Customer Reviews

Etymotic Research Ety8 Bluetooth Stereo Wireless In-Ear Earphones

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Up front, I have to say, if you have no patience, don't get these. But if you're willing to give yourself a little bit of a curve to get used to them, they are worth every penny. You'll never give them up.

I've played music all my life, and sound fidelity is important to me. When I first got the ETY 8 earphones as a gift, the form almost overcame the function for me. It took some getting used to the in-ear placement of the earphones - you really have to get them placed deeply into your ear, which felt odd at first, and took some practice to be able to do quickly. Then, there was the sort of odd feel of the two pieces hanging off my ears. Plus, they look a little bit odd. OK, so I got over the oddness. The earphones are actually very light, and once you get used to the feel, you forget they're there. Because they'd been a gift, I kind of felt obligated to use them, so I powered thru the initial getting-used-to it period, and then I started to understand what these earphones are all about.

It's about real sound. Not over-cranked, duded-up bass, but real high fidelity sound. From a wireless earphone, which I didn't expect. I don't know of another pair of earphones that reproduces the original artists' sound with so faithfully. No kidding. It's really different than the deep pulsing bass you get with Bose and many other earphones on the market. You hear the individual instruments, and the color of the sound. And the noise isolation function of this type of in-ear insertion is superior. I can be riding the Muni bus downtown and be in a world of my own. Even on an airplane, the sense of uninterrupted sound clarity is flat out awesome.

If you like driving around in a car with your radio blaring and your bass shaking the drivers around you, these are not the right earphones for you. But if you are a seeker of true high fidelity sound, go for them.

I just auditioned these at Macworld and they sound great. Same hi quality sound as the ER4 but no cord. They are also very light so you feel nothing pulling your ears down at all. As for the comment about what you might look like wearing these headphones, who cares. You enter you own world of hifidelity with the sounds of the outside world gone. Thus only where these where you will be safe not hearing the outside world because you will not. Enjoy!

Was surprised to see these show up before Xmas. Still not sure if $300 is worth it for cordless headphones for my iPod. Initial tests with the iPod adapter on a 60gig Video iPod were impressive - automatically paired, excellent quality and volume levels...similar feel to my ER-6s. Of course much of this initial benefit was offset by the fact that when you wear these things, you look like a total uber-geek.

I also was able to pair the headphones to my Motorola Q and leverage AD2P with reasonable quality (the volume level on the Q sucks with Media Player...).

Where things started to go wrong was range. I decided to try and leave my ipod on the car hood while I did some yard work listening to the headphones (no more than 10-12 feet away). I got major cut outs on the music until I got within 5 feet of the ipod. I thought it might be the range of the iPod adapter so tried the same test with the Q....this time cut-outs occurred at about 12-15 feet. Not sure if there is something that keeps these headphones from working at the full 30 foot range of true Bluetooth - but mine sure do not. My primary use will still be when traveling (if I can get around the passengers staring...) so range won't be a huge deal..but if you say you support Bluetooth - support the FULL feature set of Bluetooth.

ETY8 Positives: Sound quality, in-ear noise cancellation, controls and power management

ETY8 Negatives: Bluetooth range problems, wierd design/look, mega-expensive

BTW...my absolute favorite pair of headphones for travel are the black ER-6s from Ety....they are so much more subtle than the Bose QCs and while volume levels aren't perfect, they are just so easy to travel with and produce excellent noise cancelling results.

Take a close look at the main product photo in the listing. Notice anything? What's missing? That's right - the big, thick, annoying cable that connects the two ear pieces has been digitally removed! I was all excited about these things for a year or two before I finally broke down and bought a set. In the time that passed, the ety8 passed from being state of the art to an also ran. First, the basics. The sound is not even that great. I have two other Bluetooth stereo headsets - Motorola S9 and Sony DSC-whatever - and they both sound better. The ety8 is OK, but nothing special. Which brings me to the second feature that bluetooth stereo buyers are interested in - size and weight. OK ety is pretty good here - until you get the things out of the box and discover that they are connected by a big hairy cable! At first I thought it was just a leash, since the pictures don't even show it! What a deliberate deception and ripoff! That cord is just a complete killer to the deal. Not only is it too thick, heavy, and long, but it catches on your neck and is almost as annoying as cables that go all the way to your mp3! Not only that, but it seems like it was designed by/for cro-magnons. Terrible human factors design. The cable connects to the actual part that goes in your ear, so it interferes with fit and can actually hurt. Why couldn't the cable at least connect to the outside of the units? Bottom line: overpriced, bad design. It works and sounds OK, otherwise 1 star.

Etymotic Research Ety8 Bluetooth Stereo Wireless In-Ear Earphones
My ety8 Bluetooth Noise-Isolating Earphone arrived yesterday. After charging the unit for about 3 hours, I finally got to try these out. In a nutshell, if you are looking for bluetooth, noise isolating/noise cancelling earphones, these are amazing. The sound quality is extremely good; not outstanding but far, far from just being passable. I have been looking for Bluetooth earphones for a while but I wanted the noise cancelling feature. I decided to see if Noise Isolating would do the trick and after a bit of research, I decided that NI was just fine. I'm about to embark on a trip to Bejing for the summer Olympics and will be watching hours and hours of track and field. A few heats of the 10,000 meters (25 laps around the track) gets a bit boring even for true track fans like me. I wanted a light weight pair of earplugs and I didn't want to deal with wires.

