Scosche Thud Buds HP6
Product Details
Manufacturer: Scosche
Distributor: In Car Tech
Website: link
Typical Selling price: £14.99
Inexpensive in-ear headphone, with coloured body, available in six shades, looking like Anodised alloy but in fact are plastic mouldings. The transducers fire through small metallic grilles but look to be quite large in diameter.
Despite there being a dearth of any frequency response or performance specifications available anywhere, I suspect them of wide frequency response and high efficiency to raise a good level on the few milliwatts an iPod can raise. (60mW). Available in the UK through In Car Tec and on line at carphonekits.com.
– Available in Pink, Blue, Green, Purple, Black and Red
– Noise-isolation comfort-moulded earpieces in three sizes (included)
– Non-Tangle cable
– 3.5mm tip/ring/sleeve stereo jack plug fitted
– Adjustable span with collar on cable
Editor Review : Scosche Thud Buds HP6P
Aptly named, these have a rich phat sound with a real lift to the bass which I found very pleasant on my old Thomas Dolby albums. They are equipped with a smooth non-tangly cord that goes to a single round wire after a collar around the twin-strand part. Found at the recent trade show, we gather the brand goes all the way from this simple fashion item to audiophile grade.
The big deal with these is that they go good and loud, far louder on the iPod Touch output than the standard Apple jobs and way louder than the hearing-aid derived Audeo ones I use for my phone, which have filters (and all of them sound honky and middley and low fi, even at the high cost!) So these simple fifteen quid fashion items bloody stonk all over the more expensive posher and more polite products for an awful lot of buyers.
The main issue after ‘do they sound good?’ (and in truth before sound for most of the sort of buyers looking for these) is ‘How cool do they look?’ The answer to that you can see and the Lovely Shauna from Mobile Electronics news, who wanted some so badly, has been chosen to do the girly test and keep ‘˜em afterwards if she likes them.. so here’s her review: ( to be added after publication)
Shauna: ‘Well, I do like the look of them and nagged Adam to see if I could have them at the end of the Expo show, when I spotted he’d got them to test. But he was being a bit mean to me and wouldn’t let me have them! Now he’s seen sense and knows I need to hear them, so now I’m going to check them right out on some Shauna-Tunes, as soon as I get them!”
Later after delivery: “I tried them out on my HTC HD2 playing Rhianna’s Rude Boy and the sound was brilliant! Also, I really hate it when others can hear your headphones. It really really aggravates me, cheeses me off to hear other people’s music through their headphones on the train. And with these, there was nothing leaking. I even asked the person next to me if they could hear them and they said no! I was alright to play my music full blast in my headphones. Also, the three size options of the little earbuddy cushion things was a good idea as I needed the smallest size and before, this was my big problem as I couldn’t find any that fitted my little ears.
I use them for all my calls anyway as the speaker is bust on my phone, so it really helps! I love the way they look and they are well designed and neat. Can I keep them?”
That’d be a YES, then!
Conclusion
In fact, for being so cute, so bloody rich and loud and so bizarrely cheap to buy, these in-ear Scosche ThudBud HP6P (for Pink) headphones score well enough to earn a coveted Talk Audio Recommended award(or they did, until they broke at three months of use)
Oh dear, edit and demotion…24/6/2011
For when we buy even cheap earbuds we expect to get at least a year’s use out of them, so if they fall to bits under normal girlie use in three months, then the build quality has to be demoted and likewise the Value For Money score. Since at that point of all falling to bits (the wires came off one of the earbuds) you lose all the money you spent. So in a sad Talk Audio first, we have a score edit and adjustment.
Overall 8.0
Sound Quality 8
Build Quality 6 (was an eight)
Comfort 9
Isolation 10
Value For Money 7 (was a ten so sounding great until they break…)
And stripped of Talk Audio Recommended flag award….