After three days of painfully having to review iPhone cases, Charlie returns to his true love: cigars, calamari, the Phoenix Suns, House; oh yeah – headphones. There’s a new company on the block: thinksound. “They are here to play” (or is it stay?) would be an understatement. They have a cool name, a cool looking product, a pretty good sound, and the price is respectable. Should you keep reading the rest of the review? Yes, in case you haven’t noticed; this is going to be a fun one.
Introduction
We have said it before and we’ll repeat it now: welcome to the overly-crowded, highly-competitive and oh so important hundred dollar earphone market. Plenty try, many pass, but few do outstanding when it comes to crafting hundred dollar earphones. The simple expanation for the breakdown: there are to many earphones $100 or less. Most everyone is pretty smart and it seems everybody has some special feature that sets it apart from “just another earphone.” What’s thinksound’s you ask? Wood. Wooden headphones aren’t anything new and a quick price check will reveal that if you want to charge more then $1000 for a headphone, you should probably make it in wood or gold. Wooden earphones? That’s something new; and new is always exciting.
Out of the Box
It’s pretty standard as far as earphones go. Just like the last product we reviewed, thinksound aims at being enviornmentally friendly and that starts with packaging. When it comes to being green: small is good. The tiny recycled-cardobard box houses the earphones, a clip, four different size tips and a cotton carrying couch. Plastic is scarce in an effort to be green, but that’s okay – we prefer wood anyway.
Design
There are two different earphones made by thinksound: the rain and ts01 (previously “thunder,” we should be reviewing those soon.) The rain are the wiser old brother of the two featuring a more balanced 9mm driver. Both models are available in two different color schemes: black chocolate or silvery cherry; we got the latter. The cherry refers to the type of wood whereas the silver refers to the aluminum’s color. The earphones themselves are fairly small, but that’s good (more on that later…) The outside features the thinksound logo, while the bottom of the aluminum features a left/right identifier. A black pvc-free cord leads to a y-shape aluminum connector that extends down to the standard 3.5mm gold-plated tip.
Comfort & Isolation
Like nearly every other earphone we seem to get our hands on these days, thinksound used a common end that allows for quite a few other tips to be used, but there’s no need given what’s included. We used what thinksound labels as a “medium,” but given how small the small is – we’d say more like small. These are light and comfortable. The isolation is pretty good, although some of the universal IEMs in the price range provide better isolation; but this is something that varies from user to user, ear to ear. The earphones stay in our ears incredibly well for the round tips, something that was nice for when we were moving around.
Sound
The rains are known to be the more balanced of the two earphones produced by thinksound and some part of us wonders if we should even bother hearing the ts01s. It’s not perfection, but the 9mm driver in the wood housing is pretty impressive, and that’s saying a lot. While we don’t want to get caught making comparisons to the Shure SE530s, in terms of impedance (alone), the thinksound’s don’t have much other competition. (i.e. what’s needed to power them is incredibly low) Range wise, the return of the 20-20,000hz is seen once again at the hundred dollar price point, and we have little complaints.
Highs
Perfection is impossible. This isn’t a case of perfection and if we have to nitpick the flaws of the thinksound, we’d eventually settle on the highs. It’s not that there is anything wrong, we just would like more detail. That’s the nitpickig for the day. What you get is crisp highs that reproduce sound with accuracy that is unexpected for the price range. The soundstage is lacking a tad bit particularly at the upper-ranges, but once again, nitpicking.
Mids
The headphone’s mid-range is really what shines. The overall signature of the headphone is about as close to the mix that we want our headphones to get to and that’s in large part due to the mids. While it’s not as vibrant as the top-end earphones, the rains gave us a sound that left little for us to be desired. A lot of times we believe that good mids are those that don’t ruin the sound, this was a case of were we had mids that added to the listening experiencing. The mixture of depth and richness that we found in the mid range created an earphone that we believe is best defined by its mids.
Lows
While the ts01s are the little brother to the rains, the reality remains that the rains are the big brother. The best way we can describe the level of bass is somewhere right between that exact point of accuracy adored by audiophiles and somewhere where we like it for our generally bass-heavy song preferences; in other words: just about perfect. The depth is good as far as accuracy goes, although for bass heavy songs, perhaps a tad bit more would allow us to have a better listening experience without sacfaciging too much as far as accuracy goes.
Parting Thoughts
Notice how we didn’t have to talk about clarity, that’s because the issue never crossed our mind when listening to the thinksounds. For small ears like the ones we are blessed with, the thinksound rain earphones are a great choice. If you are looking to do something good for the environment that doesn’t sound half-bad sacrifice any sound quality, you shouldn’t look much any further. When you buy the rains, you buy into the product as a whole: the commitment to design, commitment to quality, commitment to sound and commitment to the environment; for the record – buying in is a good idea. The total package you receive from thinksound is unlike anything else on the market and while the earphones retail for $100, you can usually find them on Amazon for less then $60. For the record, go read the statement labeled “Big sound. Small footprint.” on the thinksound website, all we are saying.
32Reviews32Days (4/32)
Related Posts
- Review: Wicked Empire (Bones)
- Review: Wicked Little Buds
- Review: Shure SRH840
- Review: WESC Maraca
- Review: Pure Sounds Pur-1000
Categories: Audio, The Feed, TheMacFeed Reviews:
