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On the surface, the sales pitch for the headphone Pro by CMF by Nothing is not

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that compelling. It's got an AI button. Oh, goody. It features expressive

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modular design, which as far as I can tell means you can change out the ear

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cups. And it has a slider that takes the

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sound signature from a little on the bass-heavy SIDE TO OH MY GOD, WHAT WERE

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THEY THINKING? But if we look a little deeper, we might find a very compelling

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feature set at a shockingly reasonable price. $84 at the time of filming. That

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is with 40 mm nickel-plated drivers, LDAC and hi-res certification for its

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Bluetooth connectivity, up to 100 hours of playback, and they even claim 8 hours

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of playback on just a 5-minute quick charge, although you can cut those

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numbers in half if you're using active noise cancellation. Oh, did I mention

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active noise cancellation and probably my favorite part, a hyper-personalized

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listening experience that Apple only wishes they could deliver to their

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customers. Yes, I'm still upset about the AirPods Pro 3s. Included in the box

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you will find ah, yes, instructions to install the Nothing X app. What else we

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got going on here? The headphones themselves. Am I going to need

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instructions for the detachable ear cups here that uh

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transform my headphones into an extension of my personality, giving me

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the freedom to adapt colors to match my mood and create a look that's uniquely

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mine, as long as that look is uh What were the colors available? Green and

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orange? For the ear cups? Ah, yes, uniquely mine though. I may need

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instructions. Oh, I don't. Look at that. See, other

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headphone manufacturers, it could be that easy. Sorry, I'm getting ahead of

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myself a little bit. Oh, look, they can include a cable.

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In this case, a 3 and 1/2 mm cable, but

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no charging Wow, that's an odd choice.

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Truly malicious compliance. Oh, we have to include everything you need to use

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the product? How about this archaic jack that you no longer have a device in your

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pocket that uses? Got them. I hate how quickly my

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expectations of a complete accessory package have turned into well, a 3 and

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1/2 mm cable and a carrying sleeve is more than Apple gave me. Anyway, let's

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have a look at the interface. On the right we find our USB-C charging port,

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our smart assistant button, which from my understanding can be remapped within

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the Nothing X app, which they claim offers the same functionality across

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both Android and iOS, which is definitely a plus, as well as our volume

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wheel, and one of the external shielded microphones to help with noise

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cancellation. Over on the other side, we've got another mic, 3 and 1/2 mm

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jack, indicator LED that does indicates

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the battery status if you press the power button. Very neat. Power button,

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as well as the bass slider, and a final

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exterior microphone. In terms of build quality overall, it manages to feel

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pretty plasticky even though it uses metal for the headband adjustment

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mechanism, but not any more so than I would expect from a headphone that's

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priced honestly even significantly higher than this. At $100, I'm feeling

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pretty good about my purchase, especially looking at like the quality

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of the foam that they're using on the ear cups. As I mentioned before, I don't

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love super skinny headbands, but at least they had the foresight to actually

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put some cushioning in it. And they've also taken the design approach of

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applying a slightly higher clamping pressure to give you a good seal and to

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take some of the pressure off of your dome. Honestly, they feel not bad.

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They're somehow kind of on the heavy side for feeling plasticky, but

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not unreasonable at all. Like this ain't no AirPods Max or whatever. AirPods Max?

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those things, man. They're so heavy.

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How should I try them first? With the bass slider all the way up or with it

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all the way down? We're going full webs to start. Decent isolation, and I don't

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even have the ANC on yet. Let's power these up. After this message from our

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Check it out today. Wow, look at that. Immediately prompted to grab the app and

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install it just from these being on and in pairing mode nearby. Isn't that

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great? It's not quite the AirPods experience, but pretty solid. Mm,

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hold to switch active noise cancellation modes. I think it was on by default, but

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let's go ahead and give it a quick try. Yes, it was on by default. Not the

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greatest transparency mode I've ever heard, but one of the most challenging

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things to do is have your own voice sound natural to you through your

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headphones transparency mode. So, does one of you want to maybe say something? Hey, Lance. How you doing? Actually,

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much better than my own voice. So, cool.

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Kind of a mushy button. Can't say that that's my favorite, but

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gets the job done. And not a ton of the pressure effect of having the ANC on.

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They're no AirPods Pro 3s. I mean, nothing is. Well, nothing isn't, but

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See, damn it, Carl Pei. Why did you name

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your company this? Okay, it doesn't matter. The point is, seems good so far,

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but not industry leading. Okay, press this button to activate your voice assistant. No, I don't think I ever

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will. Detachable ear cushions. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we've done that.

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Wait, update available. Ah. Okay, firmware update. This is good.

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This is good. One moment, please. ANC seems really solid though.

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Yeah, no, like solid. Nothing claims a 40 decibel reduction overall if you use

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their ANC. It's pretty remarkable to see how far active noise cancellation has

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come. I mean, just a few short years ago, something this good would have been

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like, oh yeah, man, Bose is so good at noise cancellation, nobody comes close.

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Excuse me, but that doesn't make got randos like Nothing coming out for $84

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with what is would have blown my mind not that long

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ago. My firmware update's done. Three levels of noise cancellation, including

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their adaptive noise cancellation, which will monitor the environment around you.

