My new Earphones-Philips SHE9700

Over the years I have used many earphones and a number of headphones. Some of them good, some of them, perhaps not so good.

The best ear-phone that I have probably used to date was (by Philips) the earphones that came with the first Philips discman, called Expanium, that my brother bought me from Europe almost 8 years back. (pic of the expanium, shown below) It even came with a wired remote. Very very cool for 8 years back.


Prior to this, I only had a walkman, and the earphones that came with that or the earphones that I purchased (if I remember correctly, Philips spare earphones used to be as cheap as 49 rupees :) ) were rather ordinary.

The Expanium, though a little bulky was a marked improvement over the cassette players, and could even play mp3. Now, as to how I don't own these earphones any longer is a story in itself, and I will save it for another post. Suffice to say that, I don't have these earphones any longer, functional or not. I found a picture of the earphones on the internet and here they are,




With in-ear earphones these days, the ones above might not look so cool, but believe me when I say that 8 years back, they set my imagination on fire. Now if only I had them today, or could buy one, I could compare them against the earphone I just bought. Moving on,

Panasonic Earphones:

Panasonic is yet another good brand when it comes to making earphones. My elder brother had a couple of Panasonic earphones that were extremely good. I had one myself, but it was a more basic model. Of these, I believe both had volume controls, excellent bass and a plastic carry case. I am a big fan of carry cases, for storing earphones when not in use.

Philips SHE9700:

Coming to the Philips 9700, which I just bought, and haven't stopped listening to, since I opened the pack, it is simply excellent. There are a number of reasons as to why I bought this earphone. I was also considering the slightly cheaper SHE9550, but decided against it for the following reasons:

1. I wanted an earphone that I could use with my (Sony Ericcson) phone. This meant that I needed a cable that was short and not the usual 1.2 m. At the same time, I also needed an earphone with a longer cable, since I might also want to use the same earphone with say my Laptop. The 9700 offered the solution. It had a 0.6 m cable, and an 0.6 m extension cable. How awesome!! Exactly what I want.
2. I was kinda hoping that I would get a carry case with the earphones. The 9700 offered that as well. Great!! (The 9550 also seems to be offering something called a cable winder. Looks neat. Not sure how it works though. (see pic below)
3. I wanted an earphone that was a cut above the Creative EP630. Yes I was using the EP630 as the benchmark. And although I am sure many earphones would qualify for this, I needed one which was within my price range as well. :)

Put all that together and you get the 9700. Probably the only reason the 9550 didn't make it is because it didn't have flexibility in terms of the cable length.

First impressions:

The bass is simply wonderful. For checking this out, I compared the bass with some decent ear-phones:
1) iPod earphones (Altec Lansing ?)
2) Creative EP50
3) Sony Ericcson in ear. (well, might not be the original one :D)

The bass sounded much better than any of the above. Even otherwise, you can tell the difference in the sound quality. I played a couple of songs on my laptop and connected two earphones at a time (the laptop - Dell Studop XPS 16) has two earphone ports. I played 'Hosana' and a couple of songs from 'Karthik calling Karthik' (yes, yes :) ). The bass was very clearly evident in the 9700.

Some pics:


Some pics of the SHE9550: