here: I just put on my Airpods. Had not touch them in close to a month. People can say whatever they please, I love how they sound. This actually may be the best product Apple has put out in years, bar none.
Just added them to my signature!
After some time with my Dashes, here are my opinions (and pictures):
Having never heard the AirPods, there's no doubt in my mind they sound better than the Dash. The sound quality of these leaves a lot to be desired. They are way too warm. My guess is so many people complained about the lack of bass with previous revisions that they boosted it unnaturally. I prefer a natural, flat frequency response. These don't sound realistic at all. When listening to audio over bluetooth, I can at least use my phone's EQ and "bass reducer" setting to make it tolerable, but it's still far from flat. Previous complaints of small sound staging are accurate. In short, if you were interested in these because you thought they would sound amazing, you'd probably better look elsewhere.
I also take issue with the maximum volume level. Because this is a German company, they have to adhere to EU regulations regarding volume levels. So every time I remove them from their dock and put them in, I have to open the Bragi app and increase the maximum volume level. However, even at maximum volume, I can't help but desire more while listening. This is probably best, to be honest. I listen to music a LOT and turn it up way too high and often experience ringing in my ears. It's a terrible habit and being forced to listen to these at a reasonable level is probably a net positive. Plus, with the isolation from the custom fit, it's not like I HAVE to turn them up super loud. I can still enjoy them at this level without hearing ambient noise (while listening to steady music. As I said in an earlier post, nothing can block all ambient noise with quiet music or spoken dialog)
Having said that, my expectations were low from the start and I never expected them to sound great. I believe what they've done with these monitors is too ambitious at the moment to get everything right. Hopefully, within a few years they'll start adding drivers and improving the hardware so that I can get sound comparable to my other customs.
They absolutely nailed the fit when making my shells. My seal is perfect. I can open my mouth as far as I can and never lose my seal. I couldn't be happier. There not quiet on par with traditional customs that reach further into the ear, but the difference is almost negligible to me. I do experience some pretty significant irritation that I first thought was from the heart rate monitor contacts, but now I think it's coming from the part of the shell inside my "cymba." Hopefully over time, my ears will adjust. I've had new monitors require a break-in period for the soreness to subside. I'll give it a couple weeks and if the pain persists, I'll send them in for some adjustments. They can shave down parts of the shell if you're able to pinpoint exactly where the irritation is coming from.
The build quality is perfectly acceptable to me. If you look very closely, you can see blemishes or imperfections along the seams, but tiny flaws don't bother me. The finish looks great: nice and shiny. My only small complaint in regards to the shells is how far they protrude from my ears. It's not terrible and I expected as much, but I can't help but think if they were more thorough, they may have been able to reduce the size a little more. I could be wrong though as I believe my ears are smaller than average.
The touch panels have taken some getting used to and were a complete pain in the ass at first, but after using them for a while, I have refined my technique and I believe I have them figured out. You have to very deliberately tap them. A slight touch won't do it. You have to give it a nice thump. And only the lower half of the faceplate responds to taps. Also, when double and triple tapping, I've learned to slow down. You have to pause just slightly between taps. Now I'm pretty proficient at it.
"MyTap," which lets you tap your cheek to activate a user-specified function is neat, but after getting used to the touch panels, I don't know that I'll actually use it. It too takes practice and isn't 100% responsive. You have to tap pretty close to the monitor and it has to be a solid double tap on your cheek bone. Sometimes it takes me a couple tries to get it to work.
The 4D menu is also another feature that works surprisingly well, but I don't really see the point of using it as long as I can use the touch panels, which are supposedly designed to be used even when wet. I could see MyTap and the 4D menu becoming more useful when they allow you to assign functions that can't be assigned to the touch panels. For example, navigating playlists is cumbersome with all the swiping, holding and tapping. The 4D menu would be perfect for it.
Audio transparency was a little disappointing. I was under the impression that while I was listening to music, I would very clearly be able to hear my environment. This is NOT the case. With my music on at all, I find it completely useless. With the volume only half way up, I can barely hear anything outside my music. The only use I have for it is when pausing my music. Then it's very convenient. The last thing I want to do is remove one of these things every time someone talks to me. And there's also a really cool setting that can be toggled that automatically turns on audio transparency when you pause your Dash and it turns off once you resume playback (you can also set it up to stay on once enabled, but like I said, there's really no point).
The heart rate monitor also seems very accurate... while sitting still. It was usually within a couple of beats of my Apple Watch. When moving, on the other hand, it was wildly inaccurate. I'm gonna workout tomorrow morning and compare the two when I'm done, but I don't expect it to be on par with my Apple Watch.
In conclusion, these still have a long way to go before replacing all my headphones. But again, I never expected them to. I will admit, I briefly considered sending them back for a refund. $500 is a lot of money that I could put to use elsewhere, but I've decided to keep them. They're just too useful to get rid of... and the nerd in me thinks they look awesome. I'll use them primarily at work. I no longer need to worry about the cord getting in the way, I don't have to remove them when speaking to people. Navigating tracks will be much easier than before when using my wired customs. No more pulling out my phone or opening the music app on my watch. Just a couple taps on my right monitor and back to work. Now, I just hope these will withstand the rigors of being used 40+ hours a week. Hopefully the charging contacts can handle that volume of docking.
