Parrot Zik by Starck Bluetooth Headphones Unboxing & Review Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2013-05-07
·
3,590 words · ~17 min read
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welcome to an unboxing and first look that i'm extremely excited about this is
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the parrot zeke and while i've unboxed a couple of parrot things on this channel
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before i have never looked at anything even remotely like this so it's got a
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couple of seals one on the top one on the bottom we're gonna break those and
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we're gonna have a quick look at the overall packaging so you can see they're
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going with kind of a you know eco-friendly recyclable cardboard
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packaging going on here there's the story of zeke which is about when
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philippe stock and henry cedu decided to work together they made a vision so
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apparently these were about four years in development just to give you guys
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some idea how long it takes to bring a vision like that to life all right the
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world's most advanced wireless headphones i think this is pretty much not open for debate at this point touch
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control panel active noise cancellation automatic activation by motion detector
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their concert hall effect which allows you to change a bunch of settings on
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your phone more on that later wireless audio streaming hands-free calls simpler
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connection via nfc and includes a usb charging cable lithium ion battery three
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and a half millimeter line in user guide and protective pouch
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all right so let's go ahead and see if it lives up to the hype now i should
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tell you guys right off the bat they are not
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cheap these are not inexpensive headphones these are meant to go up
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against the likes of headphones like you know beats or those kinds of premium
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headphones although it almost pains me to even utter beats in the same
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sentence as these because based on everything i know about these so far and
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based on my personal experience with beats they are not in the same league
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at all beats
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i mean i i love you guys all i really do like all of you who have beats but
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it really wasn't the best choice for the money and as long as you know that and
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you're comfortable with that then it's okay
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all right so it comes just kind of packed in here with some twist ties
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and we're going to go ahead and get that undone i'm going to start with the
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accessories and then we'll get into the headphones themselves which actually are
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lighter than they look um i've heard a few complaints about them being kind of
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heavy but i mean in spite of the metal the
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metal construction here they actually don't have too too much weight so let's
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go ahead okay there's not much else in here there's just this box right here so
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we're going to get everything else aside now there's the zeke themselves and the
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accessory box so here's the usb charging cable depending on where you look the
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user reports are such that you'll get anywhere from about you know five to six
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hours of full functionality playback time so
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that's when you're using the concert hall effects that's when you're using
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the active noise cancelling or whatever else you you want to use so you do want
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to charge this probably almost daily or every other day it also includes a three
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and a half millimeter headphone jack cable so this one goes into
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the bottom of this earphone there we go and the other one
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goes that's a nice look at that beefy cable it's got a nice uh
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braided sleeve on it so it's not going to snag on anything shouldn't tangle up
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and this is extremely strong you'd have a really hard time putting any an undue
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strain on the connector of your phone for example see if you were to put it in
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there like that when it's in a pocket it's a lot less likely to get damaged
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than a straight connector so i do like to see that the battery itself is right
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here you can buy extra batteries i think they're about 30 bucks i'd love to see a
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higher capacity battery at this time parrot says they have no
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plans to release an external battery charger though so you do have to charge
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the battery inside your headphones so there's a manual available in a variety
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of languages but i think we're good without that and it includes a soft carry case
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so sure that people wouldn't have minded
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seeing a hard carry case but at least it's a nice soft material so you won't
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you know have any scratches or damage or anything like that now getting into the
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headphones themselves so let's get all these accessories out of the way the
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construction feels extremely sturdy so there's a couple things that stand out
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so first is the synthetic leather band on the top this is padded on the bottom
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so you can see there's padding here i've already had them on so a little bit of
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hair grease on there pretty hard on the top it's quite flexible so this allows
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it to sort of form to your head whatever shape your head might happen to be and i
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i actually find them quite comfortable already but i'm sure with uh with a
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break-in period i would either discover that that's not the case or i discover
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they're even more comfortable than i suspected they are they do fold flat for
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storage so you can see these rotate 90 degrees just like that and they actually
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go a little bit out past 90 degrees so if your ears are kind of you know
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wherever whatever shape wherever they are on your head they happen to be
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should line up with them just fine again i can't i can't emphasize enough
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the construction feels very solid so it's nice to have metal implemented
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without it contributing too much to the weight of the headphones so you can see
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here that even though there's a lot of technology and a lot of stuff going on
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in the ear cups themselves they have a plastic exterior well mostly there's
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metal here as well and down here for the base ports so that's where your base
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ports are it doesn't end up too too heavy now the ear cups themselves see
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they're not huge by any stretch of the imagination however my ears
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in particular do fit inside quite comfortably so there's soft cushioning
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here on the inside between your ear and the driver soft cushioning here and here
