According to Urbanista's website, 3.5 billion people live in 'urban environments'. That's a pretty big potential market, and Urbanista is targeting city dwellers with fancily-designed gadgets to make inner-city living that bit more exciting and glamorous.

Each gadget is named after a city. Copenhagen gets some over-ear headphones, Las Vegas gets iPod cases and London gets some in-ear headphones. It could be worse – New York gets a…uh…trolley for shopping and luggage.

So what makes the London headphones suitable for urban life? The design of the headphones is certainly striking – whether you find it attractive or not will be down to taste. We're not too sure how having designer in-ear headphones helps living in a city, but we certainly give credit to Urbanista for doing something a little different with the design.

Of much more use in a busy, noisy city environment is the inline microphone which is very useful if you're listening to music on your phone and someone rings. The earphones come with a number of in-ear attachments which makes it easy to get the earphones as comfortable as possible.

The all-important sound quality is very good and the tiny 10mm speakers have a good frequency range. The £49 RRP asking price is pretty high though, so we wonder how much you're paying just for the good looks?

How much should you spend on a pair of headphones?

It's a tricky question to answer because generally speaking, the more you spend, the better the product.

There are exceptions of course – Beats by Dr. Dre headphones are stupidly expensive and do not deliver proportional levels of sound quality – but on the whole the trend holds firm.

So do these Sony MDR-ZX500 headphones offer a decent dollop of audio fidelity, or are they just another also-ran pair of cans for the undiscerning ear?

Sadly, they fall into the latter category.

The ZX500's are cheap, they look good, they're nice and light and they sound better than those bundled buds.

But they're no star performers. All audio is squeezed uncompromisingly into the murky midrange, with little on offer in the way of fidelity at high or low frequencies. Your music can sound a lot better, and for not much more money, either.

So if you're looking to replace some bundled white iPod earphones with an over-ear alternative and don't want to splash the cash, the ZX500's will find a good home with you. But if you need more, you're going to need to spend a little more money.

There are two types of earphones.

There are those that sound good, and those that don't.

Unfortunately, those in the former category are much rarer than the latter, and to get hold of them you usually need to spend quite a large chunk of your children's inheritance.

The issue is clouded by the likes of the Beats by Dr. Dre range, which claim to deliver "studio quality" audio, but in fact do nothing of the sort.

The Atomic Floyd SuperDarts, though, are genuinely fantastic. The build quality is first rate. The materials used are premium. And the sound quality...

Of course, for a pair of earphones that cost £199 you would expect them to deliver a sound experience that impresses you every time you use them.

You want the sound to be crisp and punchy, smooth and deep, soothing and yet startling. You want the high-end to tingle on your ear drums, with every sonic vibration adding extra detail to the soundscape. You want the low end to bulge with every fibre of a bass guitar's string, with every drum beat popping as though being played right in front of you.

The SuperDarts do all that. They take audio from its source and they inject it directly into your temporal lobe.

The solid stainless steel earbuds each contain dual drivers, which means two mini speakers in each ear. This is an expensive way to build an earbud, but it undoubtedly delivers better sound, with each driver individually handling a separate part of the sound spectrum.

The SoftSeal silicone eartips create a good level of noise isolation to eliminate external noises, too. That's great for sound quality, but not so good if you're waiting for an important phone call - set phasers to vibrate.

A big bugbear of ours when it comes to earphones are the cables. You put them in a bag, and within 16 millionths of a second they become entangled in a hellish network of knots so complex it takes minutes to sort out.

Unless you're extremely careful, it's very easy to make this knotted mess worse as you attempt to untangle it.

The Creative Aurvana InEar 3 earphones are a classic example of this - they sound great, but the rubber cables are grippy and built to get tangled up.

Atomic Floyd conquers this problem by using Kevlar cables. It's a fabric rather than rubber or plastic, and the result is that it's almost impossible to get it tangled up into a knot. Even if you intentionally tie it in a huge knot, it falls apart effortlessly in your hand like a fillet of grilled salmon.

On the cable is a stainless steel remote control, which enables you to play and pause your music as well as toggle the volume up and down.

These earphones are part of the Made for iPod/iPhone/iPad programme, and the microphone in the cable also enables you to have hands-free phone calls without popping the earbuds out. Music automatically pauses when the call comes in.

The downside here is that this feature only works with Apple devices. We tried with a few Android phones and were unsuccessful. So if you want the remote and hands-free features to work, you're going to need an iDevice.

In the premium box you get the earphones themselves, a carry case, DJ jack adapter, plane adapter and three sets of silicone earbuds in different sizes.

So they're pretty good then. They're brilliant, in fact. You just need to decide whether you can afford to drop 19,900 pennies on them.

If you can't, you can content yourself with the knowledge that you'll never know how good your music could have sounded. And if you can? Your ears will love you for the rest of your life.

Sound quality is something that regularly gets overlooked.

Everyone raves about the amazing picture quality of Blu-ray discs, for example. But how often do you hear anyone say anything about how good the audio is, even though it's utterly brilliant compared to what you get on a DVD?

Seeing is believing, as they say, and with sound… well, you can't see it, can you?

