Beats EP On-Ear Headphones vs Shure SRH840

The Beats EP On-Ear Headphones makes for a good, if unremarkable, Closed-Back Headphone for people with a $90 budget.

The Shure SRH840, however, is merely mediocre at its $149 asking price, when compared to similarly priced products, and won't satisfy the needs of most people.

In either case, we suggest that you first take a look at some other options at the $90 and $150 price points before committing to one of these - it's likely that you'll be able to find some better alternatives.

If you're still interested in learning more about the Beats EP On-Ear Headphones and Shure SRH840, however, we wrote a summary of what we could find about them:

The Beats EP On-Ear Headphones has managed to impress reviewers from some of the most highly trusted sources on the internet, including Rtings and SoundGuys. It performed great in their in-depth hands-on roundups - it was awarded the "Best Wired Beats Headphones" title by Rtings and "Best value" by SoundGuys in their respective Closed-Back Headphone roundups. That's high praise, especially when coming from such high-quality sources.

Moving on to the Shure SRH840: it was unable to reach the very top of any roundups from sources that conduct reliable and unbiased testing. Nonetheless, it still managed to impress reviewers from a number of such sites, like Headphone Review, TrustedReviews, Head-fi, CNET, and Wirecutter (NYTimes), enough for them to include them on those lists.

We conducted an analysis of all of the review data that we could find on these two products. First, we focused on sources that tested and rated both of them, like CNET, and learned that they all showed a preference for the Shure SRH840.

Then we took a look at the highest review scores that these two Closed-Back Headphones received. We found that the Beats EP On-Ear Headphones managed to earn a rating of 8.1 from CNET, whereas the Shure SRH840 got its highest, 9.1, score from reviewers at Headphone Review.

Lastly, in order to better compare them to the rest of their competition, we averaged out their review scores. The Shure SRH840 managed to get 8.7 out of 10 - considerably better than the 7.4 review average of Closed-Back Headphones in general - whereas the Beats EP On-Ear Headphones earned 6.9 points.

It should be said that doing a direct Beats EP On-Ear Headphones vs. Shure SRH840 comparison might not be entirely fair due to the difference in their prices - some sources don't put much weight on value for money and thus tend to give better review scores to more expensive products.