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This is not your typical cell phone review. Mostly because I don’t understand most cell phone reviews. It’s a phone. You get a new one every few years. The fervor and intensity of Internet discussions about what phone is best is beyond my realm of understanding.

So what is this? Well, by most accounts the HTC One is, ahem, one of the top smartphones available right now (the others being the iPhone and the Samsung Galaxy S IV) and I was curious, how good is it? Not just from the dime-a-dozen subjective point a view, but an actual look at the hardware.

So I guess you could consider this a look at the HTC One mostly as an LCD TV and portable media player, judged as such, plus a bit of the other subjective crap because why not. Plus, we went ahead and did full video and audio measurements on it. Because why not.

Sherwood can fairly lay claim to a slice of audio history. Born in Chicago in 1953, it was one of the great American brands of home audio’s infancy. Its vintage tube amps still sell on eBay as affordable alternatives to more sought-after brands like McIntosh and Marantz; some folks make a hobby of refurbishing them. Its early solid-state stereo receivers also have a modest following.

When I’m asked to pick my favorite headphones for S&V’s Editor’s Choice awards, it’s always easy. I just make a list of the ones I kept using after the review was done—the ones I listened to even when I didn’t have to. After our test of affordable audiophile headphones last year, the headphone I kept on using afterward was the AudioTechnica ATH-AD900. It’s a big, comfortable, spacious-sounding, tonally neutral open-back headphone. Just the thing for streaming Internet radio for hours while I’m writing, or to use for an all-night-long Netflix binge.

That’s why I was so happy to find a successor to the ATH-AD900 at the January CES show. The ATH-AD900X has the same list price, pretty much the same specs, and similar looks.