The human brain is much better at capturing visual memories than audio ones, too, so it's much easier to look at a TV and say 'that looks better than the other one' than to switch between headphones and work out which sounds better.

The way this usually pans out on the street is that people will drop £200 on a new iPod but they won't bother to buy a decent set or headphones to go with it.

The audio market is further muddied by the fact that there are many so-called premium audio brands out there that claim to offer studio-quality sound, while actually delivering something distinctly mediocre – Beats by Dr. Dre, anyone?

For those who care though, there are lots of genuinely brilliant earphone and headphone products out there. And we're happy to report that the Creative Aurvana In-ear3 earphones are pretty good, too.

They're noise-isolating rather than noise-cancelling, and they do a fantastic job of blocking out external noise. The PR blurb claims 98 per cent of outside noises are blocked by the 'AuraSeal' design and we can't fault them on this score. If noise isolation is top of your feature list, these earphones are about as good as it gets.

However, that's not to say they're the best earphones in the world. They're not.

We're always perplexed as to why some companies coat their cables in grippy rubber. Sure, it means the wires grip your clothes and don't jangle about as much when you're on the move. But the downside is that they're just so difficult to untangle when they emerge from a bag in inevitable and inexplicable super-knots.

Sound quality is head and shoulders above most bundled earphones, and obviously a lot better than ones that cost a bit less. Each unit packs two drivers, one a woofer and the other a tweeter. Bass, midrange and highs are all recreated smoothly without any imbalance.

But that price… these earphones cost £129.99 on launch, which is a lot of cash to drop on a pair of earphones. If you value sound quality though, and you've got money to spend, you probably wouldn't be disappointed by them.

That said, shop around a bit and you'll find some models in other ranges from the likes of Shure, which offer similar sound quality for a lot less cash.

The CX880i is a new model from Sennheiser that includes an i-thing remote control in the lead and a microphone too, so you can make and receive phone calls via your mobile hi-fi .

The earpieces quote an unusually wide frequency range, right down to 17Hz – we've no reason to question that, though every time we look at a headphone frequency response specification we are reminded how far ahead of most loudspeakers even quite modest headphones are in that particular respect.

We do find it a little bizarre that Sennheiser seems to have omitted to mark the earpieces for left and right ear, but otherwise we've no complaints. Three sizes of earbud are provided and the fairly generous cable is one of the least noisy in terms of friction noise.

Sound quality

Having identified the best earbud, we settled down to enjoy some of the best in-ear sounds we've heard in a while.

Balance is excellent from the upper bass up: there is a little deep bass enhancement, it seems to us, but not enough to be really distracting. Treble sounds quite mellow compared with most in-ear models, but that's a good thing as the breed is justly renowned for brightness.

Perhaps because of that mellowness, detail can seem a little underwhelming at first, but in the longer term, it is very good indeed; natural and unforced but really delightfully lifelike. Add to that the natural musicality of these 'phones and their success is assured.

AKG does a busy line in in-ear phones and the K350 model is brand spanking new (this is its first UK test, indeed) and replaces the K330, a well-liked model that's been around for a while.

AKG's marketing includes a prominent claim that these weigh only three grams (we're happy to accept that they are among the lightest around, if only by a gram or so), but we could hardly spot a difference in practice.

More importantly, perhaps, they are well sculpted to fit a typical ear and come with a choice of easily removable soft earbuds. The cable is quite long at a little over one-metre and includes a volume control for iPod duty – that is, it controls the volume of the iPod itself rather than putting an extra volume control in the way of the signal.

This is certainly a model that will appeal to lovers of loud music as it plays louder than most from a typical portable music device. We found its tonal balance a little on the treble-rich side, but there is certainly bass there.

In fact, very deep bass turns out to be very good and initial impressions are a touch misleading because the overall balance tilt is something one very quickly learns to ignore.

Detail is good, if not quite as revealing as some, except in the lowest bass where it is excellent.

Overall, we found the sound exciting, but not invariably the most beguiling.

Dedicated to headphones and earphones, Jays designs in Sweden, but manufactures in China, maintaining several ranges of products each of which is closely targeted, for instance at the phone/ music-player user.

The t-JAYS range is where the hi-fi lives and boasts a 10mm driver and an angled sound tube, in an assembly which is shown on the company website as nestling securely in the ear. We didn't quite manage to duplicate such secure mounting but with a little experimenting with earbuds (several sizes are supplied) we contrived a comfortable and secure fit.

The cable is quite short, though an extension is provided and there's a neat little toggle which can be used to adjust the amount of cable that's split.

We enjoyed the sound of this model, but in general would have liked a little more insight and precision.

Even after extensive fiddling and prolonged listening, we couldn't persuade ourselves that the bass is entirely honest: it seems more than a touch over-present and, perhaps more disturbingly, generalised in quality. That is, it's easy to hear that bass is there, but sometimes tricky to discern which instrument is playing it.

Midrange is more exact and, at best, quite pleasingly detailed, but it still lacks some of the finesse we've heard from other models. Treble is quite well-balanced, perhaps a shade bright, but not worryingly so and very informative.

