Apple In-ear Headphones with Remote and Mic Review - Usability

	Usability
• Average cable length. • Very portable with a great carrying case. • Not easy to fix or clean. • Remote and mic!
	Introduction	Page 6 of 12	Sennheiser MM 50 iP Comparison

Cable Connectivity     (3.54)

The Apple In-ear Headphones with Remote and Mic have a cord that's just under 3.5 feet long. This is long enough to stretch to a media player in the front pocket of your jeans but not much further. Most in-ear headphones are about this length, which is just about optimal for portability: any shorter and you'd have to keep your media player in a shirt pocket, or only connect to a nearby laptop, and longer and the cord would start to become a pocket-filling burden.

Portability     (10.00)

First of all, as a set of in-ear headphones, the Apple In-ears are very portable. They use a short, thin cord, and the ear buds are tiny compared to a set of full-sized headphones. If you wanted, you could easily toss these in a pocket and forget about them. They also come with a nice case, however, which lets you wrap up the cord to avoid wrinkles. There's also a separate carrying case for sleeves that's shaped like a giant Dr. Mario pill. We would've preferred one case holding both the headphones and the sleeves, but overall the Apple in-ears are still very portable.

This is a picture of the Apple In-ears on the go. The pill on the left holds
two different sizes of sleeves.

Maintenance     (2.00)

Like most in-ears, there's not a lot of maintenance you can do on the Apple In-ears. There aren't any exposed screws to let you crack into them and they don't come with any cleaning tools. You can remove the sleeves should you want to clean them, which is a standard feature. The nozzles have mesh over them, but if gunk gets on it you'll need to be careful lest you push the grime through the mesh and into the guts of the ear bud.

Other Features     (6.50)

Battery Dependency
Despite having a Remote and Mic, the Apple In-ears do not require a battery. This is marvelous, since batteries are an annoying necessity. We award points to all headphones that don't require auxiliary battery power.

Remote
The Apple In-ear Headphones with Remote and Mic indeed do have a remote. The remote has three buttons: volume up, volume down, and the main button. The volume controls are self-explanatory, and the control button will play, pause, and skip both forward and reverse. This is great functionality, but the buttons themselves have poor tactile feedback. Unless you're really paying attention it's feel the button's click, which leads to pausing when you mean to forward skip.

Microphone
The Apple In-ear Headphones with Remote and Mic also have a microphone. This means that Apple's naming convention, athough a bit ham-fisted, is accurate. The microphone works well; we have no complaints.