I’m not an audiophile, far from it. I’m not sure if I could tell the difference between a £100 pair of headphones and a £200 pair. And just to put things in perspective for you: up until recently I used the headphones that shipped with the iPhone. And on top of that, I didn’t think they actually sounded all that bad.
That was the main reason for why I never upgraded to some Dr Dre Beats or fancy Sennheisers. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But eventually, I ran my original iPhone headphones into the ground. First, the remote on the chord stopped working, then only the left headphone was operational and surprisingly, I managed to put up with it for quite a while without too many issues. But the nail in the coffin was when my trip to Italy in the Easter for a week was coming up. There was no way, that I was sitting on a plane and bus for hours and only having one operational headphone.
It was time for action. I didn’t have a big budget, but I wanted an upgrade from the bog standard headphones, primarily in noise isolation (Read: sitting on a noisy plane with even noisier people is not my idea of fun) and better build quality. I treat my headphones very roughly. I fall asleep listening to them and often use them to their limits.
In the end, after reading a lot of folks’ opinions on various headphones I settled on the Apple In-Ear Headphones. Over the course of this review, I’ll discuss various elements of the headphones and where they fail and succeed. But first, a little context:
For years, Apple have been trying to create a good set of headphones for use on iPods and they haven’t done very well at it. After all, the current shipping headphones you get with an iPod or iPhone aren’t particularly stellar and Apple’s previous attempts at creating a slightly more impressive set of headphones were mediocre.
So, as far as most people were concerned, Apple had to get this right, very right or they might have turned into another dinosaur product like the iPod Hi-Fi.
Packaging
Apple is very good with packaging. They manage to make a product look great, even before you’ve opened the box. And it’s obvious that they’ve made an impact on the industry. Because everyone is following suit. Look at the Pre for instance, very iPhone-esque.
In the case of the in-ear headphones, Apple has kept up the top notch design for their packaging, at least when you get into it. Unfortunately, because the product is sold on shelves rather than locked away behind the counter, it’s been made with some super strong plastic packaging to envelope the box to stop thieves (I presume).
It took me a long, long time to get into the things, heavy duty scissors and a lot of brute force.
However once I was in, it was easy to admire the simplicity and usefulness of the package’s design. The headphone are stored in what Apple have called a ‘travel case’. Which really isn’t one; instead it’s an object to wrap the headphone around with a cover. There is also a capsule that contains the varying sizes of earbuds which is very well designed offering easy storage and access.
Design
The earbuds are made from a combination of plastic, metal and rubber based cabling which as a combination give it a real space age look and feel. The headphone cords are made of the same – rubber like – material as the iPhone’s which are designed to stop tangling. In my experience though, this has not been the case.
If I put the headphones in my jeans’ pocket for a while, I find that when it become time to pull them out, they’re already tangled and take a good couple of minutes to untangle. Yes. It does take me that long. The cause? surprisingly enough, the new material, though designed to stop tangles in the first place, they don’t make it easy when the cables inevitably do become tangled. The wires stick together and cause a lot of friction when being pulled along another wire.
Replacing the actual earbuds themselves are very easy, which does have it’s disadvantages (I’ll go into that later on). All one has to do to replace the earbuds is pull them off and slide on a new pair. I’ve never changed them, so I don’t understand why they don’t create a mechanism that requires a little more thought by the user but alleviates them popping off every time some force is applied to the cables.
Remote & Mic
The in-ear headphones ship with a remote and mic attached to the right earbud cabling. The remote as well as enabling music to be paused, played, rewinded and fast forwarded also acts as a handsfree mic. There are also volume controls, which I have a problem with.
Officially, these headphones are not, for some strange reason, supported officially by the iPhone. 
All of the features of the remote work perfectly, apart from the volume controls. Why? They work perfectly with the iPod Touch, don’t they?
One final nitpick I have about the remote and mic is the placement of it. It’s uncomfortably high up on the cable. This means that one has to raise their arm up to their face when they want to change song. I understand that it was put there to achieve better sound quality, but I would sacrifice that to have it placed lower down in a more convenient location. I use the device far more often as a remote than a microphone.
Apart from those two nagging issues, I’ve found the microphone to be of a very high quality and easily audible. The design and layout of the remote is perfect and easy to use without looking at. Moreover, the clicking conventions (i.e one click to play/pause) are seamless and easy to get the hang of.
Sound
I’d like to reiterate quickly, that I’m by no means an audiophile, so if necessary, take the following few paragraphs with a grain of salt. The best thing you can do is go down to a store and see if you can test them.
From my experiences, the headphones on the whole sounded great when listening to music, podcasts and the odd audiobook. There was a good range of sound and as long as the volume was kept at a reasonable level I heard no distortion created by the headphones. However, there was very little bass from the headphones. It seems that even with two audio drivers – a tweeter and a woofer – there was just not enough base on music.
Though the headphones don’t seem to employ any specific noise isolation technology, the tight seal they create around the ear managed the stop a large amount of sound from the outside world effecting you. That said, for the money, I think the sound quality on the whole is fair. Just watch out if you want to listen to some more bassy songs.
Comfort
It doesn’t matter how good headphone sound, if you can’t keep them in your ears and they feel uncomfortable, your listening experience is going to be hampered. Interestingly, Apple have designed the in-ear headphones to work for both within the ear, but also just resting on the ear – in a similar fashion to the standard iPod headphones.
My initial instinct, at first, was to use them as if they were normal iPhone headphones and that felt fine. But I soon realized that for the best comfort and listening experience, digging them into my ears was the best option. The earbuds fit snuggly into both ears fine with the medium earbuds, but as I mentioned earlier, they do ship with a smaller and larger size for varying ears.
One issue, that I alluded to earlier, is however, the problem that if I accidently tug on the cords hard enough, the actual headphones will come out, but the earbuds will stay in your ears.
Very, very frustrating and on the odd occasion – embarrassing when you don’t realize that the earbuds are still in your ears. Yeah, it happened.
I have come very close, on several occasions to loosing the earbuds – they’re tiny – and very hard to find when dropped.
Durability
I’m not going to lie. The build quality sucks. It only took a couple of weeks before the grey rubber that protected the connection between the headphone and the wire became loose – on both sides. Now, it just slides around on the wire having revealed an ugly, black piece of plastic.
Furthermore, I made the mistake of leaving the earbuds out in the open and not stored away for a while. When I returned I found that both of the earbuds had picked up an incredible amount of fluff and dust. However, it was easy to clean it off as the earbuds come off so easily (both accidently and on purpose).
I have yet to have any audio failures apart from the odd occasion when the remote suddenly stops working for a while and then starts working later on in the day.
Price
I originally purchased them after Ryan Block posted positive thoughts on the headphones saying:
I think Apple’s got something good on their hands here. These headphones sound out of their league for headphones under $100, especially considering most dual-driver headphones start at a couple hundred dollars and go up from there.
For all the small, and sometimes frustrating problems I’ve had with the Apple In-Ear Headphones, at the end of the day. They sound good, are comfortable and are available for a fair price. What more can one ask for?
