NoiseHush Freedom BT700 Bluetooth Headphones Review; Great Sound at a Great Price
When it comes to listening to music, watching a movie/tv show or taking calls, a solid set of headphones or ear buds can make all the difference in the world. There are a number of solutions out there that can best showcase your personal style, your personal needs and your satisfy your bank account (your significant other). You need a good mix of sound quality, functionality, style and comfort. At least, that is what I mainly look for. I am not particularly found of in-ear ear buds and tend to lean towards the over-the-ear variety of headphones/headsets. Headphones being the variety that blast sound to your brain, where as headsets can be used for video calls, phone calls and the likes. Taking those things into consideration along with the price point that something is being offered is another factor to consider. Spending $300 on a set of headphones because of a hyped up brand name doesn’t appeal to me much. So lets take a look at a pair that has some great sound with a great price point too. Meet the NoiseHush Freedom BT700′s
What’s in the box
- NoiseHush Freedom BT700 Headphones
- Micro tipped USB cable
- User manual
The NoiseHush Freedom BT700′s are Bluetooth and do not have a physical audio jacks.
Spec rundown
- Bluetooth Version: CSR V2.1 +EDR
- Transmission Power: Calss 2
- Frequency: 20Hz – 20kHz
- Speaker Driver: 40mm Neodymium
- Impedance: 32 ohm +/- 15%
- Sesitivity: 104 +/- 3db
- Charge time: 2.5 hours
- Music listening: 20 hours
- Talk time: 20 hours
- Standby time: 300 hours
All the headphones controls are located on what is designated as the left ear cup. You find your multifunction button, which is your power, music and calls control button, located towards the front.
Just above that multifunction button you have a small microphone hole and then your LED light indicator that displays charging information and connectivity.
In the bottom center is where the covered charging port is located to charge these puppies up. It is covered with a simple little rubber flap. Behind that is your music controls. The placement of the music controls is near perfect to reach and adjust with your left hands thumb.
The music controls allow you to quickly change tracks forward, backwards, pause, play and adjust the volume. Once you remember which direction is which. A simple push or pull on the dial changes the track. If you press it in, it pause/plays the track. To change the volume you lung hold the dial and the volume will adjust in increments.
Each ear cup sits on its own part of the steel frame and is threaded through the covers on the sides of the ear cups. As you can see the ear cup is what moves, not the steel frame. Your connection to the right ear cup is run from the the left ear cup up and over the band and is connected via the red, I believe it is nylon, braided cord.
The head band is a soft, almost leather, feeling material. It is actually called PU Leather (polyurethane) It is super soft and is two pieces sewn over the steel frame. It looks really good and feels really nice.
The ear cups are a traditional round variety and offer a soft outer material that rests on your years and a decent about of padding to keep the inner plastic that is under the cloth from sitting directly on your ears. The steel frame offers just enough ‘push’ on your head to keep the headphones from slipping around but not enough to make your head and ears hurt from the pressure of long term wearing.
How do the HoiseHush Freedom BT700′s perform
performance will need to be broken down into a few little sections since these are Bluetooth only, have a battery inside and of course can make calls.
- Battery: NoiseHush claims that the Freedom BT700′s offer 20 hours of music, 20 hours of talk time and 300 hours of stand-by time. I don’t have enough friends, or time, to sit around on the phone for 20 hours to see how well that claim works outs. I do have plenty of time to rock out while I write for you guys. I charged them up fully, ran them at MAX volume and ran them until they died. I didn’t start a timer, but I did make notes when I powered them on and off. I was able to get 15 hours out of them before they died.Mind you, this was straight Google Play Music streaming at max volumes with the EQ enabled and amped up. With regular settings and medium volume I would imagine they would easily hit the “up to 20 hours” claim. Considering that an average person won’t be rocking out for 15 hours straight in a normal day, this is very acceptable. The last 30 minutes or so though are probably the most annoying. Ever 5 seconds or so there is an annoying triple beep to let you know they are almost dead.
