The Push To Hear unit dwarfs the E500 headphones

PTH stands for Push To Hear. It's a bronze gadget the size of a large USB flash drive (or a small MP3 player), powered by a single AAA battery, plus a microphone halfway along the cable. When you press the button it lowers the volume and amplifies what you'd be hearing if you didn't have your ears full of E500. This is a strange effect and you wouldn't want to use it for a long conversation. It certainly saves taking your earphones out to tell the cabin crew you're finished with dinner or to talk to the bus driver, which is handy because it takes few seconds to get them positioned every time, but we'd suggest trying it out before you spend the extra as the E500s aren't as awkward to replace as some in-ear rivals. It does make the E500s bulkier to carry around and heavier to have in your ears unless you clip both the control unit and the cable on to something. The Push To Hear gadget is included with the E500s initially - look for the E500PTHs if you want it - but both earphones and the PTH will be on sale separately in the future.

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Replay what you'd hear without your headphones

Without the Push To Hear gadget, the E500s are curvy bronze blobs. They come with nine different 'sleeves' so you can choose what's most comfortable and fits into your ear most snugly. It's the fit that provides the sound isolation, and the bass response, and with a choice between foam that takes on the shape of your ears, three sizes each of medium-soft transparent polymer and softer black rubber plus the softest white rubber triple flanges you should be able to get good results. If you don't get a good fit with any of them Shure has other sizes available and we hear excellent reports of the customer service if you need to try something different. The sleeves are easier to get on and off the driver units than with some earphones and there's a cleaning pick. You also get long and short cables with very robust connectors, an adapter for larger headphone ports and a hard zippered case that you can fit all the bits and pieces into.

The sound isolation is excellent, particularly for background noise and people talking behind you, and you don't have to turn the volume up high to block out the noise. The earphones are larger than many others, because they need to fit in three drivers (one tweeter and two woofers) but that doesn't make them heavy or uncomfortable. You need to wrap the wire over the top of your ears but there isn't a rigid curve and you can pull the wires round to the front again. And the sound quality is absolutely superb, all the way from low frequency rumbles to bright, clear top end notes. The bass is rich but controlled, mid range sounds have enough brightness to give you all the details but not so much as to be tiring or obtrusive and the overall sound is lively and vivid. The E500s are expensive but other triple driver earphones like the custom-fit Ultimate Ears are nearly twice the price, aren't as comfortable and don't improve on the Shure sound. We can take or leave the Push To Hear unit, but even at this price the E500s are excellent value for the excellent sound they deliver.