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The Icy Box Big City Vibes are interesting headphones. They're clearly in the same market as the Beats headphones, with enough differences that it's not a simple copy job, but they're significantly cheaper.

After burn in I put the BCV through their paces with my regular set of review music, which includes a variety of jazz, dance, acoustic, and rock. These headphones seem more like they're designed for bass heavy music, with a very strong bass kick that to me is a little too much, but will be appreciated by many. To my surprise they held their own in just about every type of music, though acoustic and jazz probably isn't their strong point. Eminim came out with more bass than I'd have liked, but you could hear the instruments too. Joss Stone was reproduced reasonably well, though they're slightly veiled compared with some headphones, the music was slightly less alive, but they still did quite well. Given the price I was quite impressed with their performance.

I compared the BCV with both a 3-4 year old pair of Beats by Dr Dre and the LCD2. Both of those headphones are significantly more expensive than the BCV.

There's very little difference between the sound of the BCV and the Beats. They have a slightly different sound signature, but detail is fairly similar, with the beats edging the BCV out slightly for detail. Clarity is very similar between the two. The BCV have more bass, which I'm not sure is a good thing, and like the beats it's a bit boomy. They also have decent treble and mids. There's really not much between the two sound wise.

There's more of a gap between the BCV and LCD2, as you would expect when one costs about $150 and one costs $1000. The BCV clearly have less detail in the mid and high range, but you only really notice when you're comparing them head to head - standalone they sound fine. The BCV have deeper, stronger bass, which overshadows the rest of the music at times, but make me wish the LCD2 had just a little more bass ooomph.

Overall the sound is much the same as the beats, and compared with the LCD it lacks clarity and detail, but not so much as you might think given the difference in price.

Style wise they're very similar to the beats, with a couple of small differences. To my eye they look cheaper and less stylish, but they're not a bad looking headphone. Comfort wise they're good, though the ear cups are a bit shallow so people with larger ears may find they touch the fabric inside the cups. One part of one ear pad is crushed on these BCV headphones, it looked to me like they were under pressure from the way they were packed, and never recovered.

I didn't get much of a chance to test the noise reduction. The NR helped a little with the noise of my office heater, slightly less than the beats. When a plane flew overhead I turned the NR on and off, the NR made quite a significant difference to the low rumble of the jet engine. I think they'll do a reasonable job cancelling out plane noise, and maybe train noise.

Durability wise I don't think these are headphones you'll own for 20 years, but they should stand up to daily use for a while at least. The hinges seem reasonably robust, the headphones are a bit flexible so I'm unsure whether they'll bend under pressure or eventually fall apart, only time will tell. Build quality seems reasonable for the price.

Overall while there's nothing original in these headphones, and in some ways they're patterned on the beats, they're a pretty good headphone. Visually they look ok, though not as good as similar but more expensive headphones. With sound and build quality similar to Beats at less than half the price and perhaps as much as 65% cheaper I don't think anyone after a midrange noise reduction headphone will be disappointed with the sound. I would recommend these to a friend looking for a good value noise reduction headphone.