Steelseries FLUX In-Ear Pro Ear Buds Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2013-05-07
·
2,232 words · ~11 min read
0:07
welcome to another unboxing and first look online as Tech tips we're going to
0:11
be using our Fancy Pants dual camera setup and today we're going to be having
0:14
a look at the flux inar Pro from steel
0:18
series and Slick's getting distracted because he was looking down at the box
0:22
but he doesn't have to because we have two cameras now so basically steel
0:26
Series has a lot on the go in terms of
0:29
audio product they've had got their overthe headphones but this is the first
0:33
time we've really seen an in-ear headphone product from them so what
0:37
separates this from other headphones in a similar price range well steel series
0:41
is saying that the most important things about this guy are the fact that they
0:45
have balanced armature drivers okay so what that means is a very flat response
0:49
in fact they even have a helpful little graph here on the box that shows you a
0:52
more typical head phone frequency response versus the flux iner Pros which
0:56
is very very flat so according to diesel who is actually
1:00
in some ways a bit more of an audio nerd than slick and who is more of an audio
1:05
nerd than myself this is good because it means that you can use a software
1:08
equalizer or other kinds of voodoo magic in order to achieve sort of a more poppy
1:12
sound or a more bass heavy sound as long as you know that the headphones or
1:17
earbuds that you're using are flat then any adjustments you make are not going
1:20
to accidentally overcompensate for what was essentially a deficiency in the
1:25
product itself we've also got inline
1:29
microphone controls so it is still functional as a headset and can be used
1:33
for music or gaming with a mobile PC or
1:36
a Mac because it just uses three a 3 and 1 12 mm plug not just a 3 and half
1:40
millim plug more on that later so here's what they have to say balanced armature
1:44
technology offers an incredible audio experience the highly accurate drivers allowed to hear new layers level subtle
1:48
details and ReDiscover your games and music so we're not going to let this unboxing finish without slick actually
1:54
taking some time to compare these imem against sort of his experience because
1:58
he's the one who tried them at the steel series Suite where we picked these up
2:03
and overall his Impressions were very very positive although I'd love for
2:06
diesel to try them out as well cool thing about these is they actually come
2:09
with a variety of different ear tips so it's normal for these earbuds to come
2:14
with sort of a small medium and large but these ones actually come with comply
2:19
foam tips as well so silicon tips are
2:22
good for sort of isolating noise which is which is great and they're reasonably
2:26
comfortable yeah well okay a lot of
2:29
people don't find silicon tips reasonably or silicon silicone tips
2:34
reasonably comfortable at all which is why comply tips are a very very popular
2:38
choice so comply tips actually use a foam a memory foam that you can squeeze
2:43
and then it will expand in your ear to make it extremely comfortable as well as
2:47
to make it uh form a very tight seal so
2:50
it comes with a quick start guide although quite frankly if you need a quick start guide to operate your
2:54
headphones then you probably need some help although in their defense these
2:58
headphones do actually have a couple of nuances that make them a little bit
3:01
tricky so in terms of included accessories we've got a carrying case
3:07
which has the head earbuds themselves inside so you can see there they are
3:11
with their little oh that's kind of cool check this out so it has a velcro
3:15
surface here and then the band that you can use to wrap up the headphones has
3:19
Velcro on the outside of it as well so it'll actually stick there okay and you
3:23
can take things like extra ear tips or extra cable adapters or whatever else
3:26
you want and throw them in there nice and soft kind of like a little coin
3:30
purse if you catch my drift okay and
3:34
we've got the earbuds themselves there's that little carrying strap that we had
3:38
with the velcro got a steel series steel series sticker inside all
3:44
right uh a couple of little bits and pieces here so this is kind of important
3:49
so steel series whole thing with the flux in your Pros is that they went back
3:54
to the drawing board in terms of ergonomics and instead they I think what
3:58
what did they say they picked up like 150 earbuds or something stupid like
4:02
that like some ridiculous number I don't remember how many it was but they bought
4:05
a bunch of earbuds when they were trying to figure out the ergonomics and tried
4:08
them all and basically went well we don't really like any of them so back to
4:12
the drawing board they decided to look back at hearing aids something that's
4:15
actually designed to be worn all day in order to determine how they wanted these
4:20
to fit so hearing aids often go over the year and I apologize these are slicks
4:23
but I'm totally going to put them in so hopefully these aren't the uh these
4:27
aren't the silicone tips that he wants to use so the way that they work is
4:30
they're they're labeled in terms of left and right so I'm going to hold this one
4:33
up so that uh diesel can have a look right here so there's a little r or an L
4:38
on the inside hopefully you guys can see that I think that you can oh I'm
4:41
covering it that's why you can't see it there it is right there little r and an l and then what it what it does is it
4:47
goes over and around your ear much like
4:50
some of the very high-end earbuds are out that are out there or like something
4:53
like hearing aids they also include an accessory so this is just a little sort
4:57
of uh rubber strip thing here that acts as a guide so if you don't like the feel
