As Apple headphone replacements, these are very good headphones. Purely on an audio basis, these leave a lot to be desired, highs are muted.
September 10, 2009 Update: Wow JLabs continues to be amazing. In the middle of the summer, the audio jack separated from the headphone wires. Essentially making the headphones useless. They got a ton of play by my son who loved the design. A few emails to JLabs and no response. After a month or so and a few emails, I gave up. Oh well, go buy some new headphones, and call it a day. Well this past week I got an email saying they were sorry about not responding. Another email back with no intention that they would respond. Oh my goodness was I wrong this evening. They are standing behind these broken headphones and sending me a replacement. There's another little bonus as a great good will gesture. These guys just amaze me. There is also a letter of apology by the owner of JLabs explaining what happened. A rough customer service moment for warranty repairs; and they appear to be back on track beautifully.
September 19, 2009 Update: replacement earphones have arrived. They included a nice vinyl JLabs zipper case for the headphones, and a speaker surprise. So Jlabs did make right on this problem.
Nov. 27, 2009 update: JLabs is a very impressive company. They posted a comment to this review and suggested that I burn in the headphones. That is very good advice - sometimes it does take 24 hours or a week or two to free up a speaker and get it to sound optimal. So I ran my iPod for 24 hours, played 394 songs at medium volume (no I didn't listen that whole time). My particular sample improved somewhat, but the highs are still muted (reran the same tests). Clearer now, but still not the fabulous sound I've read about in so many other reviews. They can be brought into line with a large amount of high Hz equalizer.
December 12, 2010 update: We lost these headphones. I purchased a new pair (super cheap as a Holiday offer), and the sound is remarkably different. This pair is bright, clear, and has decent bass, absolutely nothing like the first two pairs I tried. I'm really happy I bought these one more time - they are comfortable, well built, and sound good.
Sorry guys - customer service, JLab gets 5,000 stars for caring so much. Design and look, they get a solid 5 stars. Comfort, 5 stars. It's just that all those things go away when they are in my ears and I'm listening, they are 3 star headphones. It's possible I have the 1 in 1,000,000 lower quality sample. They still can't be beat as upgrades from the standard earbuds that come with most players.
Back to the original review:
The good. These headphones are comfortable to wear. The ear bud material is soft and fits mosts ears well (there's three different sizes, typical of all in ear headphones). They stay in your ear well. Not recommended for the active person, but they won't fall out while you walk. The headphones are low profile, so if you are laying on a pillow they don't fall out or poke harder into your ear. The construction looks decent, they have a nice solid feel to them. The wires are fairly thin, but they look like they will survive. The jack is a straight one. It appears to be a little extra long, so it might fit an original iPhone.
Isolation - it works well. Anyone moving up from Apple earbuds will be stunned at how quiet these phones isolate the world. You'll be a bit surprised at hearing yourself swallow and breathe. It's the same for all passive isolating in ear headphones. These are no exception, and are not really any better than others at isolation.
The bad. Audio quality. Highs are muted pretty badly. Bass is decent, you should never expect an in ear headphone to rattle or vibrate. These headphones dig fairly deep into the bass. Midrange is decent, voices sound fairly good. Where these really fall flat, the high range. They have virtually no treble to speak of.
My testing. I tried these headphones connected to a Nokia N95-3 cell phone, an iPod (5th gen), a portable DVD player, and Logitech Z-10 computer speakers. I listened to a variety of programs, video games, comedy video, movies, and music. In all cases the highs were definately missing. My reference headphones are Shure E3c's, yes they cost 4 times the price of these (list price), but they are a reference point. I also compared to Apple's earbuds.
Movie viewing: Hancock - John Lee Hooker's opening song and the solo cello music later in the movie all were muted, but had good low tones. Dialog was clear. The explosions were clear. Imaging (the sense of where a sound is coming from) is really poor, most of the sound appered to be coming from the middle of my head. Not a bad headphone for movies.
Music: Garbage - Shirley Manson's voice was not clear and crisp. The band actually sounded separated from her singing (something not heard with the Shures). High guitar notes were muddled. Beth Orton, Central Reservation, I heard similar problems.
Cell Phone: my Nokia has a bit of a hiss whenever music or videos play. It's almost annoying with my Shure headphones. The JBuds did a good job masking that hiss. So as a cell phone headphone for listening only, these aren't bad.
I like the look, feel, and construction of the JBuds. Wish I could say that the sound quality was equally great. I won't retire my Shure headphones.