Anyone who knows me, knows that I listen to a lot of podcasts and music. I also do the majority of my listening while wearing headphones. That means that I’ll go through at least 1-2 pairs of headphones per year – sometimes more, as I usually wear them when riding to work in the mornings and evenings on the bus on my daily commute. So when Altec Lansing introduced their new cloth covered headphones, my ears were in for a treat.
By cloth covered, what I mean is the headphone cables are all covered in a cloth weave, What this means is you have a durable, tangle free earbud experience; you won’t spend 5 minutes detangling these buds. When the earphones cable looks tangled, you can just take one end, give the cable a shake, and all the kinks and tangles will shake out.
This type of earbud itself is rapidly becoming one of my favorite types; it is an in-ear style ear style that comes with three different sized silicone tips. The tips are similar in size than the ones which come with my favorite cheap go-to earphones, Skullcandy’s Ink’d buds. The medium tips are the ones I use so that the buds will stay put in my ears; they do not fall out unless I snag the cable on a railing or something which, for me, happens a lot when I am commuting to work.
Here is what the look like when they are in my ear.
I have tried these buds in my laptops, my iPod, my Neuros II and the Nextar Z10 projector and they work very well, and the sound is good. I can’t tell you what bassy rap music sounds like, as I am not a fan of that style of music, but the bass response sees pretty normal and music does not sound tinny. They aren’t the best sounding buds on the planet, but they are also much better than the standard buds that come with a lot of MP3 players. I’d take these over the Skullcandy Ink’d buds any day.
The Altec Lansing Backbeat 106 Headphones are currently only $14.71 on Amazon.com.
What I liked: Cloth covered headphone cables mean no tangles! They sound good too.
What needs improvement: Pretty much nothing. The only thing I can think of is including a few extra of each size tip, as you can lose them when you pull them in and out of your pocket.
