Pros:
Fairly decent headphones for a very, very low price.
Easy to get a good fit with the included silicone ear tips.
Unique look to the earphones due to use of wood, metal, and silicone.
Inline microphone and remote with 3 buttons that works on Android.
Loads of bass.
Cons:
Frequency response on the low end leaves the large amounts of bass a little muddy
Other:
45° bend in the strain relief near the plug splits the difference between the 90° (traditional) and the 0° (modern).
The Short Answer:
If you were going to buy Koss’ “The Plug” spend the extra $5 on these and you’ll be far happier. If you were going to buy almost anything else with a microphone and inline remote these most likely provide better sound than anything around 21 price-point. If you want them as your primary music listening pair you may be disappointed by the clarity of the bass.
The Long Answer:
So my replacement AKG headphones (which were replacements for my the pack-in AKG headphones that came with my mobile device) gave out after about 4 months. I was looking for something that was wired, in-ear, had reasonable sound, an inline microphone, and an inline remote that would work with Android (even better if it had both the universal button and the volume buttons). My first choice for headphones in the $20-50 (the “decent enough sound and won’t break on you in 3 months” range), Sony, had reduced the number of wired headphones in this price range by quite a bit and the few left only had a singular, universal button. So I started poking around on Amazon.
This was suggested and so I figured that at just over $21 (at the time of purchase) wasn’t a horrible chance to take on something that had an inline microphone, 3 buttons on the wired remote, and would work properly with Android. I was mostly right.
First Impressions:
Out of the box the headphones felt pretty decent with its unusually heady coat of insulation on the main cable. The silicone ear tips fit snugly and were surprisingly firm (the barrel seems to be made to be a bit stiffer than most ear tips), yet comfortable. The jack end of the cable was a bit of an oddity to me—it had a 45° bend in it at the strain relief (the somewhat ugly, but very necessary collar of rubber near the jack housing; A.K.A. the part that tends to fail first on otherwise well-built Apple products). Normally I like the traditional 90° bends over the modern 0° bends (wire straight out of the jack) since the 90° bends sit more closely to the body of the device while 0° bends are better suited to devices that may require full extension of the cable or many cables of the type in close quarters such as amplifier cables, microphone cables, and RCA plugs). My problem with the modern 0° bends is that they were responsible for the death of the last two sets of earbuds that I owned as the straight out cable was just trouble waiting to happen as a cable sticking straight out will tend to be forced into a 90° bend whenever it’s plugged into a device and put into a pocket. That said the people at Symphonized seem to understand that people are going to use this model on mobile devices and so a 90° bend is probably not great for when the phone is held at arm’s length (selfie photos, video recording at concerts, etc), but will still get shoved into pockets and bags where a 0° bend would just get destroyed.
Audio (both earbuds and microphone):
My initial test for the headphones was on my mobile device (where they’d most often be used). They were a massive improvement over the less expensive AKGs! The high end was immediately clearer and the audio a good amount louder. Several mobile games that I play make extensive use of solid sound design and the one with a fully orchestrated soundtrack really showed off the mids and highs of these headphones. Also, there seemed to be a solid amount of bass that made instruments in the lower range stand out a bit more. However, the lower-mids to bass range felt a tad fuzzy, but I wasn’t sure if it was just my device or the headphones.
My second test was to make a call with them. One of the first things that the person receiving the call mentioned to me was that the call audio did seem a lot clearer (I hadn’t mentioned that I was using a new set of headphones). I’ve yet to test out the audio in a recording scenario, but I’ll update with those results once I do.
The third test was to plug these headphones into my computer. Instantly I could tell the difference between these headphones and the more expensive Bluetooth set that I normally use—the Symphonized NRG 3.0 was just better in most ways. I tested both on a few different songs—several orchestral pieces (which tend to have the highest dynamic range)—a few pieces from the ’60s (one being The Beatles’ “Penny Lane” since it has both rock and traditional instruments as well as ’60s style left-right separation), a few modern electronic pieces, and Free’s “All Right Now” (which has a plucked bass that will sound like more like a tuba when the bass isn’t as clear). Most of the orchestral pieces sounded amazing, “Penny Lane” sounded excellent (it’s very mids and highs heavy), and the electronic pieces sounded sufficiently thumping. However, on Free’s “All Right Now” the headphones sadly delivered what I had feared; a more tuba-like sound when faced with the bass. In fact the tuning and clarity of the low-end of these headphones reminded me a lot of Koss’ “The Plug” (which after looking it up have a similar frequency response of 16Hz-23kHz—the NRG 3.0 has a response of 18Hz-23kHz). Sadly these didn’t offer the low-end performance of my favourite Sony MDR-EX71SL (which had a frequency response of 6Hz-22kHz)—but the Sonys were also $9-15 more expensive and didn’t offer an inline microphone and an inline remote with volume controls.
Conclusion:
I came to these wanting something that could work as a wired headset for my Android device and competently play music and game audio. These deliver on that and at a very good price. However, if I had wanted these as my sole pair of headphones for music listening I might be disappointed with the lack of clarity on the low end—which may or may not be a concern to someone listening to music with more synthesized bass-lines (modern pop, modern dance-pop, and club-standard E.D.M.). If you were going to buy cheaper headphones buy these instead!
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