Beats by Dr Dre

The last time a footballer stepped off the team coach not wearing a monster pair of cans baggy shorts were still in vogue.

The last time a top flight footballer stepped off the team coach not wearing a monster pair of cans baggy shorts were still in vogue, men stood on terraces smoking woodbines and peeing in each other's pockets and Stanley Matthews was a wing wizard despite being older than Yoda. Everyone's new favourite footballer Gareth Bale is one such footballer who invariably conducts his interviews with a pair of headphones draped around his neck (to be fair at least he takes them off) and they're always Beats by Dr Dre. They're very much the headphone of choice for the established star and while I'm more Gareth from The Office than Gareth Bale when it comes to athleticism, what we now share is an appreciation of a product so good it almost makes crap music sound decent. I said almost. Let's get the elephant out of the room. There's no getting away from the price. We got sent a pair of the tour model, which are in-ear headphones, and they retail at £119.99. If you're on a tight budget the cheapest pair of Beats you can get your hands on come in at a penny shy of 80 sheets, while they go up to £349.99 for the Beats Pro. If you're more Conference player than Premier League these might not be the product for you, but having tried them out for a couple of weeks now I'm very much a convert to the 'you get what you pay for' school of thought. Dr Dre, an American producer, rapper and record executive, came into a crowded market place with the specific aim of allowing the listener to experience exactly what the artist intended. "People aren't hearing all the music," he said in his mission statement. "Artists and producers work hard in the studio perfecting their sound. But people can't really hear it with normal headphones. Most headphones can't handle the bass, the detail, the dynamics. Bottom line, the music doesn't move you. With Beats, people are going to hear what the artists hear, and listen to the music the way they should: the way I do." Working alongside premium audio brand Monster and fellow American music producer, entrepreneur and Interscope-Geffen-A&M chairman Jimmy Iovine, Dr Dre has delivered exactly what he promised. The clarity of sound is astonishing, and that's coming from a man who is very much of the mindset the glass is half empty when it comes in dishing out hyperbole. Any decent pair of headphones will impress on initial impact purely by providing a booming deep bass but what puts Beats into a different class altogether is their ability to pick out every nuance of a track, however covert. Songs I'll be humming when being lowered into the ground such are their familiarity have been given an extra twist; closeted secrets brought out of a cupboard they'd been shoved in by my previous headphones. To the derision of my more austere friends I'm normally a fan of chunky cans but having reverted to in-ear headphones for the purpose of this review I'll be sticking with the Beats (that said, if they need someone to try out the pro version...) There's nothing ostentatious about the tour headphones, they play great hip-hop without looking hip-hop, with a strong brand identity held together by sleek black and red colourways. One of my major bugbears about in-ear headphones has always been the fact cables inevitably get tangled and often lead to a distortion of sound quality. This is where working with an audio master like Monster has propelled Beats from being a stylish but vacuous celebrity endorsed product into one that is genuinely one of the best on the market. The PR I was sent claims Monster have developed an 'innovative, patent-pending flat cable design which is ultra-flexible and tangle-free'. And, for once, it's true. The cable, which looks like old school strawberry laces, seems genuinely impossible to tangle. Result. Beats headphones are a high end-product and while not cheap, you're buying into a brand that is, or at least on its way to becoming, a leader in its field. The packaging is sensational. I thought I'd been sent a luxury watch by mistake when the box arrived. Included in the price is a sturdy and pretty stylish carry case which also includes a selection of different bud types for the perfect fit. In summary then, while us mere mortals will never be able to score a hat-trick at the San Siro or make a mug of Maicon, we can at least listen to our music on an equal footing to the Welshman. Click here to visit the Beats store.