There was a time when the quality of in-ear headphones paled in comparison to their on-ear and over-ear counterparts. Partly the issue was one of perception, people associated the idea of in-ears with the cheap earbuds that came bundled with the early iPods and iPhones which had a weak tinny sound and poor bass response. On-ear and over-ear headphones meanwhile were seen as what you moved to when you wanted to upgrade from in-ears. They had a bigger sound, felt satisfyingly weighty in the hand, and after trying them out it was hard to see how the same level of sound quality could be provided by a device the size of a broad bean. There was a time when there was an element of truth to this. A smaller pair of headphones means smaller drivers producing its sound, and historically these haven't been able to match the quality of the bigger drivers found in over- and on-ear headphones. But that was then, and these days the quality of in-ear headphone drivers have more or less closed the gap with their larger counterparts.