Jamo may best be known for speakers, but the company also offers a small range of in-ear phones of which the wEAR In30 is the middle model.

The drive unit is identical to that used in, at least, one Klipsch model (Klipsch being Jamo's parent company these days), but other details are different and there's no reason to suppose that this would be a Klipsch retread.

Jamo's description mentions 'passive noise-cancelling', by which is simply meant noise-blocking, as this model (like the others here) has no active anti-noise features. As it happens, we felt this was by a small margin the most effective at blocking external noise, but there's not really much in it.

We also felt that it had the most noisy cable, very much prone to convey friction noise (against skin and clothing) into the ears.

We're not sure the frequency extremes of the In30 are entirely honest; the response seeming to have a bit of a bathtub profile – lifted at both ends. Bass is persistently more present than we're used to, while treble has a little added fizz.

Neither of these, however, prevented us appreciating the model's very good resolution of detail. It enables one to hear deep into any mix of instruments without ever stripping away the overall cohesion of the musical image. From classical to rock to avant-garde electronica, the music was presented in a convincing and communicative way.

To hear music at its best you really need a decent pair of headphones. And this is where the Sennheiser HD 518 comes in.

Ostensibly designed for hi-fi use, the 518s bring audiophile-sound quality to your Mac, iPad or iPhone in a lightweight, open-backed design.

What strikes you first is the HD 518's sheer bulk: large, extravagantly padded, oval ear cups, a wide headband and a 3m cable with 6.3mm headphone jack and 3.5mm adapter.

It's fair to say that the Sennheiser HD 518 is built for comfort rather than stealth: those huge ear cups are circumaural – that is, designed to fit around the ears rather than on or in them, making them super-comfy.

The headphones are also open-backed to give your music a light, airy feel, although this can also result in sound leaking in or out – great if you want to be aware of what's going on around you, but annoying for anyone who has to listen to a tinny rendition of your tunes.

Out of the box, these headphones initially disappoint with a muffled sound that's thin on high-frequency sounds such as cymbals. Luckily, that quickly gives way to a more balanced sound that's breathtakingly clear with well-recorded rock, pop and classical.

Ironically the Sennheiser's transparency could make some songs in your library sound worse: it's not very forgiving of low bit-rate MP3s or tunes that were badly recorded or mastered in the first place.

Unless you've been hiding indoors for the last 12 months, you'll probably have noticed a lot of people walking around wearing headphones with a distinctive 'b' logo on them.

Monster's Beats by Dr. Dre headphones are a triumph of marketing. After the launch in 2009, they're now stocked in almost every high street in the UK. Branches of HMV have entire sections devoted to them.

The trademark red audio cables that come with Beats headphones have become almost as iconic as Apple's white iPod cables in just a short space of time. It's a meteoric rise to prominence that simply must be down to them being the best headphones in town. Right?

Well they certainly look good. The packaging they come in screams 'premium' and the build quality of the headphones themselves is second to none. Even before you put them on your head, they look and feel the part.

They fold up nicely for easy transportation, and come with a padded carry case.

You also get two audio cables – one standard 3.5mm cable and another that's compatible with ControlTalk. With ControlTalk you can use the inline remote on the cable to play/pause your music and toggle volume up and down without putting your hand in your pocket. This requires the presence of an Apple iPod, iPhone or iPad though.

There's also an inline microphone so a call to your iPhone mid-song will result in music being paused and you being able to have the conversation through the headset itself.

It all works marvelously, and in many ways it's a flawless product. It's just a shame they don't sound half as good as they look.

The marketing spiel on the side of the box, supposedly a quote from Dr. Dre himself, says: "People aren't hearing all the music. With Beats, people are going to hear what the artists hear and listen to the music the way they should: the way I do."

The problem we have with that is that it's utter nonsense.

On first listen, the Solo headphones sound distinctly muddy. We allowed plenty of time for the drivers to 'burn in' but in practise after a few weeks of daily use, performance has not improved in any meaningful way. The low end is very weak, which means bass heavy music can sound very hollow. This is particularly surprising from a brand that's associating itself with a hip-hop producer.

The midrange also lacks meat, while the high end simply doesn't deliver the high fidelity you'd expect from such a pricey set of cans.

The ear cups are not large enough to create any sort of seal over your ear, either, which instantly causes a further loss of definition. The sound leakage that results will annoy the person sitting next to you on the bus, too.

The Solo's don't sound awful by any means. But we're talking about a £150 pair of headphones here - you'll pay more than that on the high street, too. Not only that, they're endorsed by one of the biggest names in music and claim to deliver studio-quality sound. They don't.

We found that they're actually quite hard to keep on your head as well. A sharp head turn will at the very least shake them from the sweet spot over your ears. At the worst they'll half fall off your head, get tangled up in your hair and make you look like an idiot.

But the sheer number of people out their rocking these headphones in the spring sunshine suggests that that none of these flaws particularly matter. You only need to see how many people are satisfied with the mediocre bundled iPod earphones to see that sound quality is not much of a consideration for the mass market.

Verdict

They look great. They're sturdy. And they've got Dr. Dre's name written all over them. For many people, that's enough. But if you truly care about sound quality, you should probably look elsewhere.