‘Headphones’ I’m fine with. ‘Earphones’ is acceptable. But ‘earbuds’? I don’t know. There’s just something about it.
Can anyone put their finger on it? Why should ‘earbuds’ be so unappealing?
Sennheiser specialise in ‘noise-cancelling’ headphones. That’s headphones that cancel noise. Seems a bit self-defeating really.
Of course I’m being flippant and needlessly stupid. What they actually do is cancel all noise other than the whatever they themselves are producing. They’re dual ear-defenders and headphones.
They’re going to make crossing the road even more hazardous than it already is. They’re going kill you when there’s a fire in your building. They’re going to make you seem like an ignorant person who’s too superior to stop and talk to their friends. Genius.
The press release is wilfully self-important, as press releases are wont to be. Here’s a highlight. Apparently, Sennheiser’s PXC 450 headphones feature a ‘high level of passive ambient noise attenuation thanks to circumaural ear pads’.
They also feature another ingenious mechanism to counteract that whole ‘not hearing cars’ thing I alluded to before. You can flick a switch to permit outside noise. The way this works is that the headphones activate tiny microphones on their exterior and transmit the sound through the ear bits. It’s only a short step from here to people wearing blindfolds with cameras on the outside and TVs on the inside so that they can see the world around them.
The reason for this painfully unnecessary innovation is so that the headphones can continue to filter out all non-essential noise, transmitting only the sound of your friend speaking or whatever. How exactly do they decide what’s essential and what’s non-essential? What happens if the headphones deem the sound of a snarling, escaped tiger ‘non-essential’?
I know I’ve previously said that I won’t mention the price of anything because of the international nature of the internet, but you’ll just have to excuse me this once.
Fifty quid! These headphones cost fifty quid! Think what that could get you down at Bargain Booze. All you’ll get from these is unwanted attention from the criminal elements of society. A headphone wire is a means of securing your headphones. These are asking for trouble.
Of course, being as they’re wireless, they need batteries. If you’re actually listening to stuff, those batteries will last five hours. If the headphones are on standby, they’ll last 60 hours. That’s 60 hours of battery life while doing nothing.
GEAR4 use two exclamation marks consecutively in their press release when they’re saying that the BluPhones are “the smallest, lightest and most practical Bluetooth headphones EVER designed!!” This smacks of desperation to me.
They’ve also called their product ‘BluPhones’ without a space and even though they’re not blue.
Verdict: None out of three. Or None out of ten, a hundred, or any number you can think of really.
Want to look like a complete idiot? Then why not try Boomers ear muffs?
Nobody wears ear muffs. Why? Because, as I said, they make you look like an idiot. These come in black or bright pink. Bright pink would, miraculously, make things even worse. Black would be the better option, because there’s the outside chance that you could pass them off as hair.
The manufacturers are clearly borderline demented. Here’s one of their sample exclamations: “A new dawn has arrived of ear comfort and functionality!”
Catchy. It’s not an exclamation that’s likely to get used as much as, say, “stop!” or “no!” is it?
MP3Gaze features portable media players from the simplest audio-only 128MB stick to the top-end all-singing, all-dancing video players, as well as headphones, docks and other related accessories. It is updated daily.
MP3 Gaze Author(s)
