I've got a terrible habit of leaving headphones in the gym, managing to put them down in my room and never find them again or of coiling them up so tight around my iPod that I end up damaging the cable and need to throw them out, so I'm always on the lookout for some headphone bargains. I saw a pair of these on sale in a music store for around £10 so decided to buy them. However, they retail on the Skullcandy website for £17.99 currently.

I actually had a pair of Skullcandy earbuds before which broke but I really like the look of Skullcandy earbuds (my previous pair were a Paul Frank pair with Julius on them) and these ones looked cool, too, with the Skullcandy logo of a skull on them. They also come in various colours such as red and black, gold and black and purple and black. I opted for the purple ones.

Like most ear buds now, these came with a choice of fittings, depending on the size of your ears. I'm a pretty tiny person so opted for the tiniest rubber fittings but experimented with all three. I felt that the bigger sizes didn't really fit inside my ear where the smaller ones did but I find that the smaller size maybe isn't big enough as it is almost impossible to keep my earbuds in if I'm out jogging or even just using the cross-trainer at the gym, although they are usually fine when just out walking with them in. Maybe I just have strange ears, though!

I find it hard to judge sound quality as I'm by no means an expert but these seem to be middle of the range in quality to me, but then again, I suppose that can be expected as they are in a middle of the range price bracket, too. The sound quality seems to improve when I make sure the buds are deep into my ears.

The buds seem to irritate my ears after a while but again, I suspect this is nothing to do with the brand and is just due to my ears being easily irritated by ear buds in general.

I am extremely cautious with these ones since my last pair broke (the wire came loose which made the sound juddery eg. I'd get sound and if I moved then the wire would move and I'd lose the sound again or it would go crackly). I blamed myself for wrapping the earphones round the iPod too tightly when I used them but perhaps this shouldn't have happened as I've had other brands of ear buds that lasted much longer before they broke. The previous pair of Skullcandy earbuds only last me perhaps 6 months or so of not very frequent use (maybe once a week on average). So with this pair I'm cautious to not wrap them up at all.

As Skullcandy goes, it is a recognised brand and seems to be widely available in shops. I'd probably buy Skullcandy earphones again just for this reason alone and that it is convenient to buy them. However, I'm not convinced that they are the best quality earphones available and I probably wouldn't buy an expensive pair in case they didn't last.