[Review] Take the Aukey wireless outdoor speaker on your next adventure

If you’re looking for a rugged Bluetooth speaker the next time you go camping, then this Aukey speaker may be what you’re looking for. Let’s take a look.

First Impressions

Weighing in at just over half a pound, this rugged device is perfect for camping, hiking, road trips, etc. The speaker is labeled as water resistant, although I wasn’t able to find an exact specification. The speaker grills are made from anodized aluminum, while the casing is made from acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS). To get technical, it’s a thermoplastic polymer with three monomers.

ABS rubber is amorphous in nature so it doesn’t have a true melting point. It’s also impact and mechanically tough even at lower temperatures, providing a safe range of use between -4˚ and 176˚ F. Even though the rubber is durable, it’s also silky smooth to the touch, so holding the speaker is a tactile delight. For reference, ABS is what Legos are made of.

Features

• Bluetooth version: 4.1
• Standard: A2DP, AVRCP, HFP, HSP
• Weight: 1.43 lbs (650.6 g)
• Dimensions: 8.23 x 3.27 x 2.87in (20.9 x 8.3 x 7.3cm)
• Play Time: 30hrs
• Charging Time: 6hrs
• Operating Range: up to 10m / 33ft
• Power Output: 2×5 W
• AUX: 3.5mm audio-in jack
• Power Input: DC 5V
• Battery Type: Rechargeable lithium-polymer battery (7.4V 2600mAh)

Usage

Even though this is a Bluetooth speaker, it still has an auxiliary port so you can plug in an aux cable directly into your phone. On the bottom, there is a 1/4’20 standard screw mount so you can screw it onto most camera tripods if you wish.

The speaker has dual 5W drivers which deliver a clear sound that is fairly balanced amongst bass, mids and highs. In addition, the speaker has a built in microphone to take audio calls.The sound output is loud so you don’t even have to turn it up much.

As a way to test the sound quality of audio devices, I like to play this song. It has a lot of bass and sub bass, and those drops are sick bro. Check it out:

On one end of the speaker you’ll find a place to attach a keychain attachment (not included) so you can hang the speaker from a tree branch, bike, a tent frame, etc.

The speaker battery seriously lasts for a long time. It’s 2600mAh, which may not seem like much, but it’s rated at 30hrs of battery life and that’s only if you use it frequently. I was able to use it for a week without needing to charge, but as it says in the manual, it does take six hours to charge.

Due to the bulk of the speaker you probably won’t find yourself casually throwing it into a purse or backpack, but it’s still portable enough to easily carry around in a suitcase or duffel bag.

Conclusion

After having reviewed several Aukey products, I can objectively say that they are a good company. This speaker, along with the Bluetooth headphones I reviewed, are both awesome products. It’s a great accessory for your smartphone, whether you have an iPhone or Android phone.

This speaker is affordable at $47.99 and you can pick it up on Amazon (Affiliate link).

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Greenlight: Taking car safety to the next level (Review)

Driving is not an option in our world. We rely heavily on vehicles to get us to where we need to go. Over the last few decades, we have seen huge leaps in car safety. Better seatbelts, airbags and even more secure ways to install a car seat for babies. We have tons of campaigns to encourage safer driving and discourage using our phones while driving. Fact is we know better and yet we still do it.

We have a major addiction to our phones. We feel the need for it to be by us at all times and since that’s not going to change the founders of Greenlight decided to create a way to use your phone to make us better drivers.

In the box

• SmartCradle
• iOS adapter
• Android adapter
• Greenlight button
• MicroUSB cord
• Cigarette lighter adapter

How it works

Once Greenlight is launched it begins recording on a loop. It will continually record the until you turn it off. When a trigger incident occurs, such as hard braking or quick take offs, Greenlight automatically saves the clip to your device and the cloud.

 Design

The SmartCradle

There are two parts to Greenlight, the hardware, and the app. Let’s start the walkthrough with the hardware itself. Greenlight has a typical sized cradle that is similar to most cradles that hold phones or GPS devices. It has adjustable sides that can conform to any size phone, including phablets. A suction cup bottom teamed with a sticky adhesive ensures that the SmartCradle stays firmly attached to the surface of your dash.

