OnLife

Tune of the week: Broken Social Scene – 7/4 (Shoreline)

Monday / Sunshine / Hard drive upgrades.

Tune of the week: Death Cab for Cutie – Company Calls

Optimistic, warm and infectious. Magic.

Review: Griffin ‘Tunebuds Mobile’ for iPhone

When I had an iPhone previously, before it was stolen and I had to get another, I got to the unfortunate point where I’d worn out the standard white headset that came with it. Had these been standard white Apple headphones, that would have been more of a blessing than a pain – because let’s face it, the supplied headphones are crap-o. The range of sound is apalling, and the horrendous noise leakage (which if you’ve ever traveled on public transport you’ll know all too well) is unparalleled.

In spite of improvements, the set that ship with the iPhone are not much better. However, they’re worth putting up with intially as they include an in-line remote and mic, for using as a handsfree set and controlling music playback – play and pause with a single tap, double tap for skip track and triple tap for previous track. These are the features that made me think I should just put up with them and not look into a better solution.

However, Griffin have released one – an update to their ‘Earthumps’ (now known as ‘Tunebuds’) called ‘Tunebuds Mobile’ (pictured above). These headphones promise a lot for a low price, and over the last few days I’ve been giving them a run through.

Starting with the package arriving: shipped in an attractive non-blister packed case (always wins bonus points for not having to hunt for a pair of scissors!). The Tunebuds Mobile come with a small zipped carry-case which is ideal for pocketing them alongside your iPhone and avoiding them becoming damaged. They also ship with three sizes of earbud mould, with the medium size already on the headphones. Removing these and changing to the smaller size was a better fit for my own lugs: your mileage may vary.

The construction of these earphones is great. Having been used to the rubber texture of the Apple headset’s wires that get so frequently tangled, the cables for these are sheathed in braided nylon. This means, amazingly enough, no tangles except the ones you put in intentionally. They’re more robust as a result. The earpieces themselves have no unnecessary decoration, which I like.

The audio jack is designed with the iPhone in mind, and will even fit the first generation iPhone with its annoying recessed audio port. The inline remote is where the headset loses points somewhat against the Apple set: the Apple remote is beautifully slim, and can be squeezed from either side, like one large button: the Griffin remote is slightly, though not problematically, harder to trigger. This is easily adapted to, and where it loses points, it also gains them: the in-built mic, according to my tests, performs better than the standard Apple headset for hands-free operation. Other reviews have complained about the size of the remote on the cable – it’s tiny, barely bigger than the apple remote in all except width, and even then it’s not tugging on my earlobes listing my head to one side, so I think this might have been too anal an observation.

The noise isolation is an odd one to get used to, as these in-ear headphones are close to ‘in-ear’ than the standard set: talking with both earphones in weirds me out as I worry that I’m shouting, so I take one out. This is also great as it means they’re brilliant at shutting out the noise of other iPod-weilding music fans on the way to work.

Audio quality is certainly better than the Apple set: it’s not winning any audiophile awards, but there is far greater bass performance and rich lows to be had from these headphones. The mid to upper-mid range frequencies are somewhat lacking, but this is more than made up for by the overall superior sound. The only major fault I can find with the Tunebuds mobile is that the treble performance is like having a wind up tin monkey on your shoulder clapping away with a pair of thin crash cymbals every time your drummer of choice decides to let rip at his own: abrasive, tinny sounds piercing through your skull like a straw through a slush puppy. However, you bought these headphones because you’re using them with an iPhone, iPod touch or similar supported model, right? Well, be a big boy and go into ‘Settings’ on your home screen and select ‘iPod’, go to ‘EQ’ and try ‘Treble Reducer’. Aaaaaah.

It’s unfortunate Griffin couldn’t run these past a test group whose bleeding ears would have advised about the treble problems: but a little EQ adjustment never hurt anyone, and with this in place they almightily kick the ass of the standard micky mouse set supplied with the phone.

Noise leakage is practically zero: the folk on the bus will thank you.

Summary: Great price, great build quality (no more tangles!) and with a little EQ adjustment a greatly improved sound over the standard Apple headphones supplied, without losing any of the functionality.

I bought from: i2020.co.uk for a meager £15.67 delivered. Do your ears a favour.