The comfort is surprisingly good. I listened for about 2 hours without a break and had no ear exhaustion. Comparing these to my Bose QuietComfort 3, the QC 3s offer better comfort and offer richer, fuller sound with greater range. The Ety8 offer solid performance in the middle, and only ok highs and lows (although the lows are better than the highs) If I had to be critical, the only negative is that the highs are slightly on the tin-sounding side. For me personally, this is a very minor issue; the size, comfort, the noise isolating and the lack of wires makes this a great, great buy for me. What would it take for this to get five stars? If the Ety8 improved its full range, then these will be super amazing (and, I bet, much more expensive!). I highly recommend.

Being the third bluetooth headset I bought (and the most expensive), I had high expectations of these Ety8s.

The biggest quirk is that the headphones shut off when I placed my finger near the FWD/NEXT button. Even the tech support could not understand how just getting close to the button would cause the phones to shut off, but I did not even have to press the button!

In an open gym, just 12 feet from my iPod would cause the sound to drop and stutter. I got much better range (almost 50 feet!) in the same gym with my iMuffs.

The ear plugs were also very uncomfortable when being inserted and did not get much better with time. I am used to the Shure E2c headphones, so in-ear is not new to me. With such a strange design (on top of it all, Etymotic needs to head back to the design board!

I love not having wires for my ipod. However, these bluetooth earbuds don't hold to the usual standards of quality sound that Etymotic claims.

I find the sound quality, for the price, mid-range. My bose earbuds for $99.00 sound better with greater depth in bass. I don't agree that they look wierd since they are very small and fit well in the ear. It is great to garden and ride my bike without getting tangled in wires so I am keeping them but feel more work needs to be done on the performance. Dr.Horn

I've had these for about 2 weeks now. For the first few days I didn't like them much, then the next few days I liked them more, and now you'd have to pry them loose from my cold lifeless fingers.

I use mine with a BlackJack II, so I don't know how well the iPod adapter does or doesn't work. With the BlackJack, at first I was frustrated because it seemed that although the pairing went well, my phone was not 'automatically' connecting to the earphones when I turned them on. I've since found that if I turn on the earphones and then hit 'play/pause' twice, VOILA!!, I'm suddenly hearing beautiful music (through the earphones, and not on my phone which gets some very annoyed looks from fellow commuters).

I do look a bit like the bride of Frankenstein wearing these things, but the sound quality is so good that I don't care. I haven't gotten too many strange looks, or at least not stranger than usual. I love the size, and the cute little leather carrying case. I haven't had any problems with the cord going across the back of my neck, and I find the earbuds pretty comfortable. The buttons are indeed small, but fingernails work well.

The only down-side to these phones (and it's probably some secret I've yet to uncover) is that sometimes, when I adjust the position of the right phone in my ear, the unit will power off. I don't know if I'm jiggling the cord in a certain way, or if I'm hitting a button (though I don't think I am). Doesn't seem to happen all the time, so I'm still narrowing down the cause. Other than that, these things are great.

Best thing about these earphones is that I am the only one that can hear them. Even when they are not in my ears, these phones can't be heard - you need to get them pretty close to your ear before you will hear sound. Ever sat next to someone on a train or a bus and their headphones are so lousy that you're bopping along with P Diddy whether you want to or not? Not a problem with these. The sound quality is superb, particularly the low tones that can be hard to hear without overdoing the bass. Love em, love em, love em (except for that powering off thing).

These sound great! (except when bluetooth fails and there's an interruption in the sound, which didn't happen that often). They do isolate you from outside sounds much more than other earbuds I've tried. They are less comfortable than regular earbuds, but that's to be expected. The transmitter draws the iPod batter down much faster (though there's still hours of life). People look at you strangely when you wear them. I was afraid that the protruding boxes would get hit and drive the earpiece into my eardrum. On the balance, not worth the money to me, but they do sound great!

I used to have a pair of AKG reference headphones (older model of this AKG K240) for the studio and missed the quality of the sound. Flat, but responsive. Good for mixing.

ety8 sound: I wanted something that sounded similiar in quality, if not tone. The ety8's brought new meaning to tunes I listen to. Lots of spacial awareness I had missed before. Zeppelin is, yet again, a new experience.

Bluetooth: Paired it with a Mac Pro. Sounds great. Paired it with a Lenovo laptop sounds great. Paired it with a Logitech transmitter Logitech FreePulse Wireless Headphones for the iTouch sounded good but dropped connection outside if I put the iPod in any pocket.

I was under the impression that ety's transmitter would work with an iTouch, but it doesn't. It doesn't matter to me though. They sound too good to switch to another brand.

One thing about the volume controls on the right earbud is that it's easier to use your right thumb to push the buttons (with your index finger used to grasp the unit). Works perfect that way.