I recently had the sad experience of my favourite "necklace" type earbuds, a no-name brand from the Reject Shop.
If you enjoy podcasts and music while you work without disturbing co-workers (or one's wife, which is the more important motivation for me - we both have a right to our own soundscapes) then earbuds are the way to go.
Background
I don't need hi-fi for podcasts, just endurance and comfort. And all we have in town are Big W and K-Mart. Oh yes - we also have a Harvey Norman electronics shop and a Jaycar agent but HN are invariably the same things rebadged but overpriced, while Jaycar is an agency and doesn't have a great range of budget earbuds. I'd bought a set of earbuds connected with a necklace style cable that had a small control pad inline, made with skinny flat cables that - after a few years, mind you - had finally broken the wires inside and stopped working.
The Reject Shop no longer had those necklace-connected sets of earbuds, which is a drawback of shopping at such budget outlets - their product lines appear and then disappear, and this brand ("Sound Republic" I think) had been replaced by something other range - that had no necklace earbuds. Big W has a house brand "Laser" and K-Mart has their "Anko" brand, which is a small step up from Reject Store, so I bought the cheapest necklace set at Big W, and then had to buy the equivalent at K-Mart.
History
We both have normal individual earbud sets, hers is Anko; mine, whatever brand Reject Shop has been flogging recently. I hate the earbuds because due to carpal tunnel syndrome I have low sensation in my finger and I keep dropping them and having to go hunting for them. The worse issue is that my set lasts only between 120 and 180 minutes before needing to go back in the case for quite a while to recharge. Pah! For dilettantes! I listen for hours a day and want the audio to last for phone calls too.
The Anko separate buds last significantly longer and sound better, according to both of our evaluations.
But I wanted to go back to the more familiar (and to me, more useable) necklace buds, and pretty much any would do. (Except not, as I found out...) Here's a picture I grafted together out of commercial images online. They're not the exact models I got but illustrative of the type.
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| These are for illustrative purposes only and not the actual earbuds I purchased. |
Help me with the cost of them, use the image below to make a donation. I rely on donations to keep things paid up.
Laser
The Laser set took hours to charge, being supplied with 0% charge. That alone made me a bit wary of them because discharged - and supposedly new - lithium batteries means they've already been discharged beyond their lower limit and that makes the chemistry suspect to me.
But I charged it and then tried to connect the set. For the first five attempts I tried their connection method, then tried a desperation measure I'd used once before, pressing the power/connect/select button four times in quick succession after the earbuds announced "Connecting..."
That worked. Sort of. The phone connected to the earbud set. And then a few seconds later, disconnected. After trying that two more times, I gave up on the set. The +/- buttons would seem to have worked as volume buttons first, and skip forward/back second, I'm used to the skip function being similar to older BT speakers because once the volume's set you hardly need to alter it.
The earbuds have magnets to click them together when not in use. The cost was ten dollars.
Manifest: Included the necklace earbuds with the familiar little control pad inline in the necklace, a charging cable, and a (truly execrable) User Manual.
Pros: It cost ten dollars. That was five dollars cheaper than the Sound Republic set had cost me two years earlier.
Cons: It had a suspect battery and didn't connect properly nor hold a connection. Therefore nothing else could be evaluated.
Anko
The Anko earbud set had 90% charge right from the outset, it paired first time, and was fiddly to get into my ears because of the weird earhooks. The necklace cord was a trifle short for my liking. The sound isn't particularly crisp but adequate.
All in all a trouble-free and reasonable experience. The only other odd experience was that it didn't have an inline control pad, the controls are on the right-hand earpiece. There is no power LED.
The buttons I'd have liked to use as skip + / - buttons work as volume buttons first and have to be held for a few seconds to work as skip buttons. Comes down to personal preference I guess. They cost fifteen dollars.
Manifest: Included the necklace earbuds with the controls in the Rh earpiecece, the earpieces have an over-ear hook, and there's a charging cable, several more earbud earpiece inserts to suit your ears, and a reasonable User Manual.
Cons: Earhooks aren't of the best design, necklace cord is a trifle shorter than I'd have liked, the skip function. And a power LED would definitely have been worth having.
That's it. If I'd had my druthers, I'd have bought another set of Sound Republic earbuds because they lasted so well and had decent battery life. But life isn't always perfect.
Sound Republic
Not a review. Sort of.
These cost about fifteen bucks a few years ago and have a flat thin ribbon cable connecting them and the control pad, sounded passably good for the price, and the battery lasted all day for me, right up until the thin cable finally flexed through. But that took two years of regular use.
As I recall they came with the inevitable badly written manual, a charging cord, and not much else. They may have had a set of silicone ear inserts.
Proving that sometimes a cheap no-name item can be pretty good. I'm going to try some microsurgery to get them going again.
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