Gadgetoid

You can pick up a tolerably good Bluetooth headset right now for just £9.95 and not only make yourself look like a cyborg with the daringly shaped ear-piece but connect the supplied stereo earbuds and rock out to your music from an A2DP compatible phone.

I’m referring to the Qstik EVOQ Bluetooth Headset which has received plentuy of positive feedback, and it’s not difficult to see why. The EVOQ is a flexible bluetooth headset which can go from being a (slightly ugly) ear-piece to affixing to your car dashboard as an in-car hands-free system or sitting in your pocket piping tunes to your ears via bluetooth A2DP and the supplied earbuds.

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Review by Rob Farley

The Sennheiser CX550 Style II earphones are your typical, in-ear, noise blocking affair. These noise blocking, sound producing earplugs are loved by as many as they are hated and their form factor is as close as you can get to the Marmite of ‘phones.

Most of the “hate it” camp, however, could be safely assumed to be comprised of people who have never tried in-ear headphones, or simply tried a cheap pair without an adaptor suitable to their ear size. There’s absolutely no doubt that good quality in-ear phones consistently sound better and fit better than regular earphones.

Retailing at about £50-£60, and produced by the enormously popular and successful Sennheiser the CX550 are much more than just noise making earplugs and are certainly not cheap, especially when the excellent MX560 earphones, and many other entry-level ‘phones retail at under £20.

So, are the CX550 Style II Earphones worth the extra mulah?

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Sandberg CobraSet

If you or a special someone is looking for a great value headset either for gaming, chatting or just listening to music on your computer then look no further than the Sandberg CobraSet.

The light yet sturdy frame houses two circumaural headphones and a flexible microphone, it sits comfortably on the head for long periods of time without bother and has excellent sound quality, especially considering the price tag.

It has two 3.5mm jacks, one for the headphones and one for the microphone, and also has an inline volume control to give you extra control when you need it.

The Sandberg Cobraset is available for purchase from Amazon.co.uk for a little over £33.

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Way back in February I took a look at the Sennheiser PXC 350 noise cancelling headphones and found them to be exceptionally good at blocking out unwanted office noises.

I’ve since had the opportunity to try them one of their intended environments, two 12 hour flights to and from Mauritius, and have found them, once again, to be exceptionally good at blocking out a considerable amount of noise.

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Borrowing heavily from the design of Sennheisers award winning PXC350 “cloak of silence” noise canceling headphones the PC350 Gaming Headset removes the noise canceling, adds a microphone and positions itself as a high-end gaming product designed to help you keep your in-game noise to yourself.

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At last I’m back in touch with my old friends Saitek, albeit through yet another new point of contact who have made available the Saitek 3D 210 speakers for my perusal.

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I’ve always found the iPod a pain when I’ve wanted to update it with some songs at work, out of the box there’s simply no way to synchronise it with iTunes installed on my windows workstation and maintain my sync with iTunes on my Mac at home.

So, naturally, when I saw a promotion for TuneRanger hit my inbox I had to give it a Gadgetoid once over.

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Back in October the Sennheiser PXC 450 were rated the best noise canceling headphone on the market, in november a black edition was released dubbed the PXC 350 and retailing for some £70 less. It’s this version I managed to obtain for the Gadgetoid once over, and it didn’t take much more than the insertion of batteries and the flip of just one switch to realize exactly how the Sennheiser PXC 450 stole the noise canceling crown. In fact, the PXC 350s have won the very first Gadgetoid “really rather good” award.

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Originally written for elektriq.com

The MX 55 VC headphones are one of the street series, they boast a twist-to-fit design that looks uncomfortable at first glance but, once properly configured, feels good and locks the headphones into your ears to prevent them falling out at every opportunity- as in-ear phones so often do. The phones come with a selection of rubber caps that adjust the fit for optimum comfort and security.

The strange attachments designed to hold the headphones in your ears will feel weird at first but it’s easy to get used to them quickly.

The sound quality, as is typical of Sennheiser, is excellent with the top, middle and bass represented to perfection, the headphones don’t entirely cut out external sound which is a good and bad thing depending on preference. The sound re-production is so good that it reveals line noise where lesser headphones would have dampened it.

The MX 55 VC come with an inline sliding volume control and the standard asymmetrical earphone arrangement with the left cable being shorter than the right. Unfortunately there is no clamp on the volume control meaning it weighs down on the phones and has a tendency of working its way down under clothing needing to be pulled up. A clip on the volume control would have made the headphones perfect, and much more suitable for joggers or people working out at the gym where lose cables would also be a pain. Sadly though the lack of a clip is a fatal flaw for anyone doing anything much more than walking but these headphones are otherwise excellent.

As a final note, the MX 55 VC also come with a bizarre slip carry case that keeps them protected in the depths of your bag, and additionally a set of replacement alternate colour inserts for, uh, style reasons!

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