I’ve been travelling quite a lot recently…

By plane, when I like to do work and listen to music. Noise cancellation is the priority here.

Walking around cities, where I love to daydream. I don’t want to stand out with some big over-ear headphones, and I’d like to hear some traffic noise to stop myself being flattened by a bus.

Running. In the rain. I sweat a lot. I need my bangers loud.

I used to have a nice pair of knock-off Bose noise-cancellers. Goldring NS1000s. They were very, very close to the genuine Bose ones in sound, but the build quality revealed itself after I lost the case and they disintegrated over the course of a week.

So for the past six months I’ve just been using Apple’s stock earbuds. I found them comfortable and reasonable sounding. They also seem to be fairly indestructible but the cable has a party with itself every single time I put them in my pocket. Now they’ve eloped so I nipped to the Apple Store (seemingly the only place that’s open on a Sunday in Paris).

Looking up reviews for everything on the shelves (unsurprisingly dominated by Beats) I chose a pair of RHA MA750i in-ear buds. Based mostly on a fairly glowing WhatHi review. Price paid €99.95. Which is cheaper than I’d find them in the UK.

First impressions are good - build quality is outstanding. Nice chunks of machined stainless steel. I’ll reserve judgement on sound quality until they’ve worn in.

Feb 2015 Update: The MA750i headphones are brilliant. I really bash them around and they are holding up extremely well. The sound remains excellent. My only problem is that I move around a lot at the gym and once I start sweating they tend to work their way out of my ears every few minutes.