Alright my iphone ear buds finally gave up the ghost on the left side so I decided to get a new pair the other day. I needed something with a mic in it for those times i need to switch to a call. When you’re in a lift hanging lights its dang handy!
Anyway I’ve heard good things about skull candy so I decided to buy a relatively cheap pair of buds and give them a whirl. I’m an audiophile and have a very critical ear so that is the review that you’re going to get.
First of all I’m pretty sure this is the product I bought and I was not impressed with the packaging. Kind of on the cheap side, but for $30 in an AT&T store I don’t expect all that much so moving on. The actual head phones came with a neat little storage back akin to what new sunglasses come in. Don’t know if I’ll be using them for the buds or wiping forehead grease off my lenses. I did not like the type of plastic used to coat the cable. It is very stiff and the way it’s wrapped in packaging I am pretty sure the end of my headphone cable will always look like a curly pig tail.
The ear buds come with 3 sizes of plastic buds. None of which feel right in my ears. Comfortableness of wearing on a scale of 1-10 10 being I don’t notice them is about a 3. I totally notice them in my ear canal, they place a good amount of pressure in my ears and they kind of hurt if i put them in to far. (yes I’ve worn other in ears, the UM1′s are awesome) The buds do not like to stay in my ears either, I guess they’re not making a stellar seal. Packaging and looks receive a 2
Now on to sound quality.
This is the interesting part because depending on which way you wear the buds you get a totally different sound out of them. I’ll rate this on two levels on both sides. Voice conversations and audio listening. The two ways to wear them are. traditional style and over the ear.
This places the cone in two different directions, the traditional style of wearing them points the cone into the ear canal but I think towards the wall of the ear. The result is a sound that is slightly brittle without a ton of low end. This was not what I was expecting to hear from these buds when i put them in after talking to a few people about them. If there is low end it comes across as a pop rather than a boom or a thump. Ineligibility is decent.
The over the ear places the cone into a down firing position which opens up the way the sound waves reach your ear drum giving it a more booming low end sound. I was surprised how different the sound was coming from the ear buds, but it muddied the sound up significantly and intelligibility dropped (depending on the music style).
Sound quality 1-10 (same scale as before) about a 5, and when you add in wear-ability it drops it back to a 3.5.
For phone calls I’ve made two now with the head phones in the over the ear configuration. This puts the mic under the chin but I have not received any complaints that you cant understand what I’m saying. There is not much audio feed back into my ear which I like (I hate hearing myself talk). Again depending on who the person is you’re talking to, female the voice is bright enough that it sounds great, a male voice is a little muddy. For Calls I give these about a 6 and wear-ability takes them down to a 4.
Over all these headphones receive a solid 3. They’re utilitarian at best and not for the audiophile or person with sensitive ears.
