not sure, because there's just a small picture and the size isn't specified, but I'm going to call and ask about it.