It also features recording in portrait or landscape mode by simply turning the phone sideways in either direction you wish to place it in. The SmartCradle supports tilt adjustment by pressing a small green button and placing it in the most comfortable viewing position.

You have two adapters cords, one for Android and iOS each, that connect to the Greenlight button. The button lights up green when it’s ready to go. The button itself has two microUSB ports, one that goes to the phone and the other that goes to the phone charger. For the system to work all cords must be connected.

Since we’ve covered the hardware, let’s go to the software. There is an app for both iOS and Android. Here we will be covering the Android version. When installed you will go through a short tutorial and it automatically goes into recording mode. At the bottom of the main screen, you have the options to stop the recording, take a snapshot, or save which does exactly the same thing as the green button which will be explained later.

The hamburger menu gives you several options. View your media gallery where you can choose what to do with your clips. Configure your video setting, like the length of recording and quality. You can also choose where to upload your clips and your uploading preferences.

The overall design of the entire product, both hardware and software are clean and elegant. The SmartCradle and button operate properly, while the app is easy to understand and navigate.

Functionality

Let’s start this by saying this is a hard product to test safely. The very nature of it almost demands you to be in a wreck to trigger the camera. However, there were a few times when I took off a little quicker than normal, it was enough to trigger the saving of the recording.

The Button

There is also two other ways to trigger the save feature. Simply tap the button with the G on it and it will save the recording. You may also tap the save button at the bottom right of the screen in the app.

Speaking of saving the recording you probably wonder how that works. By the time it recognizes that you are in a wreck, wouldn’t it be too late to record the incident properly? Glad you asked!

The Greenlight app gives you four different recording lengths from 30 seconds to three minutes. For this example, we will say your recording is set for one minute. When an incident trigger occurs it will take the previous 30 seconds before the trigger and the next 30 seconds after the trigger and save that portion. Anything not in that time frame is automatically dumped and you don’t have to worry about your phone being filled up with the useless footage.

There are other settings that are available including three video quality options from 480p to 1080p, but 480 is plenty. You also can upload your videos to either your Google Drive or Dropbox accounts. And don’t worry about automatic uploads, the default setting requires you to manually upload them. However, you can upload them in WiFi only or when you have service.

When receiving a call or text you will be removed from Greenlight but once you’re done you can simply return by tapping the button.

Upcoming Features

Coming down the road they have some other cool features not yet available in the beta that I wanted to cover. First, they will collect your driving data like average speed, braking profiles and more to give you a look at where you can improve.

Next Greenlight will give you a driving score just like a credit score. They do this by comparing your data against the rest of their data and determine your driving score. You can then track and get tips on how to improve your score.

They are also working on accessibility to ensure you can use tools like maps, music, and communication safely without putting yourself and others at risk. There is still many places they can take this app. But it’s still in early stages, so they need to concentrate on the first final product.

Review

Greenlight offers a lot of great features and makes it a little easier to let go of your phone. It’s a plug and plays product, literally. Once you dock the phone it starts up. Now I have to mention the beta flaw that I have encountered with this product. I call it a beta flaw because that’s exactly what it is.

If you are in an area where temperatures are high, it’s very likely you could experience overheating of your phone. This can also happen with older phones as well. A simple adjustment like lowering the resolution of the recording to 480 can ease the strain on the processors which in turn reduces the heat.

Now I could have simply ignored this in the review, but that wouldn’t be very honest nor would it have given me the opportunity to give praise to the team behind Greenlight. How Jason responded to the problem and worked hard with me to solve this issue shows how much they care about their product.

Now you have to remember again what I’m testing is a beta product and shouldn’t show up on the final release. There is a lot of time between now and September.

Greenlight takes the best features of driving cameras and elements of snapshot, from places like progressive and combines them to make a great product. There is potential for this to save money on insurance if they choose to accept it once it proves to be accurate.

