What your skull needs is a touch of dignity

If you’re like me, you probably associate Panasonic with the '80s or '90s. Maybe you owned a Panasonic walkman-like-thing, or nuked your Hot Pockets in a Panasonic microwave. Maybe you bought a Panasonic boom box with AM and FM radio bands from Radio Shack. And perhaps your grandmother’s Panasonic VHS cassette player was the source of countless “old people have trouble with technology” jokes told by Levis-and-blazer-clad stand-up comedians on A&E’s An Evening at the Improv.

But Panasonic actually has nearly a hundred years of history under its belt. They’ve built everything from motors to televisions to vacuum tubes. Panasonic turntables were the tool of choice for early hip hop pioneers and they helped launch the computer revolution of the '80s with one of the first IBM clones! That’s some real starched collar, clutching a snifter of brandy in a high-backed chair, old-money history!

Compare that to today’s electronics companies. What do have. Beats? Beats was founded, what, a handful of years ago? By some guy? Who knows! You know the sort of nouveau riche vulgarians that cling to those sort of fashion trends: the kind of people who wear Gucci wrap-around sunglasses and a fur coat over a t-shirt that reads “porn star.” The kind of folks who lounge around their baroque, Olympic-sized swimming pool in gold chains and a track suit.

Seriously, you look like the Trump Plaza. Stahp.

You want a company with a pedigree? Panasonic got its start selling screw-in light bulbs! Well, okay, not the light bulb part, just the screw-in part. But still! You think Beats are cool? How’s that whole being-able-to-see-at-night thing going for you?

Take the Panasonic Wireless On-ear Headphones, for example. It’s got the slick-but-understated design of a company that’s been doing this long enough to know what’s up. And it’s full-range responsiveness gives you a clear sound, unmuddled by the over-saturated bass that comes from some headphones we could mention.

This a pair of headphone that tells other people, “Why no, I’ve never posted #NotForPeasants to Snapchat,” and not “Yeah, I’m the guy to got drunk in Atlantic city and vandalized a kettle corn stand with my unearned sense of entitlement.”