Review: JAYS j-JAYS
September 2, 2009 by Beatweek · Leave a Comment
New in iProng Labs: a hands-on review of the new j-JAYS earbuds for iPod from JAYS, priced at $70…
review by Bill Palmer
iPod users who decide to invest in higher-quality third party earbuds have budgets that vary significantly in size, and in recognition of this, JAYS offers earbuds that range in price from $70 to $249. The company’s j-JAYS are the low end of the product line, at a price point where you know you’re not going to get the same audio quality you’d find at $200 or even $100, but you’re still entitled to have pretty high expectations for what you can get with your $70.
All told, the j-JAYS does pretty well on that front. Before you even fire up these earbuds for the first time, you’ll find that the package includes not only three different-sized pairs of rubber earbud tips but also a pair of foam tips (very rare for this price point), along with a zippered carrying pouch, an airplane adapter and headphone splitter (again, rare for this price point), and a cable extender (we’ll get to this in a moment).
As far as audio, the j-JAYS are impressive with a sound that’s crisp in both the higher and lower ranges. At $70 you’d expect them to sound almost as good as this category’s current dominator, Scosche’s $79 IDR600, and they do come close – but not quite close enough to justify not spending the extra ten bucks for the IDR600, which on most of the music I tested had a noticeably wider range than the j-JAYS.
About that cable extender: it would be a nice option if it were merely optional, but thanks to the fact that the cable built into the earbuds themselves so short as to be unlikely to reach your waist, the extender becomes a necessity – and an annoying one, as it makes the cabling so long that I could literally lay my iPhone on the floor while wearing the earbuds standing up. And yet without the extender my iPhone didn’t even reach to my pocket (higher priced JAYS earbuds suffer from the same bizarre design). In all, these are four star earbuds based on audio quality, which get bumped up to 4.5 stars due to the generous bundled items, but then loses the extra half star due to the cable length. But they do sound nice and crisp for their price.
Learn more about the j-JAYS at jays.se.
Review: Logitech S125i
August 25, 2009 by Beatweek · 2 Comments
New in iProng Labs: a hands-on review of the Portable Speaker S125i for iPod from Logitech, priced at $69…
review by Bill Palmer
The lower the price, the lower the expectations. I’ve learned over the years not to expect too much from dockable iPod stereo systems in this price range, particularly then they’re this tiny. By the time you get done building in the iPod connectivity, is there any money left over to include decent audio components that are small enough to fit? So I was pleasantly surprised when I fired up Logitech’s Portable Speaker S125i, which is no taller or deeper than an iPod nano, in that it actually sounds pretty decent.
The S125i vaguely resembles the eyes of a mosquito staring at you, and features a fairly simple design. The iPod dock is on top, while the power and volume buttons are on the front, along with a bass booster button. Without the booster, the S125i has hardly any bass at all, but with the booster turned on, the bass is quite noticeable. Quite synthetic-sounding as well, but that’s the way bass boosting technology works.
I found that noisy and heavy-sounding songs were really only enjoyable with the bass booster turned on, while gentler pop songs actually sounded better with the booster turned off. But I couldn’t find any type of music that wasn’t at least listenable in one mode or the other, which frankly, isn’t always the case at this price range.
Does the S125i sound better than Logitech’s other new offering, the $129-priced S315i? Of course not. Not even close. But by not being as ambitious, the S125i actually gets some things more right by default, such as including a real iPod docking port and having the volume buttons on the front. Although the S125i is listed as being only for the iPod and not the iPhone, I had no trouble using my iPhone beyond dismissing the iPhone’s annoying compatibility warning each time; I was expecting some kind of audio interference, if not from 3G then certainly from EDGE, but that turned out not the be the case. But, and this is a big but, your mileage may vary, as cellphone interference tends to be maddeningly random.
There’s no remote control, and the S125i runs on four AA batteries, a waste of time (the rechargeable AA route) or money (regular AA batteries) if you use the system on battery too frequently. The S125i’s primary value seems to be as a (very) small desktop system that you’d leave plugged in to an electrical outlet most of the time and take it around with you occasionally.
Assigning an accurate star rating to this product is just about impossible because there are too few dockable speaker systems in the $69 price range that are worth reviewing in the first place. But I can tell you two things about this product that should allow you to figure out its potential suitability for you. One is that it’s the best-sounding $69 dockable iPod speaker system I’ve ever heard. The other is that you’d be doing yourself a big favor by finding another $30 and getting something in the $99 price range.