Summary

This is by far one of the coolest gadgets I’ve had the pleasure to review. It’s a safety oriented product that doesn’t feel gimmicky. It offers a simple to use product that works well. The team behind Greenlight is working hard to take safety to the next level. Greenlight doesn’t ship until September, but they are taking pre-orders right now. At $50 it’s a reasonable price and great time to get in on the ground floor.

Pre-Order Greenlight

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Elephone S3 review: An elegant, unlocked, stock Android experience for $180

Designed by Chinese smartphone maker Elephone the S3 is a mid-range handset released in spring of 2016. Sold unlocked, it’s capable of working with GSM carriers on 3G and 4G technologies. If you’re a “typical” US consumer looking for a new phone for AT&T, T-Mobile, or any of their respective prepaid brands, this is the sort of device you might consider.

In terms of hardware, the Elephone S3 matches up closely with phones such as the Moto G (fourth generation), Blu Life One X, or Nuu Mobile X4. In other words, it’s more than enough to get you started in the world of smartphones, but it’s not going to set any benchmark records. Specs are a generation or two behind the flagships, but pricing is attractive enough to make them worth a closer look. It’s these sort of phones that come in around $150-$200 and offer the sort of experience most people would be happy with.

If there’s one thing that intrigued about this phone going in, it’s the nearly stock Android build. You don’t often find companies willing to leave off their own custom software touch; it’s common for a brand to push its own agenda wherever possible. Aside from the Nexus line, you don’t have much to choose from and that goes double when you’re at this price point. Most companies hope to differentiate with a unique skin but we were actually more impressed upon learning the Elephone S3 didn’t have one.

Specs

• 5.2inch bezel-less 2.5D Arc FHD 3D curved glass Incell screen (1920×1080 pixels)
• CPU:MediaTek MTK6753 octa-core 1.3GHz
• GPU:Mali-T720
• Android 6.0
• 3GB RAM
• 16GB internal storage
• microSD support for up 128GB
• Dual sim card: Micro + Nano sim card
• 5.0-MP front camera
• 13.0-MP Sony IMX135 camera with flashlight
• LTE: 800/1800/1900/2100/2300/2500/2600MHz

Design

Thanks to its bezel-less design and 2.5D Arc display, the Elephone S3 looks more expensive than it actually is. The unibody metal build materials keep pace with other, more costly phones such as the HTC 10 or the Samsung Galaxy S7. Judging books by their cover, you would be forgiven for thinking this one runs $300-$400.

The screen size comes in a 5.2-inches but the phone holds like a 4.7-inch or 5-inch handset. The Champagne Gold finish on our review unit was classy; the chamfered edges add just the right amount of sophistication to help the phone “pop” a bit. All in all, these elements combine to deliver a simple yet elegant approach that feels great in hand.

Looking directly at the phone, you’ll find the power and volume buttons along the right hand side of the device. Power sits below the volume and is the first one you’ll feel if blindly looking to take action. The buttons are ever so subtle and protrude ever so little. Pressing them, however, gives a nice response and a slightly audible click.  Across to the other side you’ll find the dual SIM tray slot which allows for micro-SIM and nano-SIM (with adapter) cards.

Up top we find the 3.5mm headphone plug, set off approximately ¾ to the right. Down below is the microUSB port flanked by a pair of stereo speakers. The back of the phone houses the rear 13.0MP Sony IMX135 camera and just below that, a fingerprint reader. Like the Nexus 6P, this one puts the reader in a convenient and natural spot. Finally, we move around to the front where the 5-megapixel camera sits

Display

With phones pushing ever closer to a 5.5-inch screen size as a norm, we often find that some of the best models on the market are just a tad unwieldy. Sure, they’re ultra-powerful and able to handle anything we throw at them, but they can get to be a literal to work with at times. Given we appreciate being able to operate a phone with one hand, the larger flagships sometimes don’t play nice.

