I’m pretty particular about having a decent set of earphones around. I do certainly appreciate the super-expensive, super-quality ones, but there’s a time and a place for those. I’m particularly interested in good quality ‘normal’ earphones. Earphones for the morning rush-hour commute, for example, where you’re being pulled from pillar to post by the crowds. Routine situations such as this aren’t necessarily the place for your £300 earphones. I had a pair of mine severely damaged by some guy rushing off the tube carriage at the last minute and taking half of my earphone-set with him. He just gave me an apologetic look and rushed off as the doors closed, leaving me to pick up the debris on the floor.

So when the chaps at mobile accessory specialists Wireless Ground emailed to see if I’d like to take a look at a pair of NX80 Noisehush Stereo headset, I said yup!

They retail at a wholly reasonable — and in fact, rather unbelievable $19.95 or £12.70 (that’s against a standard RRP of $69 or £44).

I say unbelievable because, well, there are two really good points about this headset:

1. Everyone assumes that you are wearing some crazy super-super expensive earphones because of the red cord. It’s very reminicent of those Dr Dre headphones you see around the place.

2. The cord is a revelation. I don’t know what they’ve done with it but it’s really REALLY thin and the plastic or rubber they’ve used is brilliant at avoiding tangles. This is not to be under-rated. I wonder how many readers out there have got some ‘ok’ earphones that they have to unpack and unwind for minutes every single time they get on the train? You don’t have that problem with the NX80s.

Now then I’m no audio genius so I shouldn’t comment on the frequency or bass response. I really only have the following definitions that I use — bad, good, excellent. I would place the NoiseHush in the good segment. Definitely good, and arguably excellent depending on your quality appreciation. However, do remember the price point here.

There’s also an inline microphone and call-answer button. The microphone does a good job of filtering out external noise — but then again, remember the price point.

If you’re thinking about getting hold of a good pair of secondary earphones for the commute, then do consider these. You can make some serious mistakes at the $20/£20 price point as I have in the past with Vodafone (incidentally, the ones I bought at their store were also £12 — I wished I’d known about these Noisehush ones then!)

If you’re in the market, then Wireless Ground will ship you these for $19.95 plus $9.95 international shipping so $29 in total or £18.

Yesterday morning as I was packing my bag for the weekly trip to Paris, I had a feeling I was forgetting something. I checked the passport, the power cables, the charging leads and so on. All was good. I left the house.

It was only when I got on the tube toward the Eurostar terminal at London St. Pancras that I remembered: I’d forgotten my headphones. My decent in-ear ones. I can’t remember the brand name — but they were about £30 and they’ve been serving me well for months.

For a long time I’ve been a big fan of the Shure brand of headphones. They’re typically priced in exactly the same way Apple does it: Small, medium and stupidly expensive. In this case, their pricing tends to go £69, £129, £229. Something like that. It’s been at least two years since I bought any Shures. I think I’ve bought about 5 models in the last few years. The last pair were, if memory serves, the £200+ ones. All good until something went wrong with them and I had to decide whether to bother doing anything about it. I chose not to make the time to fix them and reached for another pair from an old Dell laptop.

They did the job. I then swapped to the most recent £30 pair. Again, they did the job.

I like to hear my music properly, but I have limited appreciation for ‘bass’ and all that jazz. You know when you talk to someone about headphones and they rave about the particular audio definition that one model offers beyond another? That’s when I zone out. Provided I can hear the music/audio nicely, all is good. And ideally, the headphones should be comfortable.

I prefer in-ear ones just because they block out the noise. Useful when you’re on the tube or trying to work in a coffee shop surrounded by chattering arses.

So realising that I’d left my headphones on my desk at home, I resolved to fix the issue at St. Pancras station.

I know that WH Smiths (the newsagent) tends to always have a pair of headphones for sale behind the counter. Useful, that.

When I arrived at the station, the exit I’d chosen presented me in front of the WH Smiths and the Vodafone shop.

I decided to choose the Vodafone shop. I reckoned they’d have a pair of cheap reasonably good headphones for sale.

I walked into the shop. The assistant manager chap was fiddling with the iPhone stand in the centre of the store. He looked up and said hello. I replied as I walked toward the back to the accessories section.

