Let’s face it. There are a few things you look for when it comes to finding the perfect earphones for your workout, travel and leisure goals. Durability comes into the picture, alongside external aesthetics, sound quality, and technological features that make the entire process of listening to music a transcendental one. The primary requirement though, is always, and has always been comfort.
So we recently put Monster’s premier wireless headphones – iSport Victory – to test and we were left relatively impressed by the entire package, including the price.
THE AESTHETICS?
The design is sporty, with deft touches of familiarity in the form of fins on the earbuds. It’s available in three colours – green, black and blue, while the entire package comes with three different sizes of ear tips. This particular addition alone allows you to custom fit the earbuds into your ears to ensure maximum comfort, based on the size and shape of your ear.
The cable is a real beauty, though there is a safety rationale behind it too. This particular earphones features a newly-designed twisted, reflective cable that makes your outdoor workout experience a tad more safer, especially at night. It’s also ultra-slim, light and isolates noise – giving you a wholesome listening experience.
The incline remote control and mic is positioned near your chin, once you get the earphones attached to your ears. There’s a central button that multitasks – it handles pairing, power as well as call management. And as with most earphones out there, the plus and minus button deals with volume and track selection.
On top of the device itself, you get a small pouch as well as a USB cable for charging purposes. Monster claims that the battery life of this device is around eight hours, and that’s approximately the amount of time I got from the device as well.
Most importantly, it’s sweat proof.
THE EXPERIENCE?
I spent a week on the iSport Victory – predominantly in the gym, as well as several outdoor runs. The major concern for any wireless earphones is always bluetooth connectivity. And a quick Google search will tell you that some other users have had connectivity issues with the iSport Victory. Having said that, I had no issues with connectivity throughout the entire week. Though it took me a while to figure out the initial process of pairing my device to it, everything else sailed smoothly after that. I’ll leave it for you to interpret this one.
The key thing to take into consideration is that this is a workout earphone, so it’s not designed to belt out Beethoven’s 9th Symphony with crystal-clear sound quality. But that’s not to say that the iSport Victory compromises on sound quality – in fact, it’s pretty good. A large chunk of tracks on my workout playlists are either electronic music with heavy basses or hip hop tracks with the proverbial tough drum beats. Both genres worked pretty well on the iSport Victory.
This is due in no small part to the Pure Monster Sound feature, which comes with two mode – warm-up and sport. In essence, the former features more sub-bass and is less louder, while the latter seems to amplify the high-mids and sounds significantly louder. If you’re into listening to David Bowie or even Bob Dylan during your workouts, go for the warm-up mode. But if you’re the Flume or Childish Gambino type, it’s got to be the sport mode.
CONCERNS?
It’s a tad too idealistic to expect everything to be perfect, but my only concern with the iSport Victory is the incline remote control. It’s a bit too close to the chin, which can make it uncomfortable at times. On top of that, it’s easy to accidentally switch to another track while you’re trying to increase or decrease the volume. Sure, this is a feature that’s predominant on a number of other workout earphones too, but it’s still an annoying feature nonetheless. Also, it’d be even better if the iSport Victory was available in several other colours, including Red.
To make things easier for you, here’s quick summary of the pros and cons of the iSport Victory:
PROS
- Unparalled comfort
- Sporty, sleek design
- Good sound quality
- Durable and sweat-proof
CONS
- Position of incline remote control
- Dual-function of ‘plus and minus’ button
- Limited colour choices
CONCLUSION?
At RM588, the iSport Victory is evidently on the higher end of things. But it’s probably justifiable for several reasons. The sound quality is amazing, given that it’s a workout earphone that weighs only about 15 grams. The exterior quality of it is good, especially the thin, sleek and reflective cable. Most importantly, it’s comfortable. When you’re working out, the last thing you’d want is discomfort in your ears. The ear-hooks and secure and fit – never once did they shift or move around during my runs. If you’re looking for a comfortable workout earphones that packs enough punch to belt a reasonable version of Queen’s ‘We Are The Champions’ while you power through your 10km run on the treadmill, few options are better than the iSport Victory.
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