Veho Z8 review – bang for your buck headphones

The Veho Z8 headphones, upon first glance, reminded me of the Sennheiser Urbanite. The square earpads are a little unorthodox and add character to an otherwise quite plain design. Taste is always a subjective thing, but I didn’t find them the most stylish-looking headphones.

For reasonably-priced headphones, the Z8’s use of more premium materials should be commended, however. There’s soft leather for the ear pads and a silver aluminium finish that contrasts against the black used on the back of the ear cups used around the embossed Veho logos. The edges feel a little unrefined, however. Speaking of the Veho logo, between the headband and the earcups, I counted five logos, which is a little excessive. The supra-aural earpads doa good job of passively isolating you from ambient sounds and they didn’t leak sound out, either.

The headband has a slightly rubberised finish and feels well constructed. It’s a little too stiff for my liking, however, meaning that while the earpads aren’t going to slip off your head, you do feel a little too much compression across your head after a while. The earcups are height adjustable, sliding down a distinctly ridged rail. I didn’t have any problems finding a comfortable height but it would have been nice to have had a little extra padding on the headband. The Z8 headphones have a collapsible design, with the earcups folding in to make them easier to carry about.

You get a lightly padded carry pouch, which does a serviceable job but feels a little cheap and so at odds with the better materials and build quality used elsewhere. There’s a generously-long detachable white anti-tangle flat cable. It’s 130cm long, so a little longer than average but as it’s anti-tangle the extra length isn’t an issue if you don’t need it. It’s coated in a rubberised material and feels suitably robust. It terminates in a straight 3.5mm jack. Disappointingly, there’s no microphone or remote, which I would have expected, though you could swap out the cable for one with such features if you have one (or spend £5 on one if you don’t).

In terms of sound quality from the 4mm drivers, there’s a surprising amount of well-handled lower frequency bass response. There’s lots of warmth and presence without any distortion with the volume turned up. It’s surprisingly weighty in its delivery. The midrange is smooth and comfortable. It’s around the treble that the Z8s come up a little short, lacking a degree of transparency and detail. Still, for the price the Z8s actually sound very good.

At their RRP of around £90 it would be difficult to recommend them, but shopping around they’re normally available for around half of that, making them much more enticing – they’re just £45 on Amazon right now. Certainly for the money they sound excellent. Even then, however, I would have expected a cable with an inline remote and microphone to come bundled with them. Still, they’re a good choice for the price, costing almost half that of my favoured Sennheiser Urbanite headphones, currently £80 on Amazon.