SOL Republic is a new audio company founded by the same people who worked on the Beats headphones at Monster. Their singular goal is to provide a headphone that sounds good and doesn’t cost a fortune. More »
Budwrap wraps buds
Budwrap isn’t an insulating collar to protect your delicate office-worker’s hands from your chilled can of watery beer, although it could presumably be used as such. No, Budwrap is a silicon bracelet around which you can securely wrap your cellphone’s earbuds.
Designed by Mark Williams, a high school teacher from Texas, the Budwrap was inspired by two things he saw students doing every day: wearing rubber bracelets and wearing earbuds. The band sits on your wrist and has two ears which wrap over and provide open-sided tunnels into which the earbuds themselves are slotted. Then you wrap the cord gently around the band (the edges are raised to keep it from slipping off) and the jack socket has its own hole to keep it safe.
Because the Budwrap is sized for Apple’s white earbuds, the holes are in all the right places. What’s more, it turns out that your wrist (or the notionally perfect Budwrap wrist) is the same size as the iPhone 4. Or at least it also wraps around the iPhone, longwise, so you don’t have to wear this on your arm.
Mark is soliciting funding from Kickstarter, where a pledge of $15 will get you a black Budwrap “sent directly to your doorstep.” More colors will appear once the project is successful.
Budwrap product page [Budwrap. Thanks, Mark!]
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Welcome to Engadget’s Back to School guide! We know that this time of year can be pretty annoying and stressful for everyone, so we’re here to help out with the heartbreaking process of gadget buying for the school-aged crowd. Today, we’re giving your ears some love with a plethora of headphones that will keep you rocking around campus — and you can head to the Back to School hub to see the rest of the product guides as they’re added throughout the month. Be sure to keep checking back — at the end of the month we’ll be giving away a ton of the gear featured in our guides — and hit up the hub page right here!
Whether you’re dubstepping, duck walking or just plain sprinting to and from classes, you may want to add a soundtrack to your campus travels with some slick new headphones. Although, with so many choices and styles it can be a bit overwhelming to find a set that’s right for you. Luckily, we’re here to help! Don’t forget to enter our giveaway as well if you want a shot at winning your own set B&W’s brand spankin’ new C5 in-ears — not to mention more than $3,000 worth of gadgets that are sure to induce an extreme case of Gadget Acquisition Syndrome!
You’ll find some of our own recommendations just past the break, and another chance to enter our back to school giveaway. Simply leave a comment below to be entered to win, and click on over to our giveaway page for all the details.
Continue reading Engadget’s back to school guide 2011: headphones
Engadget’s back to school guide 2011: headphones originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 12 Aug 2011 12:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Hello, and welcome to yet another installment of Engadget Laboratories. This time around we’re taking a pseudo scientific look at sub-$100 earbuds. We’ve all been caught out, headphoneless, and desperate to put some tunes in our ears. So, the question is, what exactly do you get for your money when you stumble into a Best Buy and pick up whatever happens to be hanging on the shelves? Clearly you’re trading convenience for selection when you shuffle into a big box shop for your audio needs, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you should just grab the cheapest thing hanging by the register, or the most expensive for that matter. We randomly selected four sets of phones, at four different price points, and put it to a group of average Joes and Janes to see if they could actually tell the difference between a $100 pair of buds and a $10 pair (while blindfolded and trapped inside a booth).
Continue reading Big box earbuds put to a blind ‘taste’ test in the Engadget Labs
Big box earbuds put to a blind ‘taste’ test in the Engadget Labs originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 09 Aug 2011 19:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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You probably don’t think “top-tier audio” when you ponder the wonders of Colorado Springs, but sure enough, one of music’s best kept secrets is headquartered there, camped out slyly in quite the nondescript building. A few months back, we were granted unprecedented access to Westone’s lair (just a year and change after visiting Klipsch’s HQ), and they even let a film crew in for good measure. The goal? To show you, the budding audiophile, exactly how a set of custom in-ear monitors are crafted, and what kind of work goes into creating one of the planet’s most diminutive speaker arrangements. We’ve whipped up the entire experience there in the video above, but if you’re looking for a more textual perspective, head on past the break.