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there's also extremely soft cushioning here
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all the way around so they end up very very comfortable if anything i'd suggest
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maybe sort of for zeke v2 maybe a little
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bit more cushioning on the bottom might not have been a bad idea but i don't think it's the end of the world either
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uh here so check this out so they actually had to hollow out so you can
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see there's a wire in there so they had to hollow out the solid metal in order
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to run the wires that are needed between the left and the right ear cup
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and let's have a look yeah yes so the difference is between the left and the
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right ear cup so they're meant to be worn like this oh right adjustments
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check this out
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solid snapping adjustments so what i found is that it really contributes in a
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big way to having them fit more comfortably and
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more securely because when you have headphones that are just kind of willy-nilly adjusting themselves all the
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time you're not going to be able to oh oh i did get them to move that time
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you're not going to be able to like really shake your head and move them around without having them kind of come
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off or get weak over time it feels like an incredibly strong mechanism and
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that's one of the things that personally really bothers me about cheaper
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earphones they are earphones headphones they're also extremely adjustable so i
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only had to move them out a couple notches i don't have a huge head by any
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stretch of the imagination but you can see that i'd be able to wear them even
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if i did have quite a quite a large noggin there so let's go ahead and get
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those back sort of in place all right let's get into some of the
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technology here so at the bottom you can see on the left ear cup there is a
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double microphone so the
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the the heads headset headphones depends what you want to call them because it
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can be used as a headset it has between
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four and five microphones depending on who you ask because there's a double
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microphone and then there's some internal microphones some of which are
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dedicated to noise cancellation some of which are
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dedicated to picking up on your voice and these right here are jawbone sensors
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so what they do is they detect movement in your jaw it doesn't work the same way
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as the the jaw bone okay so it does work differently from that but what they do
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is they sit right here and they detect when your jaw's moving and using
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software they allow the hardware inside the headphones to detect vocals more
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clearly than when you're than when your jaw is not moving so
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connectors on the bottom are pretty straightforward there's your usb
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connector for charging that is a micro usb again sort of not really my favorite
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there's that three and a half millimeter jack and there is your simple power
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button now before we can power them on we will have to of course oh yeah i
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should give you guys sort of here so you know there's your little philip stark
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philippe stark sorry my bad my bad accents you got your little bit of
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orange there a little bit of orange on the inside of the connectors as well as
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the uh the three and a half mil there you go so powering it on is pretty
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straightforward all you got to do is pick up this
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this ear cup there we go it's magnetic
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so it snaps into place there you go easy to get out once you
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figure out which one you're supposed to be trying to get out we can go ahead and
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throw the battery in here probably don't throw anything on tech
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tips and once i figure out how to get the
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battery in there we go works better when you do it
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the right way now we can start getting into some of the more advanced
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functionality let me just get the app installed we'll back in just a moment
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powering on the headphones is really simple the power button has a little raised
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notch on it so it's really easy to find then all you got to do my iphone 4
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doesn't support nfc but check it out shows up almost instantly i mean
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parrot's experience is with bluetooth i mean that's where they were at before
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they did the whole ar drone thing so i would fully expect there to be no
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glitchiness involved in any kind of pairing i mean yeah nfc is cool but as
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long as it's as simple as just finding the device and just clicking on it then
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i don't expect you know anyone wouldn't be able to do
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that most of the advanced functionality of the zeek is controlled through software
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so you actually can't change anything you know what i should increase my brightness here you can't in chain
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really change anything just on the headphones themselves you have to use an
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app so in this case we're using the iOS version where we can monitor all kinds
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of cool stuff so let's just go through all of this in order oh
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there's another thing okay and this this again is nothing to do with my
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experience with the zeek i just want to disclaim that right now but i've been
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using aerodrome v1 since it launched an ar drone v2 since it launched parrot
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understands software they understand the complexity of providing proper software
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updates to things and how that builds a customer experience so that is why
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i would go for something like this where really
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these headphones are all about support and software if they don't do it
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properly then a lot of these cool effects we're just going to do this later won't necessarily even work now
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active noise cancellation this does drain the battery so it can be the
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difference between you know five to six hours and you know a lot more hours of
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battery life but but
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they do sound better by all accounts with active noise cancellation whether
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you're using them in wireless mode or in wired modes so just bear that in mind we
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can go into the system here where we can oh okay active noise cancellation during
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calls on and off bluetooth auto connection enable or disable current
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firmware available updates check that out awesome okay app version parrot
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concert hall this this is cool so you can change to
