• Earphones

V-Moda Vibe II Duo

V-Moda is a company renowned for their beautifully designed and sounding earphones. It’s latest creation is the Vibe II Duo, the sequel to one of the best selling (and rightfully so) iPhone earphones. It’s solid metal casing gives the user a feel of comfort and quality, at the same time providing great acoustics. Included in the box is a bucketload of accessories: 4 different sized silicon tips in two colours (total of eight pairs), ear clips to allow an alternate method to wear them, a cable tidy clip and a carry case. The headphones have two metal protrusions on the fabric covered cable, one with a large rubber button to control playback, voice control (iPhone only) and call control (obviously iPhone only). The other protrusion is on the right earphone cable, a small though sensitive (maybe even overly so) microphone. The microphones call quality matches that of the iPhone Apple Headset, which to anyone who has used the headset, isn’t exactly a great thing given the price.

Design: The design of the Vibe IIs depends a lot on the colour choice. If you stick with the tried and tested black, you get a nice looking air of black metal headphones with gunmetal and silver highlights. If you go for a bit more adventurous option however, you get a gem look where on the black there is silver. In all honesty, unless you find the others cheaper, go for the black. As I mentioned briefly before, the cable is covered in a woven fabric, a nice touch that adds durability and strength as well as looking good.

Sound Quality: Sound is one of the things that you really get what you pay for in life. And the Vibe II is certainly no exception. V-Moda lives up to its name by providing the heavy bass die hard fans expect, but not to the point that it is unusable for anything other than heavy metal music. In fact, overall, the sound quality does live up to the price tag, providing something users will like a lot and will even satisfy the audiophiles out there.

Playback Control: works with all of the latest iPods and iPhones, though voice control only works with the 3GS. Functions as you would expect overall, but volume control would be a more than welcome addition.

Call Quality: as briefly mentioned above, the call quality is really quite disappointing for a device at this price point, expect to sound quite, washed out and have overly high treble levels to your caller, but, having handsfree calling is a bonus in itself, even if the quality is not great.

Final Thoughts: Great design and sound quality are the two main pluses for the Vibe IIs, but with a high price point of $128 US, and an average sounding microphone, it is really up to you to decide whether the sound quality and design is important enough for you to fork out that much cash.

Available From: www.v-moda.com

Price: $128US + Postage

Compatibility: All iPod + iPhone models, only more recent ones for Playback control.

Final Score: 7 out of 10 (Recommended)