- Call Quality: I usually find that with any Bluetooth device that allows for calls, voice or video, that people on the other end tend to either sound funny, or they remark that I sound like I am in a tunnel. My wife is the first, and usually the only person, I talk to on the phone. She is quick to tell me to take it off speaker or what have you. This is always without me even saying that I am testing something out before hand. She was none the wiser this time. She sounded clear and I was able to hear her without issue and she had no issues hearing me. I was in a quiet environment though, so a loud environment might be different.
- Sound Quality: The sound quality of your music or videos is another extremely important aspect of a pair of headphones. You want clear mids and highs that aren’t over powering and clean bass that doesn’t distort or drown out the rest of the music. Often times you will find that headphones lean one way or the other, or just don’t have enough oomph at all. Then there is the worst, the ones that distort your tunes when turned up too loud. With the Freedoms I was pleasantly surprised that the mix of mids and highs were meshed well with the bass. Nothing seems to over power any other element. I do try to make things break, at least a little, when I can. Listening to some Disturbed through Play Music and pushing the EQ up with bass at the max I still wasn’t able to get the Freedoms to pop or distort. I bounced over to some 2Pac and California Love, again, without any distortion or crackle at all at max volume. (Yes, I am going to blow out my ear one day. I am OK with that.)
- Comfort: The comfort question is a tricky one. Mainly because everyone is different. Every ones ears are shaped different and everyone is used to a certain style. For my smaller ears, these cover my whole ears. With my earlobe on the bottom of the cushion and the top of my ear not quite clearing the top. I have sat here doing the things I do, walking around the house and taking walks with these on for the better part of 8 hours and have found myself adjusting them only occasionally. Not so much because my ears hurt, or they felt hot, more so to adjust their position. They are very comfortable for my ear and head size.
What I like about the NoiseHush Freedom BT700′s
The call and sound quality are stellar, especially for the price point. They offer a great mix of mids, highs and bass without drowning each other out. The headband is wrapped in a soft material with a cushion coupled with the soft ear cups makes them very comfortable to wear for long periods of time. (At least for me). The controls for calls and music work as they should with Google Play Music, Spotify and the Sony music player found in the Xperia Z. The battery life is more than adequate to get you easily through more than one day of rocking out.
What I don’t like about the NoiseHush Freedom BT700′s
The dislikes all come down to personal preference. I would like them a bit better if the ear cups were more ‘ear’ shaped and not round. More like their I7 Active Noise-Cancelling Headphones
Overall thoughts
If you need a solid set of Bluetooth headphones that can, most likely, out last your device and your day, the NoiseHush Freedom BT700′s are easily a contender and ones you should take a closer look at. They look great in wither White, that I have here, or in Black. They sound great and give you a well rounded mix of wireless freedom and brain thump. Get this, they are only $45 on Amazon right now. No, that wasn’t a mistype. $45. Well, $44.95 and $44.99 respectively. Even at their listed price on the NoiseHush website for $79.99 they are a great value.
Feel free to pick up a set at your earliest convenience.
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Facebook Updates ‘Paper’ App With Birthdays, Events, Photo Comments and More [iOS Blog]
Facebook has updated its news creation and curation app Paper with birthdays, events, group updates, photo comments and much more, filling in the app with features from the “main” Facebook app that users have requested since its debut.
Thanks again for your feedback on Paper. We’ve been working to build features you’ve asked for, and we’re excited to share version 1.1. Here’s the scoop:
– Birthdays and events: Never miss a chance to celebrate! Just tap the notifications globe and scroll down to see important dates ahead.
– Photo comments: When words aren’t enough, now you can add photos to comments to show how you feel.
– Group updates: Don’t miss posts from your favorite groups. Swipe down to open the Main Menu. Tap the More Options icon to the right of the Search box. When you see your groups, check the new unread counts to catch up on the posts you’ve missed.
– New story buttons: To keep up with the latest stories in a section in fullscreen view, or to catch the newest stories in the next section, tap the new story arrows when they appear.
– More article covers: 9 new article covers join our collection, making easier to spot your favorite sources on Paper. Keep an eye out for Fox News, Bloomberg News, Mashable, FT, kottke, Popular Science, The Hollywood Reporter, Vanity Fair and Hacker News.
