I purchased my Optimus Pro35 headphones a year and a half ago in Evanston, Illinois while looking at colleges with my parents. We were visiting Northwestern. For some reason or other, my previous pair of headphones had broken. We wandered into a Radio Shack and started perusing the store. A salesman suggested the Optimus Pro35 headphones, saying he personally uses them. They were on sale for about $20, which is really a great deal for these.
Specifications (from radioshack.com):
- Plug: 1/8" (3.5mm) gold-plated
- Cord length: 6 ft. (1.8m)
- Frequency response: 15Hz-25000Hz
- Drivers: neodymium magnets
- Style: supra-aural
- Headband: metal outer, padded inner
- Other: swiveling ear cushions, titanium-layered drivers, inline volume control.
In my experience, sound quality is excellent. These sound as good as my Cambridge Soundworks DTT 2500 Digital 5.1 speakers. These are the best headphones I've ever owned (on second thought, that's not saying much). I did notice after a year or so that after extended usage (>4 hours), that my outer ears were sore, sometimes quite painfully. I found that adjusting the tilt (forwards or backwards) of the headband fixed this. My only other complaint is that the cord is too short for my taste, especially when plugged into my sound card. Aside from that, these are high-quality, durable headphones. They survived my senior year of high school, mainly in the outer pocket of my backpack, which more than once was on the bottom of 60 or so pounds of books. If they can survive that, they'll last through anything...
...or so I thought. After the incident recounted here, I will most likely be replacing these with a new pair of the same.
radioshack.com no longer lists them under this node title, but does list them under their manufacturer's model name, Koss deluxe stereo headphones, model # 115071.