The Elephone S3 fits comfortably in one hand and feels like it has a smaller screen. That is, rather, until you turn on the display and actually use it. It’s then that you see how spacious it is and how it reads for text and basic usage. At 5.2-inches, the S3’s is in somewhat of a sweet spot for us.

As for resolution, the Elephone offers up a 1920 x 1080 pixel IPS LCD screen. It’s on the lower end of the spectrum by today’s standard, but it doesn’t look bad whatsoever. We just happen to be in place now where a full HD screen is average. Would we like a 2K resolution? Sure, but then we’re trading off battery life, performance, and price. Given the rest of the hardware we’re completely content with the Elephone’s S3 screen.

We found the handset worked well in all lighting conditions; the ambient light sensor was responsive outdoors and pushed the brightness to where it was fairly easy to read text or discern what’s going on in photos. The DragonTrail Glass, which keeps things protected against your typical scuffs and scratches, is the same you’ll find in Sony’s Xperia Z line.

In summation, we quickly fell in love with edge-to-edge screen and pocketability of the Elephone S3.

Camera

The camera on the Elephone S3 was pretty solid but was far from perfect; the 13-megapixel rear shooter has an aperture of f/2.2 so it’s not quite on the level of the more costly phones. But, with that in mind, we still found the camera experience to be respectable.

We weren’t holding our breath over a $180 phone’s camera but we’ve come to expect at least something worth sharing to social media. That’s exactly what you get with this one — a camera that takes good and sometimes great photos worthy of sharing online. It’s not always fast and it’s not going to win any head-to-head competitions, but we’ve seen people settle for far less.

Autofocus was rather quick in most cases, but occasionally we found that we had to manually tap the display to set the focal point. Switching on the HDR enhancement we noticed no difference in focus times. Taking pictures did slow, though, and the S3 felt as if we were going to capture the wrong moments.

There were rare occasions (see in gallery above) where it would do an almost ghosting or two images on top in action scenes. In trying to capture a truck driving down the road it ended up putting two pieces of a truck together instead of blurring it. This only happened every so often in the dozens of pictures taken over a few weeks, and we learned how to “shoot around” this. Really, it comes down to having a super steady hand on the HDR shots.

Results varied across the board, but there’s nothing here that we felt was poor. It didn’t take long to learn what it was good at shooting and where it lacked. Sometimes we’d find some white haze in low-light indoor shots where others it would be fine. Again, remembering what we often do with these images snapped by phone, it’s somewhat of a non-starter. Once you filter a photo or throw it online it’s going to degrade anyhow.

There aren’t too many settings or custom shooting modes in the phone and the app itself is pretty bare bones. Toggling to and from video is straightforward enough as is setting flash or the front-facing camera. Dig a little deeper and you will find there are enough manual settings (ISO, white balance, exposure, etc.) to satisfy a more savvy user. Along those lines, you can also toggle timers, picture size, face detection, smile shot, and gesture shot.

Sound

Sound is rather impressive for the Elephone S3. There’s no rear or stereo setup, and there’s no software enhancement, but things come across loud and clear. Watching a video in landscape might take a short amount of time to get used to, but it’s no worse than any other brand with a similar hardware setup.

Taking calls on speaker was pleasurable as was listening to podcasts and select music. We’d like to say all music sounds great, but that’s just not the case with phones. Some are louder than others, yes, and a few models are more rich than others. By and large, though, it’s usually a case of how loud do you really want to hear before it gets annoying? Want to listen to extended periods of music? Throw in some headphones or pair to a Bluetooth speaker.

The Elephone S3 pumps out loud, crisp, and clear music. What it doesn’t do, though, is provide an overly rich sound. You won’t find the range of highs and lows that you might think of when you hear “stereo” sound.

Battery

One area where we would have liked to see improved a bit is in the battery. Because the phone runs Android 6.0, it does feature the Android Doze feature and its ability to put devices into a deeper sleep or shut down unused apps and services. That alone helps handsets eek out more usage life than in previous versions of Android. Good, right? Well…

The Elephone S3 comes with an internal, non-removable battery at 2100mAh capacity. That’s considerably lower than you’ll find in many of today’s Android phones. If we’re being honest, it’s about 500mAh, at a minimum, lower than it should have. A lot of the flagships and mid-range phones are pushing into that area and it would have been nice to see Elephone do the same.