I can’t tell you how delighted I was to see a pair of in-ear headphones on the shelf. Excellent resource planning, Vodafone. Excellent thinking. I then looked at the price. I was expecting a price-bracket of £15-£30 for the bog standard pair, and I was allowing in my mind for a more expensive pair if available. My wallet was most definitely open to whatever Vodafone had to offer me.

The pair on the shelf were marked at £12 — with an integrated microphone. Bargain.

I noted that these headphones came with a range of adapters to work with Sony Ericsson, Samsung and so on. Very good. They also had extra ear buds. And, they were ‘noise cancelling’ too.

Noise cancelling? I wasn’t expecting much. Not for £12.

I took them to the till and paid.

Job done.

However, my expectations were set incorrectly. I was expecting to get normal audio. You know, good-enough quality to be able to listen to music. I didn’t need them to impress, just to work.

Unfortunately they didn’t do that very well. Indeed, they were very good at cancelling nearly all the audio coming out of my iPhone, especially in the left ear.

I’d say the left earbud was about 70% reduced. If I took out the right earbud, I could only just hear the audio from the left.

I did all sorts of tests with my iPhone and my laptop to try and see if the problem was caused by the audio input or by the headphones.

It was the headphones.

£12 spunked up the wall.

I expected a lot better.

I’m not using my £1.48 knock-off Apple iPhone headphones that I bought from Amazon. I bought these as my last resort. After visiting Paris a few weeks ago and forgetting all my chargers and cables, I bought a job-lot on Amazon and secreted them about my bag. I put micro-USB and iPhone cables in hard to access pockets. I also impulse-purchased this £1.48 pair of headphones and stuck them in the depths of the bag.

You never know — that was my logic.

I had intended the Vodafone headphones to be half decent replacements or alternatives for my £30 pair. They certainly looked good.

Dear me.

I think I’d have been better with the pair from WH Smiths. I don’t know that for sure but I’m willing to bet that the WH Smiths pair actually play audio normally.

So at least I’ve got some headphones. No thanks to Vodafone.

Perhaps I’ve got a dud pair? They were, after all, apparently manufactured in the UK by some mobile accessory firm. I threw the packaging away in London so I can’t name and SHAME the arses who produced the rubbish. Goodness knows what’s going on with quality control at the Vodafone accessory team.

I would like to suggest that you avoid making my mistake. If you’re in need of a half-decent pair of headphones because you’ve forgotten yours, go to another shop.

Further, I’d recommend buying the knock-off £1.48 iPhone headphones made by ‘Itek’ as they actually work. I just bought a few more pairs. Useful to have.

Meanwhile, what headphones do you use?

* According to our very own James Whatley. He mistakenly put them into the washing machine last night. He reckons they’re still working perfectly.

Useful to know, eh?

You can pick up a pair here.

As shown in my clip from the Great Wall, included in Mobile Industry Review Show 27, I took the unusual combination-product  – the Jabra BT8030 Bluetooth headphones, headset and speakers – with me to Beijing.  Deployed normally as a chunky pair of headphones which connect to mobile handsets or computers to perform standard duties in making calls and listening to music two buttons on the top of the device unfold it to an almost flat bar and amplify the volume to allow use as battery-powered bluetooth speakers.

As you can tell from the shape, this unit is most at home as headphones – with a long battery life and impressive sound quality they are a tight fit and too warm and heavy to wear for extended periods for my taste, although for someone preferring larger on-ear headphones these may be a good choice.  Any phone supporting the bluetooth A2DP profile can use them to listen to music wirelessly and in my experience the phone’s battery will be exhausted before the headset’s is.  As a bluetooth headset for calls the unit is unspectacular – working well with the usual array of call answering and volume buttons found on most devices, although microphone performance is weak with the microphone positioning is so far from the wearer’s mouth.

As speakers the stereo performance and bluetooth reception range both impress – at the opposite side of our appartment the music sounded clear with good left / right separation from substantial spacing between two channels.  Unfortunately the quality of the audio produced is weak – strong bass often overwhelms the sound and tinny top-end, with the majority of the sound muddy in the mid-range.  In normal use this is fine for casual listening of dance and pop music, but anything acoustic or more sonically challenging isn’t done justice.

Typically retailing in the UK at £70 this unit has reduced significantly in price since their launch.  With an excellent travel case and long battery life it may make a good travelling solution for those that can accept the size and weight when used as headphones – others may prefer to opt for separate units.  Without the regular need for mobile speakers I will opt for a pendant-style option I can use my regular headphones with when wanting wireless audio.