– Basic accessibility: All of your sections now support basic accessibility features, and we’re working to extend accessibility throughout the app.
In addition, Paper product manager Michael Reckhow tells The Verge that despite Facebook’s plans to strip Messenger out of its main Facebook app, the Paper product team does not have plans to remove messaging from its app, saying that the team wishes to keep the app independent from the goals and strategies of the main Facebook app.
Paper isn’t the only app Facebook has been working on updates for, as the company yesterday announced a new feature called Nearby Friends for its main app. Similar to Apple’s Find My Friends, the optional feature allows users to see if their friends are nearby so that they can meet up.
Paper – stories from Facebook is available for free in the App Store. [Direct Link]
Facebook is available for free on the App Store. [Direct Link]
Nike Fires Majority of FuelBand Team, Plans to Stop Making Wearables [iOS Blog]
Nike plans to no longer make wearable hardware, as it has fired the majority of its 80-person team responsible for the FuelBand fitness tracker and will instead focus its efforts on fitness software, according to an unnamed source that spoke to CNET.
The shoemaker isn’t throwing in the towel on technology. Rather, it’s turning away from hardware and realigning its focus exclusively on fitness and athletic software, a strategic shift that would still benefit the company in the long run, analysts said.
While the competition in the fitness wearable category has increased with entries from Jawbone and Fitbit, Nike spokesman Brian Strong told CNET in an email that the company continually aligns its resources with business priorities and that it has made changes to its team as its Digital Sport priorities have shifted toward software. Nike is also opening an incubator called Fuel Lab in San Francisco to allow developers to create products that incorporate its workout metric NikeFuel and plug into a Nike+ API that’ll come this fall.
Nike’s move away from wearables also comes as Apple’s long-rumored iWatch is expected to come to fruition. Apple CEO Tim Cook is an avid wearer of the FuelBand and has sat on the Nike board for the last nine years, which has helped the two brands foster a strong relationship.
A possible partnership between Apple and Nike wouldn’t be out of the question as the athletic company was one of the first to show support for the iPhone 5s’ motion coprocessor, debuting the Nike+ Move app alongside the iPhone 5s at Apple’s media event. Apple also helped Nike enter the wearable market in 2006 with the Nike+iPod shoe package.
Apple has also hired former members of the Nike’s Digital Sport team, picking up former FuelBand consultant Jay Blahnik last August and Nike design director Ben Shaffer last September.
Apple is expected to release the iWatch later this year alongside iOS 8 and the iPhone 6.
Hide your stash, heat-seeking drones are helping thugs hijack UK weed crops
Criminals are dicks. That much we all know is true. But now these dicks are using heat-sensing drones to pull off “sophisticated” heists of weed farms (yes, that weed) in the United Kingdom, as local paper Halesowen News discovered. Consider this quote from one enterprising crop hijacker:
It is not like I’m using my drone to see if people have nice televisions. I am just after drugs to steal and sell. If you break the law, then you enter me and my drone’s world.
It’s solid logic, really. Marijuana has yet to be legalized in the UK, so growers are technically in the wrong for bothering to grow their own, get high and overeat while watching terrible telly. Or, fine, they’re probably selling that weed, too. And also, these opportunistic crooks are using drones to hunt down these cannabis crops! So, I guess we should applaud their enterprising spirit? I don’t know how to feel.
Unfortunately for the victims, these raids can sometimes turn violent. Though the smug thug speaking to Halesowen News admitted that his crew usually just outright steals from or imposes a tax on their targets since “the people growing [weed] are not gangsters.” See? He’s a thoughtful dick. The local members of Parliament aren’t unaware of the situation either, but it also doesn’t appear as if a solution is underway. Tom Watson, chair of a Parliamentary group on drones had this to say about the spike in weed-jacking incidents: “This … story shows the proliferation of drone technology which can be used for both good and bad.” That’s some deep insight from the local government right there, folks. People can do good and bad things… and all in the name of weed.
