I've had a pair of 558s for about 5-months now and would recommend them to anyone. They sound great and are incredibly comfortable. The plastic construction makes them feel a little cheap, but it helps keep the weight and price down, and is still fairly robust (I have sat on them a couple of times and they're still in one piece ;) ). The open design of the 558s does mean that you can't really use them in a public place, however. I've also attached a modmic to them which works really well as there are plenty of good mounting points on the headphones; and together provide a really good all round audio solution. One warning about the modmic though, if you order it from Antlion in the US there is a chance that HMRC will charge VAT on it, plus an £8 handling fee which meant that including postage, I ended up paying £39 as opposed to £27 which was a real kick in the balls.