Westone lab tour: how in-ear monitors are made, from impressions to impressing (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 09 Aug 2011 12:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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How seriously is Apple considering the possibility of adding inductive charging to its line of iOS devices? Seriously enough to submit some crudely drawn images to the USPTO, at least. The company’s application for “Using an Audio Cable as an Inductive Charging Coil” surfaced today, featuring some interesting solutions to the problem of inductive charging. The first looks a bit like an iPhone scratching post. It’s a big monolith you wrap an audio cord around several times, effectively turning the cable into an inductive receiving coil. The earphones in the example have a metal mesh that serve as a contact for charging the device.
Another proposed system also puts the earphones to work — though without the need for that giant charging post. Instead the headphones slip into an acoustic charger, which cause their speakers to vibrate, creating a current that charges the device. As ever, just because a patent application surfaces doesn’t mean a final product will ever see the light of day — and these methods (particularly that big charging post) do seem like a long way to go to shave off the precious millimeters that inductive charging traditionally brings. But hey, Apple’s all about the svelte devices, and stranger things have certainly happened.
Apple’s inductive charging patent application finally puts its earbuds to good use originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 04 Aug 2011 10:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Vacation season is kicking into full gear now, and though you may be racking up the ground/air/sea miles, you’ll inevitably have some downtime. Why not watch a movie? More »
The first-ever earbuds designed to be drenched they aren’t, but they just might be one of the first to actually be “washable.” Sure enough, Pioneer’s new SE-CL331 headphones ($59.99) — available in white, pink and bright blue hues — can reportedly be “soaked and washed after every sports session without damaging sensitive electronic equipment.” Furthermore, they boast a newfangled ear holder that keeps ’em in place while your body’s in motion, and there’s a two-layer mesh and rubber ring that’ll prevent water from seeping in while submerged up to one meter of goop. The built-in 9mm drivers probably won’t live up to Westone standards, but then again, you can’t exactly take your ES5s into the kiddie pool.
Pioneer’s SE-CL331 earbuds are just begging to be washed originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 09 Jul 2011 06:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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It seems the Polk folk have had their fill of iPod docks, shower speakers, and soundbars, and are hungry for a new market: headphones. The outfit aims to “change the sonic landscape” (their words) for athletes and “ardent headphone users” with their UltraFit and UltraFocus monikered ear-gear. Between the two brands, Polk is promising four brightly-colored UltraFit sports ‘phones, including in-ear, on-ear, and earbud models, as well as two UltraFocus in-ear and over-ear noise canceling headphones. No word on price or release date, but Polk suggests you should be able to get your hands on its sporty headgear sometime this fall. Need more? You can find a buzzword-laden press release after the break.Continue reading Polk enters the headphone game with sporty, generic ear-speakers
Polk enters the headphone game with sporty, generic ear-speakers originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 16 Jun 2011 05:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Pioneer’s waterproof headphones can survive a trip through the washing machine
Running your iPod through a washing machine cycle might not be fatal, but it’s certainly not a good idea. On the other hand, sometimes I wish I could wash the earbuds I use with it, especially after they get to be a few months old and end up caked with wax and fluff.
So I’m very interested in Pioneer’s Washable Inner-Ear Sports Earphones, which are rated as waterproof to one meter. You might not want to swim with them (your MP3 player is still not waterproof, remember?) but you can throw them into the washing machine or just rinse them out in the shower after a workout. Better still, you can sweat as much as you like while wearing them. I’m sure I have killed at least one set of ‘buds with excessive perspiration.
Pioneer’s earbuds are available now, for $60, and come in a bewilderment of hideously bright colors.
Washable Inner-Ear Sports Earphones [Audiocubes]
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