[Image: Shutterstock]
Via: Gizmodo
Source: Halesowen News
Nike reportedly killing the Fuelband to focus on fitness software
Just days after Nike announced the launch of its Fuel Lab location in San Francisco to enhance partnerships with other digital services for athletes, there’s a report that it’s fired much of the team behind its FuelBand wristwear. CNET reports that, according to a person familiar with the matter, as many as 55 people from its 70-member hardware team are being laid off, and plans for another version of the FuelBand to follow the SE have been shelved. All of this comes just as the wearables market is heating up, with products already arriving from Samsung, LG, Motorola, Pebble and more, while activity tracking integrated with phones is also becoming more popular. At the same time, not all of Nike’s tech initiatives have worked out, and Nike+ has largely disappeared from its shoes in the last year.
A Nike spokesman confirmed to CNET a “small number of layoffs” as its “Digital Sports priorities evolve.” Given Nike’s close relationship with Apple, one could wonder if the prospect of an upcoming wearable from Cupertino had a hand in swinging the apparel company’s focus towards “simpler data-powered experiences” — or they just spent all the money on tonight’s sweet 3D projector intro to the Jordan Brand High School All-Star Game.
Nike reportedly is killing the Fuelband. Thoughts?
Filed under: Wearables
Source: CNET
HTC poaches Samsung Galaxy marketing guru, looking for “The Next Big Thing”
HTC‘s marketing in the past year has been wildly hit and miss; the slightly absurd Here’s To Change campaign featuring Robert Downey Jr. was met with very mixed opinions though its HTC Technical Translations videos seemed to be a lot more popular. Either way, HTC is probably planning to really break through with their own marketing and to that end, they’ve hired Samsung‘s former Chief Marketing Officer, Paul Golden, the man who proclaims he “created and launched the highly successful Galaxy brand for Samsung”.
Golden was reportedly hired by HTC very recently and will serve as an adviser to HTC chairman, Cher Wang. Wang has previously said that “We just have to communicate well with our customers… I believe if we can communicate better, we will do better,” which is a sentiment we can all agree with, though it can be said that Samsung’s communication and marketing is generally extremely vague. Regardless, we look forward to what could be a resurgence in HTC marketing and hopefully a brighter future for the Taiwanese manufacturer.
What do you think about HTC’s acquisition of Paul Golden? Do you think he can really help HTC’s position in the market? Let us know what your thoughts are in the comments.
Source: Bloomberg via engadget
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Labels claim Pandora owes money for streaming old songs, probably won’t get it
Pandora can’t catch a break, it seems. Just weeks after the streaming radio service escaped paying higher royalties to songwriters, record companies and musicians have sued it in a New York court for allegedly violating state copyright laws by refusing to pay for older song recordings. The labels argue that Pandora is subject to state rules on compensation whenever it streams tunes recorded before February 15th, 1972, when federal law took over; right now, it’s only paying for those newer works. The suing parties claim that Pandora is both depriving artists of income and wielding an “unfair advantage” over on-demand competitors like Rdio and Spotify, which have no choice but to negotiate royalties for classic tracks.
Pandora says it’s looking at the claims, and it hasn’t provided a formal response so far. However, you shouldn’t assume that it will fight the lawsuit tooth and nail — the legal action may not do as much damage as you’d think.
As Santa Clara University law professor Tyler Ochoa tells us, the labels are likely suing in New York because it’s one of the few states with existing case law that addresses royalty issues like this. While some other states have their own relevant copyright rules, the music companies wouldn’t have a good precedent to work with in these territories. They would be “starting from scratch” and face a greater chance of losing, Ochoa says. As such, you shouldn’t count on seeing a state-by-state litigation campaign. Even a New York victory isn’t guaranteed, since the local law doesn’t offer perfect clarity on how to handle radio-like internet services.
The record companies may also collect relatively little cash if they do win. As this isn’t a federal suit, Pandora might only have to shell out for songs that New York-based customers play. Any retroactive payments would be limited to the past three years, and there would be questions as to why the music outlets didn’t push for compensation much sooner. Pandora could theoretically avoid any new royalties by blocking New York customers from streaming pre-1972 songs, although it may not want to risk a backlash from angry listeners.
