KEY POINTS:
I've never been a big fan of ear bud headphones, especially the ones that require you to stick molded bits of rubber right up into your ears to cut out background noise. I'd rather wear my Sennheiser EH-250 head phones which provide decent sound. The problem is that
they are a little on the bulky side if you're walking around town.
Most of my devices don't support Bluetooth without a clunky adapter and definitely not stereo Bluetooth, so ear buds it is for music listening on the move. I ditched the pair that came with my iPod Nano as I've ditched virtually every factory set of ear buds that has come with an mp3 player or phone. But what set of ear buds are going to provide the right balance of comfort, good sound and decent design?
CNet's top ear bud picks features an unusual line up of brands, most of which I've never heard of. For the last few weeks I've been trying Bose's new "in-ear headphones" ($149). Yep, they too have the squishy, molded bits of rubber but I'm slowly getting used to them. The Bose ear buds deliver pretty good sound, as good as you could expect for ear buds on low notes, nice and crisp on the high frequencies. It's no surprise the Bose representatives chose to play me some nice clean-sounding jazz and classical when I first tried out the ear buds, which are not noise-cancelling.
As is the case with most ear buds you get these days, the Bose pair come with three different sizes of silicon tip to make sure you have an option comfortable to your ear size. They're a nice little set, though I'm not too keen on the two-toned white and black cable and the chunky little box attached to the headphone plug.
Local company Phitek has also just started selling a set of ear buds ($179) under its Blackbox brand. Phitek has done well lately with its noise cancellation technology, which it contributes to the products of other headphone makers. The so-called "Active Noise Rejection" that Phitek has developed features in a new set of US$200 headphones from Audio Technica, which received some decent write-ups in Wired and Sound and Vision magazines.
The Blackbox ear buds are noise cancelling and have a slightly different tip design to the Bose ear buds. The Backbox C14 set uses one AAA battery to power the noise cancellation technology. I haven't tried them yet, but Blackbox's first product, the M14 noise-cancelling headphones ($379) are rather nice, if expensive. I hope they take off, as it would be nice to have a good Kiwi consumer electronics brand to pick up where Navman left off.
Do you prefer ear buds or headphones? Any hot picks? Anyone tried Blackbox headphones or ear buds?