How does this relate to daily usage? It’s good, but not great. The processor is a Mediatek CPU so it doesn’t come with the Quick Charge feature present in Qualcomm-powered models. We’re definitely able to get more than a typical day’s usage out of the phone, but we always appreciate a few more hours away from an outlet. On the plus side, the phone does charge fairly quickly, something we partially attribute to the 2100mAh capacity.

The Elephone S3 employs the microUSB charging port so you’ll be pleased to know all of those cables you have around the house still work. Would we like USB Type-C? In mid-2016 that’s a tossup. Any earlier and we wouldn’t care much. Later on, though, we’re going to expect it.

Software

Powered by Android 6.0, the Elephone S3 runs a pretty current version of the platform. With Android 6.0+ Marshmallow having been out for roughly a year now, we’d expect nothing less. Not only for some of the UI tweaks, but also for the security that comes with the latest releases. It’s not as if an older release leaves a phone necessarily vulnerable to anything particular, but there’s nothing like peace of mind.

The model we tested came with an essentially stock version of Android. This is a big plus in our eyes as it doesn’t force some weird OS down our throat. Considering this is a device from a Chinese vendor we expected to see a strange layout or configuration. After years of acclimating to the various custom flavors of Android, we are able to quickly hop in and navigate about our phones. The S3 proved to be no challenge in getting started; things were presented in English and nothing felt “foreign” about the experience.

Although the phone comes with a number of Google apps, one you won’t find out of the box is Chrome. You do get a browser but it’s a no-frills client that we weren’t in love with. Not that there’s anything wrong with it, but we’ve come to appreciate what other alternatives provide.

We’ve not had any previous time with Elephone models so we cannot attest to the manner in which software updates are done. Seeing as how this is a pretty lean and clean build, and the phone’s not tied to any carrier, we would not anticipate slowed updates. Then again, you’ll have to factor in price and market availability. Those two give us pause, at least for now.

Is there enough here to keep us from not recommending the phone solely based on operating system? Hardly. Just know that you may be left with what you get out of the box, save for some minor updates or OEM tweaks.

Performance

Generally speaking, the Elephone S3 was able to handle everything we threw at it. This includes your typical social media, productivity, and casual gaming. We didn’t load any high-end first person shooters on this one as it’s not what we might do on a daily basis. Moreover, we suspect the “average user” target demographic doesn’t have that sort of usage in mind. If you are here to play bleeding-edge games, you are likely eyeballing a different phone anyhow. But, given what we did with the phone, we didn’t run into any snags or hangups. Part of this is likely due to the clean OS that is void of carrier or heavy UI customizations.

The fingerprint reader responded well to our touches in almost every case. We did have a time or two where it wasn’t reading on the unlock screen but the backup PIN got us in just fine. Validating purchases in Google Play and PayPal was always accurate and as quick as we’d hoped for.

Hopping to and from various apps and games was seamless with no stuttering or noticeable lag. We might have liked more storage for local media but aren’t going to write the phone off because of it. Users will just want to get familiar with cloud-based backups sooner rather than later.

Conclusion

All things considered, the Elephone S3 makes for an enjoyable and elegant mid-range phone. It looks more expensive than it really is and handles pretty much anything your common user wants to do with it.

What really impressed us is the concept of a sub-$200 phone with a nearly stock Android OS. It’s unclear whether there will be any major updating beyond the 6.0 Marshmallow build but we’re okay with that today. You’re not going to find too many companies doing the stripped down Android approach so props to Elephone for taking this route.

We’re not sure how well the Elephone brand will fare in the US, but we’d be happy to recommend this one based off our experience with it. We don’t know how often the S3 will receive software updates so we’re cautious. Along those lines, finding custom cases and accessories might be trickier than normal. But, at roughly $180 it’s worth taking the chance, if only as a stop-gap replacement while you wait for the next big flagship.

