Creative EP-830 Noise Isolating Earphones (Black)

Ive had these for around 2 months now. these earphones are relatively new. these earphones arnt as bassy as lets say... the ep-630s but the sound on these earphones are much richer, nice high, nice mids, unlike some other earphones which has just nice bass and complete rubbish highs and lows.

i listen to dance, rock, metal, so the higher frequencies mean alot to me.

these earphones are designed pretty well, it comes with 3 different size buds, the middle ones fit me exactly and completely blocks out external sound. the cable is rubber based, not the slippery smooth ones, which are pretty good. the plugs is nicely designed too, covered in rubber which imo, doesnt break easily. plugs gold plated too.

the earphone itself is partially rubber, partially plastic and partially metal. its pretty hard to describe in words, but trust me, these are nicely designed, even putting them in your ear is comfortable because of the triangular grips.

these are awesome earphones and they dont brake easiy. excellent built quality, excellent sound for £9.99! (i got mine for 12.99 - wished i got them now instead :()

review edit~

heres a little comparison thingy:

Logitech Z-2300 = Creative EP-630 --- loud, lots of bass
AE Aego M 2.1 = Creative EP-830 --- not as loud, but sound just sounds soooo much better

main difference is that they fit in your ear ;)

Well I had a cruddy pair of 90p earphones which died within a month (amazed they lasted that long). This time I thought i'd treat myself to a decent pair but having seen some earphones in the region of £200 I didn't think i'd have much luck. I looked around the web and came across Sennheiser but further research revealed the amount of fakes around and I just wasn't prepared to take the risk.

I heard the creative EP-630s were exactly the same as Sennheisers so I checked the review and liked what I heard. Then I discovered creative had upgraded them to this model so thought I might as well buy these instead, and for £9.99 reduced from £34.99 I thought I couldn't go wrong.

Well I was proved right, these things are absolutely amazing. At first I was a bit disappointed because the bass wasn't as tasty as I expected (i'm a real bass head) but then I changed the size of the plugs and they fit so snug in my ears now and the bass just rattles through my head beautifully :-). The sound is really crisp and I can hear little bits in tunes that i'd never heard before. The best thing is I can't hear a thing from the outside world, no more listening to the mindless witterings of the human race when i'm on the bus :-).

If you really care about decent sound but don't wanna break the bank, you really can't go far wrong with these things.

I just got these Creative EP-830 in-ear headphones today and they sound fantastic. The sound coming out of these is rich, full and reproduces the music faithfully. The highs, mids and bass are well rounded and pleasing. I used the lower model, EP-630 that came with my Dell Inspiron 1720 previously and those had a lower bass-response compared to the new EP-830's (they both have the same rated frequency response of 6Hz - 23KHz). However, this doesn't mean that the 830's are anemic in bass, rather it's a cleaner sound with less emphasis on the bass's "oomph" and more on giving you a clean-cut sound. According to the product's technical spec's, the 830 uses a slightly larger neodynium magnet than the 630 to move the speakercones, so that's probably how they manage to manipulate better sound out of it. Comparatively though, while the 630 was more powerful on Bass, it was a bit weaker on the mids & highs compared to the 830.

Of course you can probably tweak your music player's Equalizer to give you a better bass profile but even at default settings in Winamp 5, the sound I got out of this was quite pleasing. With the optional DFX-8 plug-in for Winamp, the music I listen to sounds close to perfect.

The build quality ranges from above-average to excellent. I'm slightly worried about the wiring used. With cheaper earphones there's always the common problem of one of the sides fizzing out after a while or the jack shorting out, the 830's wiring seems solid if not bulletproof like other higher-end brands. Then again, at this price (I got them for 12GBP) they're easily replaceable should they ever fail. The jack uses gold-plating like they use on "Monster Cable" jacks for HD-TV and Line-in jacks. Does this affect the sound? Not sure, but it's still comforting to know that it's not made with a cheaper material.

A final note about getting the most optimal sound out of these earphones (and earphones in general) -

****ALWAYS TRY TO USE THE BEST-FITTING RUBBER EARPIECES****.

This is instrumental (excuse the pun) since a GOOD SEAL between your outer ear canal and the rubber creates a proper compartment for transfer of sound to the eardrum. Kind of like how a sub-woofer needs a closed-off area to produced optimal sound.
So PLEASE make sure you seal your ear canal with the earpiece, BEFORE you knock the bass or apparent lack thereof. You would be surprised with the difference.

Peace!