Ears-On with iFrogz Timbre Earbuds and Microphone

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We’ve been playing with (and listening to) iFrogz $50 Timbre headphones for a few weeks now. The earbud-style cans come with an in-line mic and switch which lets you make calls on the iPhone and Blackberry, and to remote control the iPhone and several iPod models. The short form: They do the job, but build quality is poor and they’re unlikely to last even as long as the Apple-supplied ‘buds that come in the box.

The Timbre phones are made of wood, and this is supposed to give them a warm, full sound. It doesn’t. Even after some use to wear them in, the earbuds sound harsh and the music seems to rush along. This last might sound odd, but somehow speakers and headphones can affect the timing and feel of music, and the Timbres make every track sound like it can’t wait to finish.

These wooden cases cause another problem, too. Barely minutes into using them, the rubber grommets which guide the cables into the buds had come loose. On both sides. You can push them back in but it is a fix that lasts minutes at best, so I gave up. I expect the joints inside to come loose pretty soon.

The other end of the bud is a little better. I can never find in-canal earbuds that fit me — they either fall out or make me gag as they nestle against my eardrum. The answer appears to let your ear-holes wax up a bit and then the rubber coated buds slide in and stick. Gross, but the only way I could get a fit, even with the different-sized grommets that come in the box.

Further down the wire we come to the blob of a control, housed in rubber with a pinhole for the mic. There is a switch in there which will play, pause, skip tracks and answer phone-calls. It works the same way as the Apple earbuds, and you’ll have to study some Morse-code to use them (this is Apple’s fault, of course, not iFrogz’). The switch lacks a volume control, sadly, which means pulling your iPod out of your pocket to turn things up or down.

After hearing the low-volume, low quality output of the headphones, I wasn’t expecting much from the mic, but it actually sounds great. A test Skype call to the Lady showed them to be loud and clear, and she could hear me very well. A test recording using the iPod Touch’s Voice Memo application had led me to think that the recording was a little quiet, but ironically it recorded great — it was just the playback that was bad.

A mixed result. If the headphones hadn’t fallen apart so readily, and if they didn’t make the music sound like you were listening through a telephone, they might be worth the $50. As it is, only the microphone is worth recommending.

Product page [iFrogz]