Sony MDR-EX71SLW : The Review

I've been purposefully holding out a review on these beauties because I wanted to spend an entire day using them at work. I received them from Amazon on Friday (bit of long delivery time...but I was in no real hurry for them)

What you get:

1 x Headphones
3 x Differently sized in-ear pieces
1 x Mp3 player soft pouch
1 x Ear-bud traveling protector
1 x Small extention cord (for MP3 players that do not have remotes as standard)

Styling:

Pictures I've found of these headphones do not do them justice. I expected them to be a lot bigger, but fortunately they are smaller and thinner then the standard iPod ones. They look a lot sexier as well...very discrete, with beautiful chrome detailing.

Comfort:

Arguably, this is just as, if not more important then the sound quality produced. As you might remember, I have a personal hatred to the standard iPod headphones. I pleased to say that these are an incredible improvement from them! After wearing them for roughly 7 hours, my ears feel no pain! The soft spongy design of the ear cups mean that they can adjust to fit any ear size. One thing I have discovered from this is that my left ear hole is smaller then my right one!!

Sound:

Crisp, clear and bassy. Those are the three words I'm choosing to sum up the sound quality. As the design fits snugly in your ear channel, you are fully exposed to a whole range of frequencies not covered by your standard earphones. For instance, having listened to Damien Rice - Older Chests dozens of times, I only realised today that there are very faint children whispers throughout the song. Needless to say I did attract some attention from colleagues at work when I was looking over my shoulder expecting to see a few kids!!
The best way I can describe the sound quality, is to push and to hold your existing earphones in. These earphones truly do make you feel "surrounded" by the music playing.

Things to note:

Noise cancellation :- Being in-ear design means that you are severely limited to what you can hear around you. Block your earholes and breath deeply, that's what it is like when all you have is the earphones on and no music playing! It's like you're in your own little world....

Volume : - Cranked up to the max, the earphones still sound awesome! However, it does becoming deafening...especially if you have your Pod uncapped. What's great is that you can now listen at half the volume of your standard earphones...maintaining the same level of loudness.

Earwax:- eewwww!! Unfortunately, the in-ear design acts like a cue-tip...so make sure you have thoroughly clean ears, otherwise you will embarrass yourself when you take them out to talk to someone - like myself :-(

Synopsis:

Just get them!

+nicks