Today I went to church in Birmingham; the Apple store. Whilst there I worshipped the cult of Apple by purchasing the new Apple In-Ear Headphones. I have had my eye on these every since they came to my attention a couple of months ago. Dual driver headphones for £54 and what's more, mic and controls for iPhone. Sounds too good to be true right?
What's in the box? You get the headphones in a triangular protective case and a small pill-like capsule containing the large and small silicon covers. However no replacement covers are supplied. Further hidden away in the box you will find a pair of replacement mesh caps for when/if your old ones became too dirty to clean. It's nice to know that both the silicon covers and mesh caps can be removed and cleaned. Mesh's present in ear canal headphones often become dirty and cleaning them is nigh on impossible unless unless of course you can remove them.
First impressions? Well before even putting them in my ears I was impressed. Not the sound quality of course but the build quality. These things are small. In fact they are the smallest pair of in-ear headphones I am yet to see. Much smaller than the CX500's and nicer looking to boot. For their size they are surpassingly weighty. When it come to speakers and rocks, being heavy generally means your getting something good. Nobody wants lightweight rocks after all. Seriously though, quality audio equipment usually has quality magnets with quality weight. The build quality of the CX500's seemed a little flimsy. Indeed the two metal rings that sit just after the silicon covers have both come loose and the silicon covers suffer from loosening with time until the point where they would slip too far along the shaft when inserting them into my ears; a constant annoyance.
What are these like to wear? Straight away they feel a far better fit than that CX500's, these are nice and snug, a good fit without feeling awkward. I also don't have to fiddle around as much pushing them into my ears to try and find some kind of sweet spot. I have had them in for a couple of hours now and they still feel comfortable. Certainly no complaints in this area.
Previously I was using a pair of £39.99 Sennheiser CX500's. These were an upgrade from the popular Sennheiser CX300's. The CX300's were very much lacking in high end and the bass was muddy. The CX500's were an improvement over the CX300's with good high end range. However they were lacking a bass but better have a little bass than muddy bass I suppose.
So how do the Apple in-ear headphones fair? Compared to the CX300's they are amazing. Compared to the CX500's they are amazing. The dual drivers provide excellent separation between lows and highs. The bass sounds rich, not that muddy sound that bleeds into mid range. This is well pronounced bass. Some people are going to claim "OMG they lack bass!!11!". If you're used to listening to a pair of CX300's. The "bass", if you can call it that, is certainly lacking by such a definition. However what these headphones provide is bass that doesn't overlap into mid range which is a truer sound. With a snug fit the level of bass these headphones reproduce is acceptable and might become a little more prominent after a little burn-in. Enough about bass. What about those beautifully crisp high's these headphones can produce? Impressive to say the least. Far superior than the CX500's.
What about ambient noise isolation? The CX500's were a bit of let down compared to the CX300's in this respect. For some reason the CX300's were much better at reducing the level of outside noise that can leak into your ears. The Apple in-ear headphones do an excellent job here and are on par with the CX300's if not better.
After listening for a while I couldn't resist comparing these again the Sennheiser PX200's. At £30 these are the best sounding pair of mini headband headphones I have bought. Of course it's easy to replicated good sound with larger headphones so the test is certainly unfair. How do the Apple in-ear headphones compare? Well the bass is unsurprisingly not as prominent however the high end is greater. This is open to debate but I much prefer the high end on the Apple in-ear headphones. Surprising.
A word on iPhone compatibility. No where on the headphone box or the Apple store does it mention any compatibly with iPhones. These work just fine with the iPhone and provide all the functions that the original iPhone headphones do. Which means that the play/pause, skip and previous all work along with the mic and call answering/cancelling. However the volume controls do not work. This is unsurprising as the original iPhone headphones don't have a volume control. I can't deny it would be nice if the volume control did work however 
So, in summary. If you want more accurate, better quality than the CX500's and don't mind the extra £14 please get these instead, you will not be disappointed.
