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Grado Labs iGrado Headphones Review - Intro

By Mark Brezinski
Published on May 07, 2008
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Intro	Tour & Design
Performance	In Use
Value & Comparisons	Conclusion
Ratings & Specs

The iGrado headphones from Grado Labs have a serious case of the i's. Presumably named in honor of Apple's ubiquitous iPod, these headphones are meant for use with portable media devices. The cord is a bit less than four feet in length, which will reach your pants pocket, but not leave a ton of slack. The iGrados are also smaller than most on-ear sets, thanks mainly to their around the back of the head design. Unfortunately, the plastic band might be a bit uncomfortable. Since it can't be adjusted, it will feel tight against all but the tiniest of heads.

In terms of audio quality, the iGrado headphones weren't the best. They had good frequency response across most of the audio spectrum, but underemphasized higher frequency sounds, however, and was especially erratic towards the very high end. The headphones were actually very good at handling distortion, although we did find a sharp, high spike towards the higher frequencies. We saw this spike in the Grado SR60s as well, which makes sense, since the two headphones have the same guts. As open-backed headphones, there isn't much of a barrier (it's actually about as air tight as a chain-link fence) to stop outside sounds from mucking up your music. It did, somehow, leak less of your music to the outside world than we're used to seeing from open-backed headphones. In terms of everything else, the iGrado headphones were on either side of average.

The iGrado headphones from Grado Labs, Inc., are available for $49.99.

Section	The Good	The Bad
Tour & Design	The design is modest, but not boring. You won't feel embarassed wearing these.	The plastic band is brittle and could break if twisted or pulled too far.
Performance	Did well on distortion and frequency response for the most part. Less leakage than other open-backed headphones.	Even in the categories where it did well, the iGrado headphones didn't out-perform many headphones.
In Use	Not heavy, compact for its form factor.	These headphones can be very uncomfortable. They aren't as portable as they could or should be.
Value & Comparisons	If you strictly look at what you're getting for each dollar you spend, the iGrado headphones are a good deal.	There are other Grado headphones that are slightly more expensive, far more comfortable, and able to offer better audio quality.

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