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different settings concert hall silent room living room depending on how big of
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an area you want to listen in you can also change your speaker angle
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by just oh sliding them around so
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you know the interwebs seems to be in agreement that something around 120
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degrees and the living room and the silent room sound really freaking sweet
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battery level is well battery level there you go batteries in use equalizer
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this is another good one so again the interwebs by and large seem to agree
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that club is a very good preset for it but unlike some equalizers that i've seen
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you are not stuck with whatever the manufacturer decides you should be
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allowed to have you can change it and use the user
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the user configurable one as well and finally help desks that doesn't really
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seem to be much of anything so there you go guys that's the app and one of the
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most important things to note about it is the fact that once you change any of
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these settings that's done it's changed it will be
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stored on the headphones themselves so even if you carry them over to some
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other phone that you happen to use you did d-pair and repair to something else
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no big deal it's all good so now let's get into some of the cool techy things
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that make people like me go kind of crazy now the first time i tried these
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headphones this is why i'm so excited about this unboxing was at ces
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last year yes this was like a year ago at
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this point and i put them on in the middle of a crowded ces hall okay
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if you guys ever into ces you know it is loud and i was like whoa
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25 decibels of noise cancellation that's what all those microphones are doing for
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you plus the fact that they are extremely well sealed and well built to
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the point where i'm having a hard time hearing my wife who's helping me film
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when she tells me things off camera because they are already canceling a lot
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of the noise on their own just completely passively and they have active noise cancelling as well now
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other cool software features again i wouldn't buy anything this software
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reliant if i didn't believe it was going to be supported in the long run
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tap here to play and pause swipe forward to change the track swipe
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back to change the track backwards and volume can be adjusted by swiping down
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or up which is really really cool and last but not least you can actually
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pause your music by going like this
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because presumably you don't necessarily want to listen to your music
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while the headphones are not seated on your ears
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i've got to say i am really really impressed i mean i was preparing myself
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to be impressed i mean i was ready to be impressed they're like
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400 headphones so they don't impress then come on um so just to give you guys
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some idea i mean probably the best headphones i've ever listened to are the
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hd800s from sennheiser um i don't really
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like open headphones that much is what i discovered i spent a lot of time with my
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hd555s and then i switched over to a closed set
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after discovering that doesn't really work that well for me these are outstanding with a person standing less
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than a meter away from me i i can see lips moving can't hear a thing
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when all the features are enabled and it's running now one of the first things my wife asked me and she's incredibly
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fussy about headphones we found like one pair ever that she'll have on her head
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which is the sennheiser pc350s and she says they're quite comfortable
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the one thing for her was the band at the top so for me it's less of an issue
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for her it's a problem and she said these are phenomenally clear for
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wireless headphones like just unbelievable with beats and any other
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active noise cancelling headphones i've encountered in the past there's a
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discernible hiss it's annoying oh just pause my music there we go there's a
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discernable hiss there's no hiss if anything the active noise cancellation
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actually enhances the listening experience on these now i just tried it
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for for walls and yes in unpowered mode with the 3.5 mil jack
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it is not the same experience as when they're powered however what i
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discovered is that you can run them like if you were to just use them like at
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your computer you can just plug them in for power you can get a nice long micro usb cable you
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could easily use them that way and then when you want to be unplugged you just
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walk away so you can charge them while you're
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using them and i'm going to have a really hard time modulating the volume
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of my voice right now because i can't hear a word i'm saying
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so let's give it a sec
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turns off it's extremely intuitive to control them using the capacitive touch
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interface here and what i do like about the materials they're using is it's a
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soft touch finish so you can see some fingerprints and you can see that
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kind of stuff going on here but you can easily wipe them off
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and it doesn't stand out nearly as much as glossy surfaces which drive me
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personally absolutely crazy and the
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music's back on now so i'm uh tuned out
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on you guys here thanks for checking out this unboxing and don't forget to
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subscribe to Linus tech tips for more unboxings reviews and other computer
16:18
videos
16:22
today we're going to be unboxing the parrot zeke this is not the first
16:26
product i've ever unboxed from parrot but
16:30
he's really loud welcome to my unboxing and first look at
16:34
the parrot zeke now this is not the first time i've looked at a parrot
16:37
product on my channel but i mean
16:41
i guess the same could have been said
16:45
welcome to my unboxing and first look at the parrot zeke by stark this is not the
16:50
first time i've had a
16:54
welcome to my unboxing and first look at the parrot zeke by stark this isn't the
16:58
first time we've had a look at a parrot product on this channel but this is a
17:03
pretty enormous departure from the stuff that we've seen in the past
17:07
so it's a couple seals on the top in the book
17:12
welcome to my unboxing and first look at the parrot zeek by stark this isn't the
17:17
first time that we've had a look at a parent product on this channel but
17:20
this is an enor welcome to my unboxing and first look at
17:24
the parrot zeke by stark this is not the first time we've had a look at a parrot
17:28
product on this channel
17:34
welcome to an unboxing that i am extremely excited about this is the
17:39
parrot zeke this isn't the first product i've ever looked at from parrot
17:45
baby's over there but it is perhaps the one that i am
17:50
most excited about so they