Back in september, when Apple unveiled the iPhone 5, the new iPod Nano, the new iPod Touch and the EarPods, they made sort of a big deal of how they measured hundreds of ears to come up with the shape of the EarPods.
The idea, presumably, was that this allowed them to create a shape that would fit a large portion of human ears.

This scared me somewhat. I’m one of those seemingly rare people, who found the previous apple earbuds extremely comfortable. In fact, after having tried dozens of other earbuds and in ear headphones, I settled on the Apple earbuds. They never sounded that great, but since I listen to podcasts and audiobooks way more than I do music, they were wholly sufficient for my needs.

So I was worried. Would the funky shape of the EarPods sit comfortably in my ears?

It instantly made sense to me, that directing the sound more directly into the ear canal would be better – but what if my ear canals weren’t in the same place as “hundreds of ears”? As reviews came in – most people found them to be an improvement, while some absolutely hated them.

Well, today I tried the earpods, and once again, Apple seems to have made them for my ears specifically. I’ve already worn them for a couple of hours in complete comfort, and don’t have any plans to remove them for the next couple. There is absolutely no discomfort. The sound seems to be greatly improved as well, but if I had to guess, I’d say it’s mostly because the sound is directed into my ear canals more efficiently.

The EarPods are very easy to get into the ears, because they’re slippery and yet they don’t fall out even if I shake my head quite vigorously. Now I’ve seen some videos to suggest, that some people have a very different experience with retaining the Pods in the ears, but for me, the fit is close to perfect.

Something that has not traditionally been awesome about Apple headphones is the durability. Without fail, they have failed on me yearly for about 4 years now. Each time  I got a replacement with no problem, so that’s good, but they really shouldn’t break that often.

My feeling is, that the EarPods will have equally lackluster durability, but they do seem to have a little more in the way of stress relief on the wires. The same kind of stress relief that I have instantly ruined on all my previous Apple earbuds.

The sound quality of the EarPods is definitely very good for the price range, but there are others that are good as well, and obviously some are a lot better. If you can tolerate the in-ear style, they are most often the superior choice for sound quality.

However. If you’d like to spend $29, and the EarPods fit your ears well. Then I can highly recommend them. The in-line remote seems a lot nicer as well.