...which you throw straight in the bin, once opened. I still fail to understand why companies try to flog us stuff in "pretty boxes" that get trashed. Plain brown cardboard box, with minimal plastics...that's all we need.

Wow, those are a huge backwards step from the Sony DRBT10CX. Less battery life, greater chance of them flopping out of your ears.

And available 12 months ago for under £25.

WTF? Is this a knock-on from "Unlimited Broadband" with download limits? We now have wireless headphones with wires. What next, Asus start advertising Invisible Netbooks that you can see?

If you want wireless headphones, buy a pair without wires. If you don't mind having wires dangling from your ears, pulling the earphones out, buy a set with wires. Who, in the name of Jobs, is going to be willing to pay £100 for wireless headphones that have fucking wires!!!???? And would they like to buy the centres from my Polo mints 'cause I won't be needing them. Only £1 each!

I guess you could loose a word or two about the sound nontheless? Also, what could be more convenient than wireless phones with a super fiddly small battery-door that you will have to fiddle with about every second day? These could be much more compelling if that circular case featured inductive charging. It is not like organizing and remembering all those gadgets charging schedules makes my life any better and added fiddling makes it substantially worse.

Larger bluetooth headsets with more buttons (and less shiny boxes) are also available...

If all gadgets were strictly functional at the expense of form the world would be far less interesting. These look like they'll go nicely with my very shiny (if ever so slightly compromised Sony Ericsson X1)

Hey Bassey! Nice rant about wireless with wires. The wire-less part is the connection between mobile and headphones which makes sense when you think about it. If it was truly wire-less how are you going to get stereo if you don't have a physical wire connecting the two earbuds? I suppose you could have a Bluetooth receiver in each one that decodes just left or right but you'd need a battery and a charger connector in each one too. So that doubles the price. And what about a microphone for when someone phones you up? You haven't thought this through.

I've got the SE HBH-DS220 which has a Bluetooth receiver with a clip which has the distinct advantage of allowing you to plug in any headphones of your own choosing if you don't like the in-ear canal ones supplied. Plus you can replace them when the cable inevitably gets damaged. And they're a lot cheaper too.

They have controls on them (for the limited range of player that support Bluetooth controls), have no annoying wires, have equivalent battery life, charge from a standard USB cable and cost about 1/2 the price of these.

many headsets are a triumph of style over comfort and usability. I guess pretty much all the technical issues have been solved so the marketing people can squeeze a headset into any shape they like. so far the best device I've found is the Motorola S705 which will pair with multiple devices, does the A2DP stuff, has an FM radio and AV controls. Even better, you don't have to use them with the supplied earphones, which is essential since in the main I hate the in-ear things!

I've gove through about half a dozen in-ear sony buds over the last five years which have all died due to the rubber/wire breaking where it meets the earbud - the cheap bundled ones i've got with SE handsets have survived for years, but consumer ones from sony with the softer rubber on the wires simply dont last.

That being said, stereo bluetooth is the way forward, i've use my moto S9s for a couple of hours a day almost every day for the last year. I know they dont fit everybody perfectly but for me they're great - the controls work really well and nothing else comes close to being as usable while running/cycling/squashed on a busy tube.