The CS-HP500s are alright if you need a headphone only intended for use on the move. It simply has not got the muscle to compete with some of the headphones in the same price range intended for home use sonically. The design is debatable, but since the headphones are available in two different colors I am sure you can decide on one that is looking nice to you. If the headphones were a bit better both in terms of sound quality and comfort my rating would be much different, but as the solution is now I find the CS-HP500s hard to like. Perhaps they are the result of a too aggressive pricing strategy.