5:01
of the thin wires hanging on your ears then you can actually wrap them in this
5:06
there's just a little slit in the top of it and then it'll be a bit of a thicker
5:10
piece that sits over top of the ear which should help it be a little bit more comfortable for those who aren't
5:14
really used to this whole approach to things so uh where was I going with that
5:20
right included accessories so there you go you've got your medium small and
5:24
large tips and then these guys right here so these are the compli foam tips
5:30
and I'm going to switch to the other camera here so you can have a look at these so the way that you're supposed to
5:34
use these is you actually squish them up
5:37
into a tighter sort of ball like that
5:40
and then you wait for them to expand inside your ear now they don't last
5:43
forever unlike normal silicone ear tips which will last for a really really long
5:47
time these should be replaced probably every few months if you use them
5:50
frequently but they're not actually all that expensive so you know it's it's up
5:55
to you both options are included you can try the complies you can use them if you
5:59
want or or you can just not end up using them over the long term and you can
6:03
stick with the silicone ones which will last pretty much forever or until they
6:06
become sort of a hygiene issue which is I don't know for gamers is that an issue
6:11
is a hygiene issue a thing all right
6:15
other included accessories we're almost done here so there's a little
6:18
proprietary connector on the end here that actually serves uh a very distinct
6:23
purpose so you can plug in either here we go sorry I know I'm covering up the
6:28
camera here and there's nothing diesel can do about it there you can plug in
6:32
either a three banded three and a half millimeter so that'll carry your your uh
6:36
your microphone and your headphone signals through one connector or you can
6:40
use the other included connector to plug it into a PC or other sort of more
6:44
conventional device where you have two separate two banded connectors so you
6:48
can swap those out and I would like it to be noted that this is actually one of
6:52
the better non-tangle cables I've seen in the past so it's quite a bit thicker
6:57
which actually gives it some additional weight so when it's hanging off of your
7:00
ears the good news is it doesn't hang right out of the ear tips out of your
7:03
ear canals themselves because it wraps around your ear but it gives it some
7:06
extra weight so it pulls a little more than normal but because of its thickness
7:11
you can actually crumple it up in a little ball stuff it in your pocket so
7:15
we're going to hope that this live demo actually works pretty well whoops and
7:18
then you can untangle it in a matter of sort of less than less than seconds so
7:23
that's a good thing as well on the I believe it's the left earbud yep on the
7:28
left earbud you've got that inline volume control as well as a microphone
7:32
that I had talked about before so here I'm going to give you guys a close look at that so all that is pretty
7:39
straightforward so there's the microphone on the back and there is the
7:43
Integrated Controls on the front and I don't know if we're missing anything at
7:47
this point so let me just see we've got all the accessories we've got the
7:50
general features right so basically steel series whole thing with this is
7:54
that for the price which is in sort of the mid hundreds range it should pretty
8:00
much blow the doors off anything else that's out there so we're going to take a moment and let these guys try it out
8:05
after much testing in our audio laboratory well the tech tips studio if
8:11
nothing else um actually well slick forgot his phone
8:15
at CES so his music library is
8:18
conveniently not here however Diesel and I spent some time with it so my point of
8:22
comparison is my Clips has four eyes which I know aren't fantastic earbuds by
8:26
any stretch of the imagination overall I'd say it's if I had to pick something
8:30
where the flux iner Pros just utterly destroyed the S4 I it would be in terms
8:34
of bass however it didn't sound just sort of boomy and ridiculous like a lot
8:39
of imem or a lot of headphones do especially if they're oriented towards
8:43
Gamers uh diesel is a bit of a of an earbuds Diva so he uses Sennheiser i8s
8:49
which are obviously a much more expensive pair of earphones than these
8:53
ones so his whole take on it was H they're not as good as my IE8 but if we
8:58
had to to make you draw a conclusion that wasn't based on just sort of being
9:02
a diva uh diesel it would be probably what something along the lines of very
9:06
competitive for the price compared to the i8s okay so he's he's G he's giving
9:11
me the thumbs up so I'd like to show you guys that I did install the uh the metal
9:16
or metal piece yeah the metal piece that like you know straps to your head and
9:20
you nail it in place uh no the rubber piece right here that actually for me
9:24
made them quite a bit more comfortable now there's the obvious problem where if
9:27
you scrunch them up and put them in your pocket and they come off or you have to
9:30
adjust them in any way then they might be a little bit inconvenient but I would
9:34
say for me personally the comfort factor is definitely improved by uh by adding
9:39
those so I think that pretty much wraps things up thanks for checking out this unboxing and first look at the steel
9:44
series flux inear Pro guys I've been
9:47
saying this for a long time about my 7 hes but it's time to stop thinking of
9:50
Steel series as gaming audio because they A Cut Above what anyone else in the
9:56
gaming headset space is doing in terms of audio quality with particular
10:00
emphasis on the 7 H's and now the flux in ear Pros don't forget to subscribe to
10:04
Linus Tech tips for more unboxings reviews and other computer videos