Altec Lansing Backbeat Series In Ear Headphone user reviews

5.0 stars

"Great sound quality at good price." on December 16, 2009 by halocog

Pros: Great sound that's engineered by Ultimate Ears.
Confortable fit.
Braided cloth/mesh cord

Cons: When the cord rubs against clothes at low volume, you can hear it.
if you keep these in your pocket, lint will get in and around the silicone tips.

Summary: great headphones at a good price, huge improvement over skullcandy's in the same price range.

3.5 stars

"better than standard headphones" on March 25, 2009 by denewbgp

Pros: good full sound
3 included ear tips
not tangle prone

Cons: the plastic in the earpieces is too large and can cause some discomfort

the cloth wire does rub against clothing an creates audible sound at low to medium volumes

lacking on base

1.5 stars

"I'd rather use the Headphones that came with my ipod" on May 19, 2009 by scrippsic

Pros: The only good thing about these headphones is that the headphone jack fits into an EDGE IPhone without an adapater.

Cons: Muddled base, undefined highs and unimpressive mids hiding underneath all of that...

Summary: I bought these earbuds last night to hold me over until Eytomtic could replace my Ety ER4's under warranty. I know that Ety ER4's are in a completely different class, but for $50 I expected headphones that were halfway decent.

Besides the sound quality the thing that really scared me was that my ears were fatigued in less than 30 minutes after putting these earbuds in. I've used my ety earbuds and my Sennheiser headphones for the last few years and I can't remember the last time my ears got fatigued from listening to music, but my ears began to ache and i started to get a headache after just half an hour of using these Altec Lansing earbuds.

One other thing that was dissapointing was the "sound isolation" quality. I was expecting ear buds that fully went into the ear canal and made a tight seal, but it seems like these headphones merely fit more sungly into the ear than most ear buds because of their soft silicone tips. Because the tips didn't go fully in the ear canal the sound isolation was minimal. I ride BART from San Francisco everday and the transbay tunnel creates a high pitched whine as the train heads to my office in the east bay. In order to avoid being bothered by the tunnel noise I need my earbuds to have a good seal in the ear canal. Unfortunately, this morning i had the unpleasent experience of listening to this high pitched whine along with my music all the way through the transbay tunnel.

I don't know that you can do any better for $40-$50, but I know that I don't think that these are worth the money and I would rather spend $150 on a pair of quality Shure or Ety's than waste more money on cheap Altec Lansing headphones. These headphones are going back to best buy tonight!!!