Never seen before design, slick to hold, nice to touch, comfortable, a nice upgrade from the previous generation Apple Earphones with Remote and Mic. My love and hate about Apple EarPods.

Bought this little sucker with the Switch99 lucky draws voucher during Switch WORLD2012 event. It is a RM100 cash voucher, added RM9 to bring another new Apple accessory home.

EarPods

Apple introduces EarPods with Remote and Mic on September 2012 during the Apple Special Event. Along with this unique EarPod, Apple announces iPhone 5, iPod Touch and iPod Nano at the event.

Apple’s Highlights

• Designed by Apple
• Deeper, richer bass tones
• Greater protection from sweat and water
• Control music and video playback
• Answer and end calls

You can also use EarPods as a handsfree/remote camera trigger for iPhone running iOS 5 and above. You can press the plus “+” or minus “-” sign to take pictures remotely.

Design

It’s a nice name for uniquely designed earphone. I Like it before I even touch it, not sure if it was that Apple took three years to do it or that I think this was designed for the future. Maybe it’s the fact the design look like a spacecraft. I do however recommend you to try playing spaceship with it, make special effect jet engine sound with your mouth and imaging you flying it. Woot! Cool right?

Shiny white plastic special molded shape and has no soft rubber material attached to the unit. Look pretty slick but not a good friend of an oily face user, like me. For those of us who has an oily face, we, by god bless, will make this unit shinier. I don’t recommend greasy EarPods borrowing business here, you don’t want to do that to your girl friend.

I have never tried it, but I think EarPods is good for use during walking. For security reason I do not encourage the habit of listening to music while walking alone. You become the disaster time bomb waiting to happen.

I tried the EarPods during my runs and it falls off and I hate the wire swinging around, too much distraction.

EarPods a very nice design for casual listening.

Packaging

I love the Apple product packaging. I just love to keep them with me even though I know I’ll let it lying around. I don’t have a reason to throw away Apple beautiful packaging such as this.

EarPods definitely has a very nice packaging. The EarPod container shaped like an iOS app icon, white plastic color as the base holder and crystal clear plastic as a top cover. Then you have this paper tray with EarPods graphic and product information with transparent plastic holder to house the whole package for merchant display. I mean the packaging makes you want to bring home this sucker. Period.

Sound Quality

I have to be honest that this sucker sound better than the previous Apple earbuds. “Nice” is the word I’ll use, I can’t say that this is an insanely great earphone. I like the fact that you can hear deeper bass better (low frequency) and because of the unique design, you hear more details slightly better. The funny spaceship design seat the earbuds in my ear nicely and I was able to enjoy the music without having the earbuds falling as I move around. I shake my head, then give my head a few spins and EarPods still stick! Really a good sucker.

If I were to compare to the many Sony earbuds I have used, I’d say Apple EarPods was no way come near to the quality sounds of bass that of Sony earphone which I came to love for many years. Sony earphones have always been my choice and my preferred great sounding bass earphones.

EarPods gives better experience listening to podcasts, YouTube or motivational audio where low frequency or a good sounding bass is not the important factor. EarPods speaker gives you a very good mid and high range sounds.

To me EarPods doesn’t seem to be giving the best punch, I felt the speaker somewhat underpowered during my use with my MacBook, iPad 2, iPhone 4 and iPhone 5. Sometime I think the EarPods can not hold the lower frequency and the sub-bass sounding flat and the vibration seem like almost broken the speaker cone.

However EarPods do maintain what I consider high standard speaker. I normally test an earphone by cranking the volume up to about 60-70% and I hold the earphone 30-60 centimeter away from me and see if I can spot the music playing.

If I can hear from that far, to me that’s a bad and a low quality speaker earphone. On a long term use you would likely to blow your eardrums off and FYI no one wants to know what you’re playing while you boarding the public transport. I find high pitch/ high frequency leak from headphone or earphone rather annoying.

Thoughts

Apple customers benefited from the new EarPods in many levels, this is by far the best premium Apple design earbuds in the history of the company. It is free for iPhone and iPod customer and it is affordable if you wish to buy.

However, If you want a pro experience, get Apple In-Ear Headphones with Remote and Mic or other high end brand. Otherwise EarPods would probably do just fine for many people. Great design to show off and a nice casual music listening for enjoyment.

I love the EarPods but I wish I didn’t buy it. I now have 2 EarPods sitting in the drybox doing nothing after purchasing an iPhone 5 few day after I bought this sucker.

You can get yours online at official Apple Store Malaysia or by visiting your local Apple Premium Reseller. I recommend Switch Kuching for Kuchingite.

Price: RM109