Best Value (V-MODA Bass Freq £24.99/$50) |
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While for many, the standard buds provided by Apple and other manufacturers are just fine – for most semi-discriminating listeners, they just won’t do. But for about $50 - around £25 -you can get great sound, great bass and great comfort and style in the form of the V-MODA Bass Freq. |
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V-MODA is the music lifestyle brand based in Hollywood, California. It designs and markets innovative products that fuse high-fashion and high-function, while paying homage to a rock'n'roll and house music lifestyle.
One of the nice features about these V-MODA earphones is the colour choices. While colour options do exist among other developers, V-MODA has eight options for colou r in the Bass Freq line. Each also has brightly coloured cables - a nice fashion touch. Most users should be able to match their MP3 colour. Replacement earphones can be about fashion - but first and foremost - they are about sound.
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Design |
The Bass Freq headphones are more of an in-ear design. You don't have to "cram" them deep into your ear canals like some and you don't have to wind the wires behind your ears like others. They are a simple in-ear design that gently goes into the ear canal. The benefits of in-ear designs have been noted many times before; improved sound isolation, greater efficiency and more direct-delivered sound to your ears. The Bass Freq have a very small footprint - so they do not really stick out far like other in-ear designs. The Bass Freq come in eight different colors which makes it very easy to match the color of your non-white or black MP3 player.
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Comfort |
I found the Bass Freq design to be very comfortable for hours of listening. I like the sound isolation but I really like the fact that these Earphones stayed in and didn't fall out. Extended listening was quite comfortable with the Bass Freq design. They don't sit so far down the ear canal that you get that strange feeling that can only be described as "disorientating" with other deep in ear designs.
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Sound Quality |
These little babies produce the kind of bass that makes one say "how the heck did they do that?" The overall sound quality was great - amazing for a $50.00 set of earphones. Bass was deep - not just boomy - but clean and deep. Every note of the bass drum can be heard and felt with these earphones. Vocals were clean and pure. I also found that the highs were not totally overpowered by the bass as can frequently happen with other "bass heavy" earphones. They simply add the deep bass that most factory earphones can't put into their earphones.
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What the Critics Say |
Cnet’s editors gave the V-Moda Bass Freq Earphones an 8.0 (Excellent) and said: “The V-Moda Bass Freq earphones are available in several stylish colors and are competitively priced at $50; they're louder than other earbuds and offer great sound quality.” Gear.ign.com said: “The V-Moda Bass-Freq earphones deliver on their promise of increased bass response. The enjoyment we could garner from listing to rap with the earphones was much greater than what we could extract from the songs via the stock iPod earphones.”
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Overall Conclusions |
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I found the Bass Freq to be very comfortable for long listening sessions. The Bass was tremendous and the over all character of the music was natural but very full - especially in the lower end.
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