“Apple’s original Earbuds are an icon of mobile technology… The rounded shape was comfortable enough, but the buds could easily fall out of an ear while you were running, and they did little to block out noise around you,” Olivarez-Giles reports. “Not so with the EarPods, which look and sound far better than their predecessors… The EarPods have a sleek, retro-futuristic cool that evokes Arne Jacobsen‘s Egg chairs. They’d look at home floating next to Eve, the hovering robot in Wall-E. And the improvements to sound quality are especially striking, especially considering the fact that these are $29 headphones (or free with new iPods and iPhones) with drivers smaller than a dime. The EarPods offer a level of richness and detail that I’d usually associate with mid-range and high-range in-ear headphones such as $100-ish sets from Beats, Aiaiai and Shure.”
Olivarez-Giles reports, “I also noticed that the design allows for a comfortable level of isolation. The EarPods aren’t noise-canceling by any means, but they do a good job of blocking out background noise without the discomfort that can come from buds that completely seal off the ear canal… I went for a short run with the EarPods in place, and they didn’t slip out or irritate me at all. Wearing the EarPods for a few hours during the work day was also no bother… Apple says it spent three years designing its EarPods, with more than 124 different prototypes tested out on more than 600 people. Given how much better the EarPods are than EarBuds, there’s no question that the effort was well worth it.”
Much more in the full review here.
Related article:
Meet the all-new Apple EarPods (with video) – September 13, 2012
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