The traveling gamer has depended on his or her headset on just about all occasions where playing video games in public with the volume turned on is not appropriate.

In the last few years I went through two pairs of earphones, one being the original headset that came with my Creative Zen Nano Plus MP3 player, and the other being some off-brand earphones that I found in a random dollar store for about $4.99; I guess the joke was on me since the dollar store charged me five bucks for this headset.

My Creative earphones were destroyed in a tragic accident (somehow they fell on the floor and for some reason that I can't remember I didn't pick them up immediately, and when I got up, I forgot about them and I accidentally stepped on them). My other pair of earphones got destroyed not too long ago when I was bored and was playing my PSP in the pool around 3 AM (yes, I'm a night person). Technically speaking, only half the headset was destroyed; the right ear piece (it slipped out of my ear and fell right in the pool.

At first I did not think too much of it, but when I had to take my step-grandfather to the eye doctor for his monthly injection (he has Macular Degeneration) I was forced to stay in the car and play my PSP so I would not disturb the entire waiting room. Well, that was a little over four hours of waiting and you can bet that I was glad that I charged my spare PSP battery the night before. The next day I went searching for a new headset. The hard part was deciding on which one out of the billion headsets on display to pick up. The price ranges went from $6.99 all the way up to $124.99. About a year back I did buy a Maxell 100 dollar headset and the only thing that it did for me was to hurt my neck due to the weight and after the first set of batteries depleted, it pretty much became worthless since the battery cover got jammed. Therefore I was determined not to spend this kind of money. That's how I eventually ended up with the Sony "Good Sound" MDR-E828LP earphone set. I was skeptical at first considering that they were only $9.99, but I decided to give them a try anyhow; I saved the receipt so I can return them if the sound was terrible. However, the sound was pretty good. Keep reading if you want to find out more.