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About a week ago Anker sent me a free sample of the Soundbuds Verve Wired Headphones in Black and Gray. They wanted my thoughts and opinions on their new product. Below is my review and features offered on the Anker SoundBuds Verve Wired Headphones.
Anker SoundBuds Verve Wired Headphones – Features
The new wired earbuds come with powerful 10mm composite drivers that deliver audio with clear highs, mids, and powerful bass. To help block out the outside world the earbuds come with a noise-isolating design that reduces external sound. And to keep your hands free, your eyes away from your screen, and focused on whatever activity you are working on, Anker has added a wired in-line remote with microphone for answering calls.
As with many wired headsets the wired connections wear out. This typically happens when you bend and move the wires around. Each time you bend the wire, that’s one less time you can bend the wire. As the wire wears out, the connection wears out. To resolve this issue, Anker toughed up the wire design to withstand over 15000 bends.
Anker has provided its customers with the option to choose from black/gray earbuds and white/gray earbuds. Each set comes with the SoundBuds Verve, XS/S/M/L/XL EarTips, Carry Pouch, their 18-month warranty, and friendly customer service.
If for any reason your earbuds fail, please contact Anker Support. All products purchased from an authorized dealer comes with an 18-month warranty and friendly customer service. They also have a message board where you can learn more about products offered by Anker and get minor quick support from the community (I’m on there). If they can help, they will, if not they will suggest you contact support via email.
Anker SoundBuds Verve Wired Headphones – The Review
As I mentioned earlier, Anker sent me the Anker SoundBuds Verve Wired Headphones in black and gray for me to review. Below is my real life review of the earbuds. You won’t find any technical tests, but you will read about my experiences from everything from packaging to how they stack up against the Apple wired earbuds.
The packaging
As with most of Anker’s products, the packaging is a simple, easy to open white and blue box that has a picture of the product on the front and the specs/important information on the other side. The product I received was wrapped in shrink wrap that sealed up the product to keep it safe and tamper free.
Once opened everything was protected in plastic bags or in separated compartments. One bag had the ear pads and the earbuds came in its pouch wrapped in a small circle. To hold earbuds in place, they tied up by a Anker logoed hook-and-loop strip.
The Build Quality
After looking over everything, I found that the Anker SoundBuds Verve Wired Headphones were made well and looks good doing it. The wired portion of the earbuds is thick gray rubber tube that is slightly translucent. It just clear enough you can see the twisted wires on the inside.
The connector is right angled and gold plated. To help secure the wire in place and to reinforce the connection the wire is surrounded by reinforced plastic
As to the earbuds, they are just heavy enough you know their in your ears but not heavy enough to hurt your ears. For me, the ear pads that came installed worked great. But my wife had to change them to the extra small size. The wire connection is also reinforced by black shrink heated hose.
The inline remote microphone doesn’t have the reinforced heat shrink hose. But the remote is made well. Its a light weight matte black plastic cylinder inline remove. The remote button will only answer and end calls. The button is high gloss and has a sturdy feel to it. on the opposite side houses the microphone.
The Sound Quality
The first test I did was to use the Anker SoundBuds Verve Wired Headphones connected to my laptop to watch the Kingsman – The Golden Circle.
I have to say I’m impressed with the sound quality. I think they sound better than my Anker’s wireless earbuds. I think the wired earbuds’ sound quality is close in quality to some of the lower end premium earbuds.
During the action scenes you could hear all explosions, gunshots, and damaged to the characters clearly. It sounded like I was sitting in a home theater room. The base was heavy and I couldn’t even max out those 10mm speakers.
During the speaking scenes the voices were clear and didn’t have that fake sound that you sometimes get from cheap earbuds.
Music sounds good. Its almost as good as my over-the-ear headset. If they were wireless I would switch my old ones and make these my main set.
Using the Hands Free Option
For using the microphone test, I introduced the Anker Verve Wired Earbuds to my wife and had her use the device for a while. I normally do not use wired headsets and rarely use hands free options when wired up. My wife has been using the Apple Wired Earbuds for years and loves them. So I got her to do the tests.
She said that after changing out the ear pads they were comfortable. She could clearly hear the other person on the line and they could hear her clearly. While I was traveling, I talked to her while I was on the car speaker and mic system and I had no issues clearly hearing her and she could hear me just fine.
Her only issue is the in-line mic needs a volume up/down and music controls. Why did Anker not put these on the remote?
Normally for me, my wireless earbuds must have controls on the wired part or on the earbud. If I can’t control the sound and music, then I will not purchase the headset. My wife is the same way. For her, it’s a must. Her volume rocker buttons on her iPhone are damaged. So she has to control sound from the screen or from the headset. When she’s driving or she’s doing something and doesn’t want to look a the phone screen. Having to deal with sound by adjusting it on the phone defeats the purpose of the hands free option.
Because of this issue, she prefers her Apple Wired Earbuds over the Anker SoundBuds Verve Wired Headphones. If she didn’t need volume controls she would have chosen the Anker Verve Wired Earbuds. They sound better and feel better in her ears.
Final Thoughts
Overall, we love the new earbuds and recommend them to anyone who needs a premium set of earbuds at budget friendly prices. For less than $20, you can’t beat thet price. I’ve paid $30 for a pair of wired earbuds and only get a few months out them before they broke and the sound quality was only ok. Currently, the Anker Verve Wired Earbuds are running $15.99 on Amazon but Anker is always running promotions, so you could get these for less.
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