While working on my PhD research, I liked to listen to music while reading and coding but, due to working in a shared office, I went through a LOT of headphones before I found a pair that worked well. Mostly this was due to them falling off the desktop and breaking or being broken during transport. Eventually I settled on the Escape Platinum headphones shown here.
I got mine at Winners, which sometimes has some surprising bargains, but they are fairly common and can be found in many places. These are great because they have a removable wire rather than a soldered in one. The most common break I encountered was the headphones falling and catching them by the wire while trying to stop them from hitting the floor. That's pretty much guaranteed to break many soldered in wired headphones. They also have a fold in design which makes them durable for transport/storage. My only real issue with the headphones is that they are "on ear" instead of "over ear".
Recently, also at Winners, I came across these headphones (mine are all black instead of grey) which are over-ear and I thought it would be fun to compare the two. For this comparison, I'll be comparing them in terms of advertised features, sound quality, ease of use, and physical design. See the expandable list below for each part of the comparison. If you want just the summary, skip to the Conclusions.
Advertised Features
Sound Quality
Ease of Use
Physical Design
Conclusions