I bought these Creative EP-630 earphones after I had the Sony MDR-EX71SLB Fontopia earphones for about 2 years and was really impressed by them apart from the rubber on the wire. It felt very flimsy and cheap and if you rolled the cable in your fingers you could feel the wire moving about. When they were about 18 months old the rubber started breaking and exposed bare wire. These earphones were £26 when I bought them and for only 2 years worth I thought this was a bit expensive, so I started looking for good quality cheap ones.
While in the process looking for new earphones, people were recommending the Creative EP-630 as a brilliant all rounder with great sound and good quality for a brilliant price. In the end I bought some for around £6-7, this price is available from a few online shops.
I have now owned these earphones for over a year and there is no sign of breakage. The cable feels strong and if you roll it in your fingers it doesn't feel like it will break.
The correct way to put these earphones into your ears is by pulling on the top of the ear to open the ear canal slightly and then put the earphone in, this way it will sit further in the ear blocking out more sound. This technique does make a lot of difference and while sitting at the back on a very noisy bus with my iPod on but not too loud I couldn't hear the engine over the music. These earphones give a good deep bass and great overall sound.
The earphones have 3 choices in the size of the rubber earbud you use, I find the small and medium ones fit me well but have settled for the medium ones as I found they fit slightly better and when out jogging they stay put.
Because these earphones fit deeply into your ear, you do hear every little tap on the cable so when out jogging, if you have the cable flapping about you will hear a slight thudding where the cable is tapping on somthing, it's not too distracting but I can see how it could be annoying for some people.
The earphones are at the end of a Y shaped cable rather than having one earphone cable longer than the other, for me the Y shape is a better design. The length of the cable isn't too long either, if you have your MP3 player in your trouser pocket, the earphones will go in your ears without any pull on them.
The saying 'you get what you pay for' didn't ring true this time, if these break I could replace them 4 times before I pay the same price as I did for the more expensive ones. Although the Sony earphones are cheaper now, they are still more expensive than the EP-630s for the same specification.
It is a shame you don't get a carry case to put them in for transport as the rubber buds are quite fragile, but if they came with a case I am sure they would cost more, and i'm sure some people already have a suitable case for them from previous earphones etc.
Update: After owning these for over 2 years and using them most days the right earphone stopped working intermittently for about a week and then gave up completely. I was gutted that they had stopped working and tried to find similar ones with good sound but ended up getting a second pair of these. If I get another 2 years out of them it would have cost me about £15 for 4 years of earphone usage.
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The Creative Earphones EP-630 is designed with ergonomic softsilicon in-ear earbuds ... more
for excellent noise isolation. Powered byquality Neodymium magnet transducer the EP-630 offers high-qualityaudio reproduction with extraordinary bass that is idea...
Postage & Packaging: Free! Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days...
Oct 24th, 2009
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