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The best cheap headphones are getting a gorgeous limited edition

The best cheap headphones are getting a gorgeous limited edition

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Koss Porta Pros. The very name of these achingly retro-looking headphones is hallowed among the audio lovers who’ve gotten to hear them. The Porta Pros are about the same age as I am, and they’ve endured because of their inexplicably, illogically awesome sound quality, which belies both their basic looks and bargain-bin price of $49.99 (which is typically closer to $35 online). And now they are getting a limited edition and you get to decide exactly what it will look like.

Koss has offered up a selection of five new colorways for the Porta Pros, and my colleague Paul Miller enthusiastically and greedily wants all of them. Usually, I’d shrug off a cynical marketing exercise of this kind — there’s no indication of the limited edition headphones being improved in any technical way — but the Porta Pros are just so damn good, that I’m happy to use any excuse to write about them. Seriously, these are the best 50 bucks you’ll ever spend on personal audio. Guaranteed.

Oh, and as to the color choice, we’re all in agreement that black and gold is the best, right? They’d make a pretty gift for the Pittsburgh Steelers or Borussia Dortmund fan in your life, in any case.


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