That having been said, if $69 is the high end of your budget, and you’re looking for something small that charges your iPod (and unofficially your iPhone) while outputting decent-sounding audio with an optional bass kick and a AA battery option, the S125i turns out to be surprisingly recommendable.
Learn more about the S125i at Logitech.com or pre-order now at Amazon.com.
Review: Comply NR-10i for iPhone
When it was realized that soft rubber tips could be slid securely into the ear canal as opposed to traditional earbuds that merely sat beside the ear canal, listening to music through earbuds suddenly took a huge step forward in terms of audio quality and the ability to block out external noise. Hearing Components thinks it’s found the next breakthrough in earbuds, in the form of squishy foam that’s even softer and fits even more comfortably into your ear canal than rubber. And having spent the past week using their Comply NR-10i earbuds, I’m left to conclude that they’re right.
You squish the foam in your fingertips (much like you would with foam earplugs), insert them into your ears, and the foam immediately re-expands to fill your ear canal. In my experiences, the foam tips are better at blocking out external noise, and better at creating an intimate listening experience, than rubber-tip earbuds.
The letdown comes when you realize that the foam tips are the star of the show here; beyond the foam, the NR-10i is basically just standard fare. It sounds fine for its price, but even with the better noise-blocking and the more intimate feel, the NR-10i doesn’t quite produce the same overall level of audio quality as, for instance, the Ultimate Ears MetroFi 220 – which is priced ten dollars cheaper.
The cables on the NR-10i are thin, and the design is lightweight overall. One oddity is that the play/pause button is up around your chin, leaving you reaching around for a button whose exact location you can’t really see out of the corner of your eye.
Basically, these are 3.5 star earbuds that get upgraded to four stars due to the foam tips. A few other earbuds also come with foam tips (Westone 3, Ultimate Ears 700, etc), but not typically at the sub-$100 price point. If you’re wishing you could keep your current earbuds but switch to foam tips, you’re in luck – Hearing Components sells the foam tips for use with various third party earbuds for $15-$20. Based on my experiences using the foam replacement tips with some of my favorite earbuds, they’re worth their price.
Learn more at ComplyFoam.com
review by Bill Palmer
Review: JayBird Tiger Eyes
July 20, 2009 by Beatweek · 2 Comments
Most headphone companies offer the same set of earbuds for iPod and iPhone users, with the only difference being the in-line controls built into the latter and a modest price hike to go with it. But JayBird has gone in another direction entirely, as its two earbud products are substantially different beyond just the iPhone mic and button.
As previously reviewed, the company’s $99 Endorphin Rush earbuds for iPod are a full-on bassfest, with the bass so booming in relation to the treble that they’re likely to evoke love-it-or-hate-it reactions from anyone who tries them. But the Tiger Eyes for iPhone, in addition to having the iPhone-specific features, physically smaller buds, and a cheaper $89 price, also have a noticeably different sound to them.
Do the Tiger Eyes sound as crisp overall? Not quite, and nor would you expect them to, considering they’re less expensive and offer more hardware features. But their bass-to-treble ratio, while still probably still outside the mainstream, is less pronounced here than with the Endorphin Rush. That could be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your preferences, but I expect the Tiger Eyes will be the more widely appealing of the two as a result. You’ve still got to like a ton of bass (these are still more bass-heavy than the more mainstream bass-heavy options like the vibe ii and IDR600, for instance), but you don’t have to be a bass freak to love the Tiger Eyes.
But the Tiger Eyes have another trick up their sleeve, one that we see on far too few iPhone earbuds: in-line volume control. Even the relatively few earbuds that do offer it tend to do so in an overly bulky and clunky manner, but the Tiger Eyes nail it with a simple slider that hangs chest-high during use. Of course the slider isn’t controlling the iPhone’s actual volume, instead just reducing it by percentage, meaning you’ll have to start with the slider somewhere in the middle to be able to turn it up later.
For bass-loving iPhone users, the Tiger Eyes are a phenomenal sub-$100 option. But be warned: even though these are a little more mainstream than the Endorphin Rush, they’re still not your father’s bass-heavy earbuds, if you know what I mean.
Learn more at JayBirdGear.com
