Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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171 of 177 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
jBuds are Ear Buddies, December 7, 2008
These were my fourth pair of earbuds and the most impressive I've owned. The wiring and connections are solid and reinforced. I've replaced earbuds when the wiring breaks or the sound volume becomes unequal.
I'm hard on earbuds. My workday starts late in the morning and lasts until late in the evening. I need to still be asleep when the gardeners come with their leaf blowers and weed whackers. Earbuds serve a dual purpose: they keep sound out and give me pleasant sounds to sleep by. Being a bit of an insomniac, my MP3 player helps me to fall asleep each night as well. This is tough on earphones.
I'm impressed with the construction of these buds. Stress points are well reinforced and unlikely to fail. But ruggedness isn't the primary reason for buying phones ... sound quality is.
These are second to none when it comes to sound quality. Bass is solid with no distortion. The midrange and highs are crisp and clear. I've listened to everything from hip-hop to classical and they have provided a superior listening experience.
The worst feature of these phones is that they have a straight plug into the media player instead of an angled plug. This makes it easier to accidently unplug the phones. At worst, a minor drawback. Also, the barrel of the buds is a bid longer than others. At first I thought this would be a problem with lying on a pillow, but it hasn't disturbed me at all.
These utterly dominate all the other earbuds I've owned, both in terms of construction quality and in terms of sound. Buy a pair with confidence - you can't go wrong.
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286 of 307 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good Step Up From Apple Earbuds, November 26, 2008
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 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.
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.
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89 of 97 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent dynamic range in a small package, November 25, 2008
I bought some earphones not too long ago from Radio Shack. They were the kind you press into the ear. They were awful. The sound was bad and they wouldn't stay in the ear at all.
The jbud j2 are also a kind that you press into the ear (stay in pretty well you you give them a small twist when inserting instead of just pushing them in.) It made me a little nervous, but the price wasn't bad and the reviews were all good, so, I decided to go ahead with the purchase. Amazon got them to me in less than a week and packaged them well.
The sound quality is very good. Some of my classic piano concertos just come to life with these.
The dynamic range may be a little too good. I like to listen to music before I go to bed and I would use the Samsung earphones that came with my player, and by the way they are very good for being the included earphones. Since it's right before bedtime, I'll turn my player's volume down to 2 or 3 (out of 30). The J2s when turned down that low on volume, the higher frequencies I can't hear like I could with the "cheap" earphones. Perhaps it's my hearing. This really isn't a complaint because when I turn the volume up to say 10, It (J2s) sounds fantastic.
The construction seems pretty good, but only time will tell for sure.
The noise canceling part of the earphones also works very well, if that's what you like. The Samsung earphones you could hear other people talking just fine and still listen to the music. J2's you cannot. That can be good or bad depending on the situation.
I may get another set for my son.
They are good,
Bryce
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