Customer Reviews

Maxell EB-125 Stereo Ear Bud

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2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

...because they suck. I bought these when I was walking to work one day at the drug store. I got ripped off and paid $4.99. Here is why they suck:

1. They are uncomfortable in my ear. No soft rubber, just hard plastic. Not even really molded to fit in an ear.

2. The plug was shorting out from the second I plugged it in. It requires much twisting and bending to get sound out of it.

3. Since they don't fit well in the average ear, the sound quality ends up sounding super tinny. I found that if you reverse the left and right earpieces and twist them in a 45 degree angle to the front, they sound OK. It's not comfortable and you can't wear it like that for more than 10 minutes.

4. They are white, like every other earbuds available on the market today. I wasn't plugging these into an IPod, but now I look all the yuppies on the bus out of suburbia with their white wires going into their ears. The yuppies are going to start thinking that I am one of them and try to trade rare Phish bootlegs with me.

I am going to go back to using my gigantic Optimus headcans. They look silly but sound better. In the time I spent writing this review, I could have panhandled enough cash to get better headphones. Maybe I should stop being a cheapskate and drop some money on better headphones.

Nah.

Instead of just griping about the Maxell ear buds' deplorable sound quality, permit me to recommend a superior alternative.

"Customers who viewed this" set of Maxell ear buds would be better off listening to music/podcasts by pressing a stethoscope (check this website for availability) against the outside of any mp3 player.

In a side by side comparison:

Appearance - Stethoscope wins

Comfort - Stethoscope again

Design - same as above

ROI/value - give it to the 'scope

Audio quality - STETHOSCOPE, BY A LANDSLIDE

Bonus suggestion: Have your small children use these awful Maxell ear buds just for listening to music you want them to hate.

What was I thinking when I bought these $3.16 headphones!!?! they suck big time!!! I'm planning to burn them along with all the evidence of the purchase.. look for better quality headphones somewhere else

I wanted to buy some cheap-o headphones to wear at the pool with my old CD player...you know, something that I could have and if they got wet and ruined, I wouldn't be completely devestated. Unfortunately, you can only wear these for about 5 minutes before they hurt your ears. So I bought alternative headphones and put these away. Stupid me, I brought them out when I needed some in a pinch and they actually have been shocking my ears! They are not molded to fit in any ear and they have this nub on the side of each that kill! The sound quality isn't so bad but the fit is. Spend the extra money for comfortable ones. I'd even be so bold as to venture to the Apple store and buy the $20 earbud headphones that come with the iPods. Those things are great!

Put it this way, you get what you pay for (hopefully , you don't pay over 2 bucks for them). the sound is awful, it crackles, no bass. Ended up buying a set of "philips" for a few bucks more, couldnt be more pleased.

If you buy this product after looking at these reviews, you have only yourself to blame.

My excuse? My earbuds broke and I picked up a cheap replacement on the road (not via Amazon), just to tide me over. And, yeah, they are as terrible as the reviews here state. I'm astonished they're still for sale, they're so bad.

What I found worst (also mentioned in other reviews) is that the round part the goes in your ear is very hard plastic, and pretty large -- I'm a good-sized adult male, and these were too big for my ears. There's no give at all, and the straight part coming down to the cord is placed so they don't even stay in the ear. A gentle tug pops them out -- which, pathetically, comes as a relief at least to that ear.

The lousy fit also means the audio quality is very poor, and very low. Most of the sound was probably leaking out (and would thus annoy fellow transit passengers), so even when the volume was at its highest I sometimes couldn't make out the speech in a podcast.

Oh, and the cable is too short, too.

I'm switching back to my Sony MDR-ED21LP Fontopia In-The-Ear Headphones even though one channel has died. Good audio in only one ear is better than pain in both. (The JBuds Hi-Fi Noise-Reducing Ear Buds (Black) are also quite adequate.)

Ok, I bought these to use at work so that I could avoid listening to all the chit-chat and paper shuffling. I listen to internet radio which is not ver loud anyway. These buds are really uncomfortable. They are not molded in any way to fit the human ear. because they do not fit well, the sound quality really siffers. The cable is very short, which means if I stand up at my desk, either I rip the buds from my ears or jerk my laptop off the desk by my ears. Either way it hurts.

Now, the good points: well, they're nice and shiny.

I suggest Maxell's beckband earplugs, or if you must have the ear buds, just get anything else.

I bought these at my campus store when looking for a cheap replacement for these: Coby CVE92 Isolation Stereo Earphones. First out of the box, and compared to the Cobys, they sounded AWFUL. Tinny, the noise blended together, and generally terrible.

I've since kept wearing them since they're all I have, and I will admit that they seem to have gotten better for me. Maybe they've just broken me.

These are NOT high-quality sound headphones. The sound tends to be muddled together, even after they break in, and I already lost the pathetic rings of rubber that surround these. How they could manage to fall off is anyone's guess, but they did, and that reduces the comfort of the headphones considerably. Furthermore, since they don't fit into your ear properly, the sound is quite "tinny", and they tend to fall out whenever I walk to classes.

Also, move the jack while listening and the sound will crackle/disappear for a few seconds until you get it back. That may just be my mp3 player slowly dying, though.

Still, they work, and I can hear a reasonable range of sounds from them. About as much as you can expect from $5.

Overall, buy these if you are desperate for headphones and on a severe budget crunch. Otherwise, do what I'm doing right after writing this review, and fish out a bit of extra money for actual high-quality headphones.

I am shocked by how terrible these sound. It reminds me of listening to an AM station on a portable transistor radio, if you're old enough to remember that. I'm surprised Maxell would put their name on these. I won't look at Maxell products the same way again.