Heaphones are gadgets that most of us, the extreme audiophiles excluded, probably don't pay all that much attention to when selecting. We might look for a particular brand, though, and for the most part Sennheiser is a reliable choice - if by no means the cheapest option among the big names. These PMX60 phones are a good choice for a personal music player - which I suppose is the generic name for those who don't want to have (or at least don't want to admit to having) an iPod! In my case they were tested with a Sony NWZ-B152 MP3 player.

The PMX60s look quite restrained, which is a relief to those of us for whom the Skullcandy or Ribsherbet variety rather smacks of "trying too hard", in the way that we all had schoolmates who were so self-consciously achingly cool that they ended up being frozen out altogether. Sennheiser have taken the view that the performance of their headphones, together with the relatively discreet branding, will speak for themselves - and in the main I think they've got that one right. I can't imagine anyone looking actively bad in these headphones.

These phones are of the variety whose headpiece rests on your neck rather than looping right over the top of your head. This isn't a style I've experienced all that often, and it did take a little bit of getting used to, but the lightness (not much more than 50 grams) and balance of these things is good enough that after a couple of minutes it ceased to bother me at all. Slightly more problematic were the ear-pieces: maybe I have funny-shaped ears, but I found I had to wiggle them around quite a bit (the headphones, not my ears!) before I got really comfortable, despite the fairly generous foam pads.

A small niggle I do have is that the provided lead is only a round metre long, rather than the 1.2 metres or more some other models give you. That does mean that these phones are likely to be confined exclusively to media-player use, rather than being able to double as computer headphones, at least unless you're prepared to sit very still over the keyboard! The lead is black, like most of the rest of the unit; there are some chrome/silver highlights, but not too many. There's a standard 3.5 mm jack plug on the end, which I haven't had any problems fitting into things.

As these headphones by no means keep sound in, I don't think I'd recommend them for use in a quiet environment such as a library, not that that's ever stopped thoughtless people... however, considering only the sound that you can hear the PMX60s do a sterling job. I listen to mostly classic (ie rather old-fashioned) rock and pop, and these phones seem to be absolutely ideal for that sort of work, with clear, crisp tones and excellent definition. There's a good, solid bass, but it's not overwhelming; perhaps fans of more bass-centric genres might consider it a little light in this department, and might want to look elsewhere.

Sennheiser seem to have ceased production of the PMX60 now, at least for the UK, but you can still find them fairly easily on eBay and the like. An average asking price is around the £25 to £30 mark - certainly not the cheapest headphones you can buy, but a remarkably low price for ones of this type with the Sennheiser name attached. They may not last you a lifetime - I do wonder how durable that neckband actually is in the very long term - but while they're working they give better sound than you'd expect at this price point, and so have to be recommended.