Klipsch Image S4

Today, I had a real desire to pick up some new earbuds. Partially it was for my trip to Boston, but I didn’t want to settle for just any old earbuds. I have plenty at home, ranging from the ones that Apple gave me with my iPhone to others I’ve gathered over time that came with various media devices I bought, and even some I got from my trips to Hong Kong. I’ve always seemed to like the sound that came out of the Bose headphones, but I’ve never tried their earbuds, and they don’t offer demos of them (for obvious reasons — hygene). But I’ve been hesitant to plunk down $100 for a set of earbuds. I’ve read plenty of reviews for the Shure earbuds, and they all tout how incredible they are, but if I can’t get myself to shell out $100 for Bose, I sure as hell am not about to shell out $300 for Shure. One of the nicest sounding earbuds I did buy were some Philips ones, which ran $20 (yes I’m cheap), but sadly broke because they went cheap on the cable. So I Googled around for top rated earbuds, and CNet gave the Klipsch very high marks, and at $80! The price is still more than I ever paid for earbuds, but I wanted something that would make my music really pop. So, off I went searching the internet like a good frugal, money conscious, shopper and I noticed that no one sold these for any less than $80, so I just stopped into my local Best Buy and I happily picked them up tonight.

The first thing I noticed was how small the earbuds were, very unassuming, in a nice glossy black with silver finish. Once unboxed, I did notice what other reviewers on the web commented about, which is the cheap feel of the chord, but the cord is not the worst I’ve experienced, at least it’s not stiff. I’ve got a set of earbuds where the cord is stiff and manages to stay in awkward angles, curling in funny spots on your neck and head — no fun.

The default pads they had on were too small for my ears, so, opening the nice tin case that came with the earbuds I pulled out some slightly bigger pads, which allowed the earbuds to sit comfortably in my ear. It’s important to note here that these are not noise-cancelling earbuds, they are noise-isolating, big difference. The pads did a very nice job keeping out the exterior background noise around me, this’ll hopefully be nice on my plane ride tomorrow.

Now I had to hear what they sounded like, so I plugged them into my iPhone, got to my playlist, and played the “Roll Call” song from the Halo 3 soundtrack, it’s a nice tune that has plenty of drums, acoustics, and even vocal components… I was quite amazed! The music really did come to life! The bass really came through and the music was brought to an entirely new level for me. But I had to be sure if it just wasn’t a reaction to having spent $80 on earbuds, so I had to compare these to my other headsets and earbuds lying around my house.

First, I played the same song with my Audio Technic’s ATH-A500′s which are a nice sounding over the head headset, which is pretty well rated for it’s sound quality. For me, the S4 held up nicely and even surpassed these, mainly because the music was more in my head, due to the earbuds blasting the music directly into my eardrums.

Second, I tested them against some decent no-name earbuds I bought from Hong Kong. These no-name ones are pretty decent sounding, but I didn’t like the overall design; this is one with a stiff cheap feeling cord. The S4 blew them away, no contest.

Lastly, how did the S4′s compare to the earbuds Apple gave me? There was no contest. The Apple earbuds seemed so absolutely flat in comparison to the S4.

In summary, I’m quite impressed with these earbuds. Sound quality is unsurpassed in anything I’ve used so far, but then again, I’ve never tried a Shure, but I think this will suffice until someone wants to share their Shure’s with me.