James Rivington on Apple’s New EarPods

James Rivington:

There is no doubt that the EarPods are an improvement over Apple’s original bundled earphones. […]

But for anyone thinking of buying these things separately for £25/$30 — forget it. That price is utterly ludicrous. For that money you could bag yourself a decent pair of Sennheisers — low end ones admittedly — but they would still be head and shoulders better than the Apple EarPods. In fact, we challenge you to find a pair of £25 earphones on Amazon that sound worse than this — you won’t be able to.

Via Ryan McBride, who poked me on Twitter last night with the following:

There’s a bunch of terrible reviews out for Apple’s EarPods. Not sure why @gruber published the only two positive ones.

If even the “terrible” reviews declare that the new EarPods are a clear improvement over Apple’s previous earphones, I think that’s pretty good. Are they worth $29 on their own? That’s a good question, and Rivington, for one, clearly thinks not.

Update: Via Brian Behrend on Twitter, the cheapest Sennheisers on Amazon with volume controls and a microphone cost $40. EarPods do more than just play audio.

★ Tuesday, 18 September 2012