Sorry for those who tuned in on the 23rd May and didn’t receive any new posts… because I marked it as the 23rd on my calendar, but I scheduled it for the 25th! Well, manual is the way to go here. Depending on how you want to look at it, this post is either one day late or one day early. Sorry!
Let’s start the post.
I previously used a pair of earphones that I got and they worked pretty well for about 1.5 years or so until they went whack on me. By whack, I mean that even the slightest movement would make the music stop playing (inside wiring issues??), weird voice control would be triggered, and the controls stopped working (couldn’t start/stop/pause/skip). Basically, they were driving me insane because I couldn’t even enjoy my music in peace!
Because I had a pretty good experience with beats solo HD headphones by Dr. Dre, I figured I’d run with something that I was familiar with and somewhat trusted. I know some people don’t like too much bass, but I’m a bass kind of person.
At first I was a bit hesitant as these retail for $149.95AUD, and I’ve had bad past experiences with earphones losing their cool after a year or so. Let’s hope this is not the case.
There are quite a few colours to choose from and I purchased from the Apple store. They only had the basic colours in stock (white, red, black, grey) and I chose to go with the grey/ silver pair. They seemed to be the last ones they had, but I’m not complaining because I think the other three were not so nice. I mean, I do have the white headphones, but I’m not fussed about matching it up, and I don’t want a bright red cable all the time.
These images were taken when I unwrapped these earphones for the first time, so everything is new to me as it is to you.
As usual, the box is solid and the packaging is well thought-out. I have a suspicion that most of the money you pay goes into the packaging and advertising 
Nothing new, but I guess you can’t help it if that is the case.
Although not pictured, the earphones have a little ring that you can push up and down so you can control how far apart the earphones are/ lock the cables right under the chin.
These are the earphones in their default state. At first I thought that I could live with the ear buds, but then I decided that they weren’t the right size and were a bit on the large side so I decided to swap them for something else.
This part is under where the earphones sit. There is a little tab that you pull and lift up. As you can see, there are 2 different pouches available.
The pouch on the bottom can be used to store your earphones on the go and contains a clip inside, if you need to clip your cable onto your shirt or whatever.
The top pouch contains 3 other types of ear buds you can exchange the default ones with. If you consider the default ones to be medium sized, there’s a small, large and what I call “weird”. I tried to use the smallest size but they were a bit on the small side… air was coming in from the sides so I got a lot of noise and my music sounded like it was being played in an empty hall. In the end I settled for the “weird” ones because surprisingly, they were the best fit. I could have stayed with the medium but on the long term it would have been annoying since they would slowly pop out over time.
Another thing to note is that the rubber used for these ear buds aren’t very soft or smooth – in fact, I don’t think it’s very good quality in the respect that they would not be all that comfortable. They’re okay, but not as good as the crappy ones I was using before (!!).
The cable is kind of strange as well. It’s different to any other cable I’ve seen and the best way to describe it is flat spaghetti. Still, feels somewhat comfortable but I think it will probably break and crack easily since it’s thin. I already have a crack and I didn’t inflict that – it was from the packaging when I opened the box. I’m not sure if I should go back and exchange them since it looks like a manufacturing fault, but I can’t really be bothered at this stage.
There is a crapload of advertising. One sticker, a catalogue, a warranty thing and a user manual. I can’t imagine where I could possibly use the sticker.
See that crack on the cable?! Well to be accurate it’s not really a crack, more like a super deep dent. It seems to appear more than once, so I guess that’s a design issue with a flat spaghetti pasta cable or whatever you want to call it. I haven’t even started using it and it seems like it just imploded on itself or something. AND THOSE WEIRD FLIMSY EAR BUDS.
Who knows, by the time I publish this post I would be using these and not caring about the crack because I’m not the type to exchange things.
For the record though, the controls work great – start/pause/stop, volume up and down. Skipping is slightly difficult, but bearable. The sound is also good and there are no issues there. Probably the worst thing about these is that flat cable (though it does take up less volume), and how it likes to collect dust (same material as the ear buds). Otherwise, these are pretty lightweight and come in a seemingly luxurious box.
These are probably the cheapest earphones by Dr. Dre – there are the tours ($200) and others. I really wanted the collaboration with Alexander Wang, but as you can probably guess, we never have anything good here in Australia, and when we do, it’s gone in a flash. These shall suffice.
Now I don’t have stupid earphones going whack on me!
Next post will be on 28th May.
MIKETSU MUSE 