We’d like to thank our friends at GeekBuying.com for providing us with the Elephone S3 for review.

Inateck Aluminum Car Mount: Keep your eyes on the road (Review)

Distracted driving has become a major problem in society. The National Safety Council reports that cell phone use while driving leads to 1.6 million crashes each year. We are all guilty of it. We preach it to our kids and yet we don’t follow our on advice. I’m not confident that we will stop this from happening, but maybe we can slow it down a bit. Inateck offers a simple car mount that can help keep your eyes closer to the road and maybe a little less distracted.

Design

Inateck’s Car Mount is gold polished with a firm rubber front so it won’t damage anything. It’s has a sleek look and won’t be an eyesore in the car when the phone isn’t attached. The downside is if you’re like me and own a phablet, it will take away an entire vent. So you’ll need to forget about that vent and let the other vents do the work.

Function

Inateck’s Car Mount is an aluminium magnet mount that attaches to your car’s air conditioner vent, much like an air freshener in the louvers. It comes with two pieces of metal, you can use either one, that attach to the back of your device or case with a sticky adhesive. If you have a metal phone, (preferably with a flat back) then no worries as it should attach straight to it.

Another option is sliding it under your phone case is it’s thin enough and the magnet isn’t strong enough to go through a thick case.

The car mount is universal to any car and has an easy to install, yet firm enough to stay kind of power. Once you have attached the mount to the louvers and the metal to your phone, place your phone against the mount and let the magnet do the rest. Simple right?

Summary

I won’t pretend this is a miracle product that will save countless lives. It won’t. But maybe it will keep you from looking down at your phone or at least keep you from fumbling for it while driving. It will be safe and secure in front of your eyes. For $11, Inateck’s Car Mount is a good deal.

Buy Inateck’s Car Mount

Audeze SINE headphone review: High-end on-ears, because why not?

You may have not heard of Audeze, and that’s okay. The company makes some of the most premium (and expensive) headphones out there, specializing in high-end planar magnetic driver technology. Now, most of its inventory is large, open-back over-ears, but the company has just launched a more mobile and wallet-friendly solution for the more general audience who want a taste of what planar magnetic technology can do. Let me introduce the SINE On-ear.

If you compare the SINE to the rest of Audeze’s lineup, it’s obvious that the SINE is new territory. It’s on-ear, closed-back, and doesn’t cost a fortune. Fortunately, that doesn’t mean that Audeze skimped on the package. This is the world’s first on-ear that uses planar magnetics. Let’s check out if the SINE are the new leader in the on-ear headphone market.

Design

From a distance, the SINE aren’t that special-looking. The design is fairly basic, and its black, stealthy styling is somewhat discrete – nothing like the over-engineered cans that Audeze is known for.

That isn’t necessarily a bad thing; not everyone likes to draw attention with a flashy adornment on their head. However, this isn’t to say that they don’t look/feel expensive. Their sleek shape and premium materials ensure that the user will get their money’s worth. And when you take a close look, you’ll see that Audeze is serious about every detail.

When you pick up the SINE you’ll immediately notice that the frame is completely metal, resulting in a satisfying heft. This is certainly refreshing compared to today’s sea of plastic, cheap-feeling headphones. It feels solidly constructed, like a $500 headphone should.

The frame’s unique, truss-like design is from Audeze’s collaboration with a BMW subsidiary called DesignWorks. That group has the freedom to come up with some rad, unconventional designs, and I think added a sweet touch to the SINE’s somewhat basic form. The leather-wrapped ear cups and headband also up the sophistication.

At first glance, you may be fooled into thinking that the SINE are over-ear headphones. The ear cups are fairly large for on-ears. Audeze put a lot of consideration into the ear cup shape, and you’ll notice that their asymmetrical, tapered contour makes sense for the shape of the ear.

