Hasta La Gadget!

IFrogz sent through yet another pair of headphones to test and this time, finally, they’re good enough to buy. The Comfort Series CS40 cans are an over-the-head, over-the-ear design and, while they don’t offer the big, detailed sound of even slightly more expensive headphones, they’re competent, tough and, yes, comfortable.

The design is simple and good looking (with one horrible blemish). The ‘phones have a steel band covered with a hard rubber strip up top and two tough plastic sliding sections from which the cups hang. The cups can gimbal inside their rings, which themselves fold up and inside the band. This means that the full-sized headphones fold small for throwing in a bag.

The “comfort” part comes from the deep and very soft cushions which also appear to be sealed pretty well against at least a light shower. These cushions are almost erotic to the touch, and combined with the gentle spring of the steel band and the non-slip rubber grip, the headphones sit very firmly but softly on your melon.

But what about the sound? Not bad. I tested them against a pair of Panasonic RP-HTX7s, the shell-eared, candy-colored retro-cans you see everywhere (and which I bought myself), and also against Apple’s stock earbuds. The iFrogz beat the Apple ‘buds immediately. They have a good bass, very deep and resonant but still well controlled. With lossless-encoded chip-tunes (A Kind of Bloop, if you must know), they came close to the depth of the Panasonics.

But the balance of the music is somehow off. Where the Panasonics give a sense of the music existing around you (the “stereo image”) and the bass, higher tones and voices are both balanced and separated, the iFrogz kind of crams things together. Jack White’s voice on Catch Hell Blues, for example, doesn’t actually sound tinny, but you think it does.

If you just put them on and listen without comparison, though, the iFrogz do a good job, and the build-quality is more than up to the $40 price tag (the Panasonics are $60). They really feel solid, but still lightweight, and the foldability makes them doubly attractive: I have always chosen the earbuds over the Panasonics when traveling because they are so bulky.

And the horrible blemish? The stupid radiation logo on the side. These might be in the “Ear-Pollution” range, but that symbol over your ears mars an otherwise clean and almost classic design.

iFrogz Comfort Series [iFrogz. Thanks, Ashley!]

Photos: Charlie Sorrel