A walk into Best Buy (or more realistically a poke through Amazon) to find a pair of headphones is a daunting task.  With hundreds if not thousands of options to choose from, clueless consumers (myself included) go with what they see the most or what is advertised the best.  Maybe that isn’t the best plan of attack.

Time did an exhaustive review of over 3,000 pairs of headphones, giving each one a score out of 100, factoring in expert reviews and their specs.  Their results may surprise many of you who have walked around a city, college campus or anywhere people walk around listening to music.  Coming in 17th out of the 18 most popular headphone brands was Beats by Dre, scoring a lowly 58.  Other notables included Skullcandy, which came in 16th, Bose, which came in 12th and Apple which came in 11th.  The full list can be seen below.

-Brian Weidy (@frostedweidies)

18 – Plantronics

17 – Beats by Dre

16 – Skullcandy

15 – Koss

14 – Creative

13 – Philips

12 – Bose

11 – Apple

10 – Panasonic

9 – Audio-Technica

8 – JVC

7 – Sennheiser

6 – AKG

5 – Sony

4 – Pioneer

3 – Klipsch

2 – Grado

1 – Shure

via Time // Photo Credit headphone.com