Etymotic hf2

May 8th, 2008 | by Mike Kobrin

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As you'd expect from a company that designs hearing aids, Etymotic put a lot of effort into call quality.


Highs: Excellent sound; effectively blocks noise

Lows: Weak bass; intrusive eartips; suffers from "cable" thump"

Where to buy:

Introduction

Etymotic's hf2 is a redesign of the company's hyper-accurate ER4P in-ear headphones, adding iPhone compatibility via an inline mic and call button. At $179 USD, the hf2 aims squarely at iPhone owners who are audio purists and favor 256Kbps or higher MP3s or Apple Lossless files. If you’re outside that listening group, you’re better off checking out cheaper headsets from Shure or V-Moda.

The hf2 is compatible with iPods and many other music players, though the inline controls only work with the iPhone. Also, they didn’t work properly as regular headphones with our 160GB Archos 705 WiFi (we only got one channel of audio). If you've run across more incompatibility issues, let us know in the comments!

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