Koss “The Plug” Earphones: A Tragedic Saga of Failures, Part 3
Written: Jun 17 '03 (Updated Jun 22 '03)
Product Rating:
Pros: Good sound isolation- but this can be dangerous in some situations.
Cons: Extremely difficult to position correctly, uncomfortable, won't stay in place, sound is too bass-heavy, muffled.
The Bottom Line: Make sure you're comfortable wearing foam earplugs for hours on end before purchasing. For extreme bass lovers only (with the mod). Tinny and weak without the mod.
tesseract's Full Review: Koss The Plug Earbuds Consumer Headphones
I have small ears set close to my head, and I’ve had a devil of a time finding the right earphones to wear with my MP3 player. You can’t beat an earbud’s ability to deliver soundwaves directly to your eardrum, but most earbud speakers are uncomfortably large for me, and many of them have inferior sound. I don’t like the over-the-head style, and my very limited experience with street style phones was horrid. I was willing to spend up to $30 to try to find something better than what I currently have. So I made an experimental purchase of two different alternatives- the Sony clip-ons and Koss earbuds known as “The Plug.” I figured I would decide which ones to keep and which to return. I’ve also included comments on another pair of Koss ear clip phones that I previously tried and rejected. I originally wrote these as one review, but due to posting requirements, I’ve broken them up into three separate reviews with the same preface.
I tested all of these 'phones using my Diva MP3 player with all the equalizer settings on the player flat. I did not tweak the EQ settings while trying them— I like the sound on the flat setting with the phones that came with the Diva, and if the new phones can’t do at least as well, back to the store they go, says I. I shouldn’t have to pay more so I can tweak it to get it to sound as good. At the time, the Diva happened to have mostly classical and new age music loaded on it.
I’ll also make my standard disclaimer when it comes to audio equipment— I’m no audiophile and my comments are made from the point of view of an average and not particularly finicky listener. If you consider yourself a real audiophile, you may think my comments are way off base, but I doubt there’s a pair of $20 earphones out there that will satisfy you anyway.
None of these earphones come with any kind of carry case— no wind-up, no pouch, nothing. So they WILL get tangled. They all have average length cords—I didn’t make a note of the measurements, but they seem neither unusually short nor long.
“The Plug” by Koss
I had the highest hopes for these, but they turned out to be the worst of the lot.
These come in silver/blue or silver/purple. They are the newer model— the old model is yellow/blue, has an inline mute button, and comes with a carry pouch. These newer ones have neither the mute button nor the carry pouch.
These really are designed just like a pair of earplugs— they’re rather long and tubular in shape, and the cushions are made of the same super squishy foam rubber. I also immediately noticed I have the same problem with them that I do with earplugs— I roll the foam up, cram it in my ear as quick as possible and hold it in place while it “conforms,” but when I let go, it still has a tendency to spring right back out. After a few minutes of experimentation, I found that twisting it back and forth as you stick it in your ear helps it get seated a little more firmly, but even a light tug on the cord still dislodges them. The whole time I tested these, I couldn’t get both speakers to stay in both ears satisfactorily at the same time. I can practically guarantee you won't be able to keep them in place during any kind of strenuous activity.
These come with four sets of cushions for a “custom fit,” but as is nearly always the case for me, they all seemed too big. It has two sets of basic cone-shaped cushions, and two even larger sets—one cylindrical and one hexagonal. You can reverse the cones for a different fit, and this seemed to help a little, but not much. I think if you can ever get these in place properly (which I couldn’t), they will probably do a pretty good job of muffling the outside world, which is a good thing if you want pure music, but can be very dangerous if you plan to use these while cycling, skating, running, or any other outdoor activity where you may need to hear things like traffic, horns, and sirens for your own safety.
I had high hopes for the sound on these, but I was to be disappointed yet again. My impressions of the sound are probably somewhat hampered by the fact that I could never get the darn things in right. The sound on these was just… weird. It seemed both muffled and tinny at the same time. Under the muffling, the overall sound didn’t seem to have adequate bass response and felt weak. Because I had such trouble getting both speakers in properly, the sound was unbalanced and leaned toward my right ear the whole time. I didn't wear them long enough to experience the magnified sound of the cord bumping against the speaker, but I can easily believe it would be a big problem.
I wore these for about 15-20 minutes, fiddled with them the whole time, and couldn’t get either a satisfactory fit or properly balanced sound. By the end of that time, my ears were sore and aching, and I was fed up. No matter how good the sound is, it’s not worth this rigmarole. I took them off and resolved to return them to the store.
But before I did, I read a few reviews and noticed that a lot of users recommend modifying The Plugs by making your own cushions from real earplugs. The word on the net seems to be that replacing the cushions with real earplugs improves the fit, the blockage of outside noise, and the sound production of the speakers. I happened to have a box of earplugs handy, so I grabbed an icepick, a butane torch, a cutting board, and a steak knife and performed a little quick surgery on a pair of plugs. (There’s an absurdly long set of instructions on Headwize, but the condensed version for non-engineers is: 1. Saw off end. 2. Poke hole.) I crammed the results onto The Plugs and tried it out.
The sound was different, but I didn’t think it was much of an improvement. It was much more in line with the other comments I’ve seen on Epinions— extreme bass, very muffled, and not much else. It sounded exactly like someone walked by and cranked my bass boost up to the max. I had to turn the treble boost up to max just to get it back into the vicinity of what I consider normal. With the treble all the way up, Andrea Bocelli sounded pretty good again, but I still found that there’s a noticeable tendency for the sound to lean towards one side of my head if I don’t have the two plugs positioned identically, which is virtually impossible to accomplish.
The real earplugs stayed in better, and did in fact maximize sound isolation, but I still found them woefully uncomfortable— much worse than the earbuds I was trying to replace. After wearing them for less than five minutes, my ears were aching and I was getting a migraine.
The Saga Comes to an End
After finding all three of these products to be completely useless to me, I morosely gave them all low ratings and stuffed them back in their packaging to be returned to the store. Grumbling, I stuck my old earbuds that came with the Diva back in my ears. They hurt my ears after about 20 minutes, but at least they stay in place that long, and they sound pretty good to me. Actually, after listening to these other three, they sound GREAT. It shocks me to my core that the cheesy no-name free ‘phones actually sound better than any of the three I paid for.
Unless somebody's got a better idea, I guess I'll just stick with the discomfort I'm already familiar with. If anyone knows of a smaller earbud for a reasonable price (i.e., under $50), I'll be happy to hear about it.
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