I've been getting very frustrated with my headphone purchases in the past 18 months or so as it seems these things are built to fail after a certain amount of time and one pair that I bought was broken right when they arrived. Thankfully the company accepted them back and issued a refund in such a fast pace that there is no way they actually checked them. I think the company realizes that a certain amount of their stuff is going to be defective and then just issue refunds no matter what you tell them.
My major displeasure has been with a company called Soundcore, which is a mid-range company that is clearly trying to copy the higher end ones like Apple, Samsung, and Beats. I guess that just like they say "you get what you pay for" but I am not the kind of person that is going to spend hundreds of dollars on headphones, no matter how good of quality they claim to be.
My beef with my latest (and last ever) round of Soundcore headphones was the battery life and how they hijacked their own user interface app to be one where they force you to sit through advertisements just to access the settings... for a product that you paid full price for. Screw that... I'm out.
They also would run out of juice regularly mid-run and while I still had one that was active, it is really annoying to go from stereo to mono just about the time you are really getting into the groove.
Now, i am not going to lie. I knew that this was going to be Chinese crap and therefore didn't have high hopes for them. They, as far as I can tell, don't even have a company name and are just generic sport headphones. Searching the back of the same box reveals zero company information.
The included book doesn't offer any better information so I can only presume these are mass produced in some factory where they are well aware that they are making cheap copies of a real item. This was about $20 so yeah, I wan't expecting the world.
At least the product inside the box was exactly what I was expecting it to be.
I was happy that the unit came almost fully charged and it was nice that it was USB-C as well. It annoys me to no end when anything arrives with a connectamagoo of any other sort. There's just no need for that anymore in my opinion.
I took them out for a literal test run and at first was extremely impressed. Despite being cheap the sound-cancelling on these things was much better than on my far more expensive SoundCore ones.
The sound was also louder, which was expected, and the only downside would be that the sound clarity wasn't as good and this was also expected. It wasn't "tinny" but it just wasn't as "full" which I know means nothing but just imagine loud but not as nice sounding and that is what is going on with these new headphones.
This is all good stuff at this point though and I took off on my run quite pleased.... at first.
The downsides of this kind of headphone is that the control module/battery lies in a place where you have two choices: it can bounce up and down on your collar-bone or you can put it under your shirt. I put it under my shirt and this worked swimmingly for a bit until I became, as I tend to, extremely sweaty.
once this portion of the fun began my sweat (I am presuming) leaked into the controls and started changing the headphone output settings as well as pausing and unpausing the song every 20 seconds or so. As I went further this started happening even more frequently.
So this is going to be really annoying because I can't do anything about how much I sweat, that is just the way that I am. The bouncing on my collarbone isn't really painful, it is just annoying and there really isn't anything I can do about that. I'm not going to be able to tuck it under my shirt because while it is nearly spring here now, it is only going to get hotter so I am going to get even more sweaty in future runs.
The product was advertised as being "water and sweat resistant" but when you think about this, what does that statement actually mean? A piece of toilet paper is "water resistant" but that is a far cry from "waterproof."
I'm not going to give up on these though because the very long battery life, the fact that it has a visual indicator of how much battery remains, and the improved sound and noise-cancellation are a big plus.
I suppose I will use these until I either end up with a bruise on my collarbone or destroy them with sweat.
I don't even know what I would attempt to purchase next. Perhaps those over ear headphones with a strap the goes behind your head that has extra battery in it.
I will not buy a high end version of headphones ever because I am just not that kind of person. I once bought really expensive eyeglasses thinking that this would make all the difference and it absolutely did not.
however, if there is someone out there that can genuinely state that a certain higher end set of headphones are TRULY better and not just some sort of brand loyalty hogwash, I would appreciate you letting me know about it.
I can't really tell you what brand these are because as the pictures show, they don't have one.
