The Beats by Dr Dre Solo HDs seemed to be a good fit for my needs

OK, so with my iPhone addiction, I needed a good set of headphones to be able to listen to tunes and conduct phones calls - the Beats by Dr Dre Solo HDs seemed to be a good fit for my needs. Beats By Dre Solo HD In retrospect, I suppose I tried to fit my needs to the headphones instead of vice versa - I wanted to love these so bad and in the end I just couldn't.

Pros:
- pretty good sound, though I would not be an expert on this due to a low-tone hearing loss, but I can say they beat any earbuds that I have ever used for clarity
- in-line microphone and volume adjustments
- nice neoprene-type bag with an adjustable strap to help you carry these along where needed
- folds up very compactly
- attractive headphones
- you see these headphones a lot - felt like I was part of a club - my thought was 'how could that many people be wrong?'
- ear pads are fairly comfortable (though not the headband) and easy to clean

Cons:
- not circumaural - this ended up being the deal breaker for me - after a while, the headphones tend to put pressure directly on your outer ears and become uncomfortable - I wish I would have known this prior to purchase as the 5 minute trial period at Best Buy didn't point out this flaw to me
- headphones overall feel like they are "pinching" your head and I'm afraid to try to stretch them due to the plastic construction, which feels like it will eventually snap - I read this on several other reviews as well that these headphones will break
- no noise cancelling - I can live with this, but since they rest on your ears and not over, you will hear a lot more of sounds around you than with circumaurals or a headphone with noise cancellation
- builds up heat - this is a common flaw to every headphone that I've used, they all tend to get hot after a while and make your ears feel like they are in an oven
- feels cheap for the price paid - at nearly $200, I would expect better construction, but then again there aren't a lot of headphones out there with the features that I want

Recommendations:
- need to work on the overall comfort of these headphones - maybe integrate more ability to adjust, though the likely trade-off here is the ability to compact the headphones for easy transport - a cushion on the headband would be another nice touch
- find a way to reduce the heat build-up on the ears - wish that I was an engineer and could do this myself, I'd sell it to all headphones manufacturers :)
- drop the price a bit - the flaws here aren't anything that doesn't happen with other headphones, so I could live with the flaws better if it wasn't at such a cost

Overall, a decent set of headphones if you can live with the pinching and the heat. Beats Solo  I love the ability to have a phone conversation with these headphones on and listen to some serious tunage, but found that I could do either one only for short periods of time, so I reverted to using earbuds as they are easier to transport.

I will likely be reselling these to a friend shortly and trying to find something that is a closer match to my needs.