WHERE THEY EXCEL
These work especially well for two genres, speed metal and classical music- two genres which you otherwise would not refer to in the same sentence.
These are great for speed metal as the bass attacks and decays so quickly that with these, blast (bass drum) beats sound like blast (bass drum) beats rather than a muddy, thudding rumble as they do with slower, warmer sound signatures.
They're great for classical or any acoustic music due to the forward and realistic presentation of the picking of string instruments.
These also work well for Home theater due to the different spacial presentations of sounds with vocals being in the foreground and non-vocals being in the background. This is perfect in scenes where the characters are speaking over a din of traffic noise or other non-vocal sounds.
KEEP THEM AT HOME
You can use them anywhere you want, but because their cable is thick, long and is terminated with a 1/4" jack, they aren't very portable. They also sound better out of a powerful stationary source component such as a stereo receiver or a computer soundcard than they do out of a smartphone- they sounded terrible out of my Samsung Galaxy S3. This is to say nothing of their open-air construction which gives you no sound isolation from your environment nor others in that environment any isolation from you. Last, they are so fragile that they wouldn't last long on the streets.
WHY I WANTED THEM
I got these because my only stay-at-home headphones were Sennheiser HD 558's which have a slow, warm, veiled sound which does poorly with speed metal.
COMPARISON WITH OTHER GRADOS
I was able to listen to these comparatively with the SR60's, SR80's, SR125's and SR325's.
I chose the SR225's because the SR60's and SR125's had noticeably less clear, less resolute sounds. The SR80's were so warm that they didn't sound like Grado at all but instead, they had the warm sound signature of my Sennheiser HD 558's. The SR325's had a sound which was more strident, more fatiguing than the SR225's in addition to their having a heavier physical (non-auditory) weight which caused them to be more uncomfortable than the SR225's. Anything above the SR325's was out of my price range, so I didn't even try them.
Also worth mentioning is that whereas the 60's and 80's had 1/8" jacks with a snap-on 1/4" adapter, the 125's and above came with a 1/4" jack. This is relevant as the 1/8" jack with a 1/4" adapter is fragile and if stepped on, probably will break and will have to be replaced whereas the latter is a lot more sturdy.
i tried sr325e and it was to bright for me