Sony MDR-EX70LP Fontopia

The Sony MDR-EX70LP Fontopia headphones have a nice little kit that comes with them. They also have a generous cord length.

Great sound quality, though they obviously don't match the out-of-ear headphones. The treble is great, and the bass is good. It is a great small package!

I personally don't like how far in your ear the headphones must go. If you don't push them right in then you don't get the fullness in sound. They completely block out any ambient noise, but because the seal is so good in your ear, any noise you make by moving your jaw or talking is really amplified.

Overall 7/10.

The Sony MDR-EX70LP Fontopia headphones are some of the best ear-buds I have ever used, and the bass is great. Sony made them great, but they cost so much.

I bought these as an upgrade to my MDR-228LP in-ear phones. I was disappointed in the sound so did a series of comparative tests and found I prefered the MDR-228LP. The EX70s sounded a bit thin particularly in the mid-range so much so that the nature of the music was quite different. Vocals sounded very quiet compared the the 228s. Bass sound quite well defined but the bass is also quite good on the 228. I prefered the comfort of the 228s too.

One thing I did not do is "run them in", i.e. play them for 30-40 hours. Maybe I should have done this but I did't think running in would change them into a good set of phones.

I was listening to these at home. Perhaps they would compare better if used in a noisy environment. But don't buy them purely for sound quality as you are better off buying some "proper" headphones from Sennheiser or Grado. EX70s will sound better than the phones that are supplied with a new Walkman but then you can pay a lot less than this to get a massive improvement over supplied phones.

I purchased these headphones for use with my Sony Minidisc recorder to replace the supplied earphones, which I found to be a little 'tinny' and susceptible to dropping out of my ears with just the gentlest tug on the cord. I did a lot of online research on a good set of in-ear phones and this model in particular was almost always highly spoke of. So I paid the £30, rather reluctantly as it seemed a lot of money to spend should they not have been up to much and little improvement upon the supplied headphones... I am pleased to say I shouldn't have worried, as they have proved to be every bit as good as I had expected from reading the reviews. The sound quality really is exceptional when you consider the compromises of the design size wise. They have a big, solid, powerful sound which offers great bass reproduction, so much so that I now have the bass boost feature of my player set to 1, not 2, and still hear much more bass than with the suppied phones. These earphones really do stay in the ear, thanks to the soft rubber 'earbuds' (think of foam earplugs and you get the idea of how these headphones sit in the ear canal). And like earplugs, they cancel out some background sound, though not as much as some reviewers state, further improving the listening experience. Yes, they are expensive. But you have to pay to get the best, and therefore they are worth it if you value high quality sound reproduction. Remember, headphones make the biggest difference to the sound of any player. If you have paid good money for a player it makes no sense to use the poor quality headphones which come with the equipment. BTW, the version sold in the UK is the long lead version. This makes no difference performance wise, and I have found it to be an advantage in use over the short lead phones which came with my Minidisc.

Sony MDR-EX70LP Fontopia Headphones:

1) The noise elimination. These things work on an earplug principle, meaning they expand and fit your ear-canal, so effectively when the music is on you can't hear much else. You still can hear some ambient sounds, but a lot less than regular earphones. This is good, right? Not for the guy who didn't hear the car. Up to you if this is a positive feature or a negative criticism.

2) They look cool. One of my criteria when buying earphones is that they must look good (which is also the reason why my earphones tend to get stolen a lot). They don't look as cool as a silver Sony pair that I have, but there are nice touches that let you know that it's expensive. It's the whole image thing. For example, at the point where the cables split to the two earphones, there's a cool embossed Silver Sony logo there. Also the whole thing is a dark purplish blue, not black. Even the case (the stupid case which I feel like throwing away) is a transparent blue.

The last word:

If you're like me and you want portable good sound without having to carry around a big pair of headphones, get this. The sound quality really is impressive for what it is. Though I am full of complaints about the packaging and the fragility of the thing - Sony really should have done a lot better for their "high-end" model (check out Sony.co.uk's website and you'll see that they regard this model as the ultimate pair of earphones), especially when all their lower-end models incorporate good things that this doesn't.

But am I glad I bought it? Yes. The sound is unbeatable, and that is paramount to me. It only gets 8 points because of the tainted packaging.

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