While the SINE cannot fold and collapse in size, the ear cups can rotate flat to slim its size.

This also means that Audeze was able to make the driver opening larger than average, which it says allows for more air and better acoustics. I also imagine that you get a better distribution of pressure on your ear. On-ear headphones can be tricky in regard to comfort, because the ear pads rest on top of the ear instead of around it.

Function

So to address one of the biggest questions for on-ear headphones: How comfortable are they?

Very. The larger than standard ear pad size works for me. The comfort is also due in part to the superbly supple ear pads. The cushions are very soft (kind of squishy) and the leather feels great against the ears. Isolation is terrific for an on-ear too, as the large ear pads engulf the ears and mold to fill any openings where air can escape. Thick padded over-ears will still easily beat it out in terms of isolation, but this ain’t bad for an on-ear. But bear in mind that the SINE isn’t exempt from discomfort over a lengthy listening session or heating up your ears.

A nice feature of the SINE is a removable cable, giving you the flexibility to replace it or use a third-party cable. Interestingly, both ear cups get their own 3.5mm audio input (probably the only on-ear on the market like this).

This allows the user to have a balanced output (separate left and right lines, if your player supports it). Although, Audeze only includes a combined cable, but a nice one at that. It’s lengthy (about 46″), very sturdy, and flat (which helps against tangles).

I must mention that the SINE has a unique perk, but sadly for us Android users, it’s only for Apple devices. There’s a variant that comes with a cable that has a custom in-line digital-to-analog converter (DAC). For folks not familiar with what that means, it’s a dedicated sound processor, built into the cable. Only, the only one Audeze makes at the moment has a lightning connector at the end of it. Here’s hoping that Audeze makes a Type-C compatible one in the future.

The $499 model of the SINE includes a quality carrying pouch, an lightning-compatible audio cable with built-in DAC, and a standard 3.5mm jack audio cable.

The 24-bit DAC unit is also a 3-button remote/mic.

The package with the special cable runs at $499 price, while the standard model will save you $50, at $449.

Sound

Since this is Audeze we’re talking about, you’d be right to expect some bangin’ sound quality. Rightly so. One important mention is that despite the SINE being a deviation from Audeze’s typical monster cans, they still pack top-notch planar magnetic drivers. This is a first for an on-ear headphone (I really like how Audeze follows its own standard and not the industry’s). Audeze explains what planar magnetic technology is in comparison to the conventional dynamic driver, so I don’t have to. Essentially, the diaphragm is able to respond more quickly, resulting in better dynamics and more accuracy.

That sounds great on paper, but does it mean anything in the real world? Yes, if you have an ear for the details. You can definitely pick up on the fast-paced response of the driver. This is one of the most detailed reproductions I’ve heard. And I can’t believe I’m saying that for an on-ear headphone.

The upper end is where the technology really shines. The treble is sparkly, airy, and clear. The mid-range is my next favorite. I love that it’s forward, lush, and natural. The sound engages the listener through realistic detail. But with that said, the SINE can’t work magic. It is still an on-ear, and its soundstage can’t quite match the fullness of larger headphones. The SINE is more confined in comparison (more width than height and depth), but still impressive for an on-ear.

The bass response may not be everyone’s cup of tea. I’m not talking about its quality, but it’s presence. The SINE doesn’t produce the head-rattling boom that bassheads live for. I want to describe it as delicate, but it’s still deep, clean, and full-bodied. The SINE tries to stay true to the music, and lets it do the talking.

Final Thoughts

I love that the SINE exists, not just because it’s an excellent pair of headphones, but because it goes against the status quo. We’ve known on-ears to be causal headphones, but Audeze comes in and turns the category around. And not only does it work in being something that audiophiles can be proud of, but the in-line DAC offers something you won’t find on any other headphone (if you’re an Apple user, that is).

And apparently the market is convinced on the idea of a high-end on-ear, because the SINE is currently backordered on its website, “due to overwhelming demand” (as of time of this writing). Hit up the official page at the link below for more details.

Audeze SINE On-Ear product page