Friday, April 13, 2012

Jabra Rhythm head-phones Product Review

I was given a set of these Jabra Rhythm headphones to try out. 

When i saw the packaging i was a little disappointed as there's nothing different from the many ear-bud style headphones you see hanging from racks in your electrical retailer of choice. On removing them from the packaging the first thing that struck me was the build quality of the jack plug and the adapter that enables it to work with Nokia and Sony phones. This was very impressive, made of metal and with a very solid/robust feel to it. On engaging the adapter, which i won't need as i am an iPhone user, there was a reassuringly solid fit.

The cable length is good and it has the style of cabling where the left ear cable is attached to the main one and shorter rather than a single cable that splits (like the standard iPhone headphones do). There is the microphone with button to play whatever is on your iPhone and a clip so that you can secure the cable from flapping about if you are using them to run or something more active. So far so good.

So what do they sound like?

I am an iPhone user, as i mentioned, and tend to listen mainly to podcasts, Talk Ultra, Marathon Talk, Guardian Football Weekly, The Game by The Times are a few that regularly flood my ears. I normally listen to these while i am out walking my dog. The problem i have been having is that to be able to hear anything through the iPhone earphones i am constantly pushing them deeper into my ear and this is with the volume already at full. Simply with normal background noise and spoken word podcasts they were not man enough for the job.

The Jabra Rhythm is a different story altogether. The ear bud fits snugly into the ear, it's not moving. I hit play (using the remote on the wire) and had to reduce the volume, this is unheard of. I then took them out (with the dog) and was really impressed with them. They have noise cancelling technology which just works. I didn't have to fiddlle with the buds in my ear or rewind the podcast to re-listen to something i had missed or even try and squeeze a few extra decibels out of my iPhone by pressing the increase volume button despite already being (and knowing that) it was at the max.

When I got home I experimented with the Jabra's playing some music. My comparison ear phones are not great as they are the out of the box iphone ones but the Jabra's performance is excellent. The sound quality was excellent, no distortion or tinny sounds and theiPhone  volume does not have to be at the max in order to hear the music. I tried a variety of music just to see and, again i'm no expert, but all types of music were handled equally well. Radiohead, Coldplay some instrumental stuff (Drive soundtrack) and even some chart rubbish that the kids listen to all sounfed, er great!

I have used them once for a call and they performed exactly as you would expect, i could hear the caller and they could hear me. I was outside and checked with the caller if there was a lot of background noise or anything and they confirmed there wasn't. 

All of which leaves me in the position of having a very nice set of ear phones that work as i want them to. They look like every other headphone (white), they sound great and block outside noise. Frankly they are what the iPhone ones should be but aren't.

Would i buy these? Definitely, for less than £20 they are excellent.