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And there's plenty of other things to like about Nothing's companion app. You can play around with your spatial audio

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settings, which personally I'm not that into, or you can dig into yes, my

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friends, their personal sound profiler, which takes just a few minutes

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apparently, and why don't we do that? Or their extremely in-depth EQ. Like, man,

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they are pretty much setting the standard as far

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as I can tell for personalizing the audio experience both automatically and

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also giving you the manual adjustments that you might want if you're an

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audiophile or if you have more particular tastes. Is what I would say,

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except that whether it's because they didn't partner with KEF on the tuning or

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because they want to differentiate their higher-end products, they only support a

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basic EQ with a couple of modes and the

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ability to kind of broadly drag bass, treble, and mids around. There's no

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parametric EQ on these headphones. With

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that said, I'm still expecting the experience to be pretty good because we

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do still get their personal sound profiler, which we can go through and

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set up now. Okay, here we go.

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Cool. And the best part is it stores this profile on the device themselves.

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So, whatever app you're using or whatever device you're using, you should

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be good to go. With that enabled and a flat setting in the basic EQ, there's

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not much else to show here. As always, I wish there was the ability to just fully

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customize what things do with the single press or press and hold, but like this

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energy slider, if I could just have it make like a slide whistle noise in my ear, that

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would probably be more useful than tuning the bass for how much energy I'm

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feeling right now. To be clear, it's not the first time I've encountered this

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gimmick, and I even was positive about it back in the day when I was rocking my

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IE80 in-ears that had the little dial on them for how much bass, but in practice,

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I never used it then and I'm never going to use it now. I don't think I care

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about low lag mode right now. Don't need dual connection, and that's about it.

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Let's give them a shot, shall we?

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Wow, that's without spatial audio on, eh? I was convinced for a very brief

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moment that I accidentally was listening to my cell phone. Not in terms of the

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the quality, it was just the initial like crackle crackle crackle crackle at the beginning, so not critiquing that,

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but woah.

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With the bass slider all the way up, they are

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comically bass-heavy.

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I don't know how much of this is going to translate, man, but like, can you

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hear that, brother? Let's turn them down now because as you

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can see from the helpful frequency response graph that you're looking at

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that was created by the lab in collaboration with DMS, if we

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dial them all the way back down, we actually get pretty close to what would

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be the average expected preference range. Yeah.

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Now they're not overpowering. They don't have anything to prove to the person

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who's just trying to enjoy sitting in in their car and having a conversation with

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the person in the passenger seat as they roll up with their arm on the window and

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they're like going like this like, "Notice me. Please notice me, you know?"

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Nothing to prove with the slider down. Ooh.

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Not loving the granularity on the volume slider. I was just trying to dial it in

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to, you know, something appropriate to stick up to the mic, and it's off or

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loud enough that it would not be easy for me to

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talk over them. And they don't have any kind of automatic conversation mode or

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anything like that.

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You got to give them credit. The slider does what it says on the tin and as far

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as overpowering bass goes, at least it's

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reasonably well controlled. Like I've heard sloppier. All right, let's get

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some thoughts on the microphone because while the speakers themselves sound

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Honestly, surprisingly good considering that these

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are again $84, right? With active noise

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cancellation, with solid claims of battery life and reasonable build

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quality. So, an easy area for them to cheap out would have been on the

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microphone. Let's give my wife a call. Hello, wife. Okay.

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She needs a second. Really great call clarity. Oh, hey, sorry. I just wanted

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to try out this microphone and you were the first person I thought of to call.

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That's nice, she says. Oh, okay. Getting an update on the honey-do

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list. She wants me to go get some headphones and water bottles from her

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office. How's my microphone though? Does it stand out in any way whatsoever? Very

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clear. Okay, but hold on a second. Just riddle me this.

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Too clear? It's hurting your ear. Oh, I mean you do crank your earpiece volume.

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Like I'll accidentally take a call on her phone sometimes and the other person I'M

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LIKE, "OH, LORDY." In many words, she said the dynamic range is pretty good,

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but there's a little bit of cutting out sometimes. I mean that could be your connection at home though. Our cell

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signal there is not very good. Okay, now that I've just got you on my regular speakerphone, what how would you compare

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this? Before, it didn't sound like you were talking to me on a

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Like it sounded almost too clear. And now when it's on speakerphone, you

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sound more like you're talking to me on a phone. How about if we just compare to the on-device microphone on the Pixel?

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Oh, yeah. That sounds more like talking to me on a phone. So, you would take the

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headphones over either the speakerphone or talking directly into the handset?

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Got it. I don't know if you guys heard that. Yes, in terms of quality and

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clarity, but phone sound is familiar to us millennials, so we might have a

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subconscious preference for it. Thanks, my lady. Just a couple more things to

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cover off. They're IPX2, so they should be resistant to some light perspiration

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or precipitation, but nothing too heavy. I wouldn't go swimming with them on and

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as for the looks, I haven't really commented on them much because I got to

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be honest with you guys. I I don't really rock the cans, if you know what

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I'm saying. So, I'll leave that to the folks who are kind of into them. Hey, at

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least they're not just another, you know, black headband and black cushions

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that you wear on the side of your head. So, you got to give them credit for at

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least doing something a little bit different. As for whether to consider

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purchasing these, honestly, Labs team

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really loves the values, describing them as kind of an AKG K371, but wireless and

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at a lower price, which is Honestly, a pretty good sales pitch.

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Subscribe to ShortCircuit. See you at the next one.