 When I saw these accent-wear cat headphones absolutely smash their goal on Indiegogo about a year and a half ago, I knew I had to have them. Not because I thought they looked good, not because I thought they would sound good, but because the beginnings of the kick-farted video format were already forming in my mind and these things had epic disaster written all over them, but let's see how that turned out then, shall we? The Aria headphones from Phoenix come complete with a cardioid clip mic and acoustic chambers constructed entirely of Japanese pinewood. Check out the link in the video description to learn more. Our epic tale begins, as it always seems to, with the original delivery date estimate of April 2015 given to me when I backed this project in October of 2014. It took all of one month to get the inevitable derp we actually can't use the manufacturer we intended email, something to do with a poor human rights record, fair enough, and after four months of radio silence an update comes through. Brookstone will be taking over customer service and manufacturing. Cool. Shortly afterward, I sent an email to Brookstone asking if I could get one of the first off the line to facilitate a timely review. They told me that pre-sales go up in the fall, so I replied back saying I'd never asked that and I had already bought one and then I never heard back. So alright then. From there the backer updates were actually looking great. August onward is rapid-fire photos of prototypes and good news all around. So then why has it taken until now for you to review it Linus? Good question. A combination of it being shipped to my old address in spite of me sending a request to find out where it was being sent so that I could change it through Indiegogo and the shipment eventually being abandoned after an apparent attempted delivery to the wrong address, though I never actually got any notices, which took about six months to finally resolve. Though to the credit of AccentWare and Brookstone, who seems to have basically acquired them outright, they did eventually deliver my product, which is good. But what about the headphones? Are they good? Well honestly at a hundred and thirty dollar retail price, I've seen much worse than the cat phones. That's what I'll be calling them. You get a surprisingly rugged carrying case, a meter-long cable with inline volume control and a gaming grade bendy microphone that feels kind of cheap and sounds a little something like this. Moving on. The folding hinges do not lock and the size and swivel adjustments are plastic and will therefore wear out relatively quickly, but the leatherette covered ear cups and headband have a thick and soft, if not especially breathable, memory foam covering them. Not too bad. But any old random pair of headphones from a completely unknown brand, even one with decent build quality, shouldn't have performed this well as a crowdfunded product. Let's discuss the main selling point. These plastic cat ears are not just cat ears. They also, along with the ear cups, light up for up to five hours in the color of your choosing. I ordered purple and they have speakers inside so you can share your music with your friends and family in a unique and creative way, according to the marketing materials. Thanks to these add-ons, the cat phones are a little on the heavy side, but I'd still describe them as reasonably comfortable, even after an hour or more of continuous wear. But of course, I wasn't actually expecting any of that stuff to suck. It would be relatively hard to screw up a plastic mold and some LEDs at this point, so let's talk audio quality. The kind of thing that's easy to brag about on a spec sheet with frequency response numbers, but that is actually very difficult and requires decades of engineering experience to deliver. The cat phones are better than I expected. Not in a, wow, these are great, go buy them now kind of way, but in more of a, they surprisingly aren't the worst thing I've ever heard kind of way. Lows are handled surprisingly competently at low to moderate volumes with tighter bass than I expected, though at higher volumes distortion does set in, and if mids and highs behaved in a similar manner, you'd actually have a pretty competent pair of hundred-ish dollar or less headphones on your hands. Unfortunately, they sound kind of like there's a sock over them or something, with vocalists in particular coming across like they're a little too far from the microphone. At closer to 40 to 50 bucks, they'd actually be pretty compelling on a pure sound quality basis. But what about the other features? Pressing the second button from the back activates the speakers built into the ears at low volume to help you avoid getting punched on the subway. You'll need to actually turn it up each time you activate this feature. And turned up, they actually sound alright, I guess. Not nearly as good or even as loud as a high-end Bluetooth speaker like a UE Boom, but better than trying to use your phone, so there you go. Which leads us finally to the answer to the question posed in the title of this video. Evaluating the Catphones as headphones, there's no contest. DT770 Pros from Beyerdynamic can be had for the same price. They both sound and fit much better, with HyperX Cloud 2 headsets available in masculine or feminine flavors for actually significantly less if having a microphone is your thing. So it comes down then to how much value you assign to the statement that you're making by wearing these. For me, that's not much. To people I've never met, I'd rather wear unfashionable audiophile headphones and look like someone who appreciates craftsmanship rather than someone who thinks cat ears are cool. And besides, I've come up with my own way to stand out from the crowd for having absolutely no taste. But I suppose everybody's got to blaze their own trail in this regard. But what if you wanted your internet connection to blaze a new trail through the United Kingdom or the United States or something along those lines, and you didn't want internet providers tracking your web browsing? Well, TunnelBear is the simple VPN app that makes it easy to browse privately and enjoy a more open internet. 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