To Ochoa, these factors make it “pretty likely” that the lawsuit will end in a settlement. There’s enough uncertainty that neither side would get much value from duking it out in the courtroom. The odds are that Pandora won’t take a serious blow, and that the labels will only have limited success in getting money for their golden oldies.
[Image credit: Dustin Gaffke, Flickr]
Filed under: Internet
Via: New York Times
Source: RIAA
Apple Offering Some Developers Second Chance to Buy Unclaimed WWDC Tickets
Apple is offering some developers a chance to buy unclaimed WWDC tickets, according to a report from 9to5Mac and several Twitter users. Apple has emailed certain developers to offer them WWDC tickets, giving them 24 hours to pay the $1,599 ticket fee.
This year, because of nearly immediate ticket sellouts in past years, Apple decided to offer WWDC tickets to registered, paid iOS and Mac developers through a lottery system. Developers who won the ticket lottery had until April 14 to complete their purchases.
Now Apple is reportedly reaching out to developers who didn’t win the lottery and offering them a chance to buy unclaimed tickets. Some developers are starting to get phone calls from the company informing them that they have been randomly selected to buy one of the tickets that winners failed to claim before the 14th.
It is unknown how many WWDC tickets went unclaimed by lottery winners, nor how the company is choosing developers to receive a second chance at tickets.
The annual Worldwide Developers Conference will be held from June 2-6 at the Moscone West convention center in San Francisco
Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 finally listed on Samsung India eStore for INR 36,340
We are finally getting hints of official availability of Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 in India. The device has been listed on Samsung India eStore at a price of INR 36,340. The device is currently out of stock but will be available very soon. It was officially announced way back in June 2013 and released in other international markets by Q3 2013 but we are not sure why it took Samsung almost an year to release it in India. The 7 inch and 8 inch versions of Galaxy Tab 3 were made available in India by July 2013.
Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 On Samsung India eStore
Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 Specifications & Features
- 10.1 inch TFT Display, 1280 x 720 pixels, Multitouch Capacitive Touchscreen, 149 ppi
- Android v4.2.2 Jelly Bean, TouchWiz UI
- 1.6GHz dual-core Intel Atom Z2560, PowerVR SGX544MP2, 1GB RAM
- 16/32GB internal storage, microSD card slot
- 3MP primary camera, 1.3MP secondary camera, 720p video recording
- microSIM slot, 42Mbps HSDPA, dual-band Wi-Fi b/g/n, Wi-Fi Direct, Bluetooth v4.0
- MicroUSB v2.0 port, MHL, USB Host
- IR Blaster, Stereo Speakers with Dolby Digital Sound
- Accelerometer, Compass, Ambient Light Sensor
- 8mm thin, 510 grams, 6800 mAh battery
The Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 comes with a dual-core processor, a 10.1 inch HD screen and Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean on board. None of these features are seem attractive right now as most of the competition has now moved to relatively better hardware. Devices like Nexus 7, Nexus 10, Sony Xperia Tablet Z and Asus Transformer Pad come with latest version of Android, higher resolution screens and more powerful processors. Moreover, details about the upcoming Galaxy Tab 4 have already started flowing in. Would you buy an year old tablet with 2 generations older version of operating system? Let us know in the comments below.
Hit the Samsung India eStore
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Metro PCS Launches the Galaxy S5 for a Whopping $649.00
The key to Samsung’s success and pure domination of Android phone sales is there ability to get the device everywhere. I mean seriously, EVERYWHERE. All four major carriers have the device, U.S. Cellular, Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile will have it shortly, and now we have Metro PCS. That covers a good portion of consumers just here in the states.
They have the Galaxy S5 listed for $649.00 outright, since Metro PCS is a pre-paid style service it isn’t surprising. They do offer free two shipping with your order though, minus weekends of course.
Any Metro PCS customer out there digging out their tax return cash to pick one up? Head over to the Metro PCS website for other details and ordering info.
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