Open box in modern online retail usually means

“Someone bought this and sent it back in about two to four weeks. There’s probably nothing wrong with this, they just didn’t like it or opted to buy or keep something else. Maybe there’s a scratch or a fingerprint on it. The original packaging has a small tear on it but the stuff inside is unused, we can’t really sell this as New because of it so Open Box it is.

There’s a chance we inspected it but we probably just looked at the reason it was returned if there was one and if it wasn’t broken, we resealed the box and sold it as Open Box. If we have someone checking returns, they spent about 15 seconds verifying it makes noise and and isn’t on fire before sealing it and listing it as Open Box. If the person buying this Open Box item doesn’t like it, they can return it to us and we’ll give them their money back or exchange it for another spin of the Open Box Roulette Wheel. Most people will get what’s essentially a brand new product.”

Think about the person that keeps a pair of headphones for a year and then returns them. Imagine them in your mind. What they’re wearing. Who they are. Where they live. What they talk about. The lack of a soul and level of disordered personality that compels them to keep things for 364 days and then returning them.

There’s like maybe 100 of that person on earth. Most of them are probably on this subreddit but the chances you’re getting a headphone with a year of use is almost zero and if it appears that it has a year of use, return them. The odds you get a great deal on an almost perfect or entirely perfect pair of headphones is pretty high.

I almost never buy new if I can buy open box or even resold by a reputable reseller for anything. In the last five years, I have returned a total of seven items out hundreds of that weren’t acceptable for what I paid for them. Almost everything I bought was essentially new, maybe it had some damaged packaging or some very light cosmetic damage. I think I probably pay an average of 30% less per item across what I buy and sometimes a lot more. Amazon is the easiest place to do this by far. There’s no reason not to at least try on open box sales if you intend to keep the item and won’t need the OG packaging to be flawless. If you don’t like it, send it back.