If you check out the House of Marley website http://www.thehouseofmarley.co.uk/ you can clearly see this company loves clean and simple, this clearly shows in their products as well.
But delve a little deeper into the company a you can see they have three core principles.
1. Superior quality - House of Marley say that "Every product is soulfully designed and engineered to perform at the highest level. Our high-performance audio products are engineered to deliver the Marley "Signature Sound" and pour out all the energy, emotion and detail of every recording". Well to find if that's true I guess you'll have to read on.
2. Earth friendly - Marley products are crafted from sustainable sources and earth friendly materials. This includes recycled plastic and metal used in their products. Now not many companies do this, which again is what makes House of Marley such a unique brand amongst the vast field.
3. Cause minded - This being the one of the main reasons why I love to buy House of Marley products. House of Marley as a company is really committed to giving back, House of Marley works closely with the Marley family charity (http://www.bobmarley1love.org/). So when you buy from House of Marley you know that some of the profit goes to a good cause.
So lets get to the headphones. To start lets talk design and features.
Design and Features
The design of the Chant headphones is really rather nice, the combination of the metal, wood, plastic and Marleys REWIND™ fabric is really lovely. They certainly feel more expensive than they are and at £14.99 they certainly aren't expensive.
The headphones are seriously lovely. Just look at them. The headphones support features an engraved pattern around which not only adds an earthy feel but looks pretty great to.
You can then see this is separated by a metal band which extrudes out to where the silicon tip sits. Speaking of the silicon tip you get two sets. One medium and one small, which is a bit unfortunate if you require the larger ones.
Around the back of the support you can see it features a black ring in which the House of Marley logo has been engraved into the centre of it.
Its really lovely and a very subtle way to show off your brands logo. Not like some brands which whack a bright and look at me advertisement on their product.
I really actually prefer this approach, its much more refined and grown up.
Moving down the cable you get the push to talk button controller, which is quite nicely placed which means its not too close and or to far it just sits nice.
However its plenty close enough to be used as a mic to talk calls with. Press the House of Marley branded button and you can play/pause your track or answer calls with it.
The call quality isn't bad through the earpieces but I was told the mic sounded a bit robotic at times. Which to be honest is a bit bad but then again you cant expect everything to be amazing at this price point.
Then moving further down the cable, (which I have to say is really very nice) you get the 3.5mm connection for your device. Its a pretty standard affair and works exactly as you'd expect. Again you get the subtle branding on the jack, which is quite a nice touch.
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| 3.5mm right angle audio jack |
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| Subtle branding on audio jack |
Build quality
Not going to say to much about this but the headphones are really well made, quite durable and like I said just feel more expensive than they are. The cable however is the stand out feature for me (I know right) but its really lovely, it feels very nice and is a welcome addition. I can say its much nicer than the cables of some other headphones at this price point.
The only thing that really lets the quality down is the audio jack and the talk feature. They just feel so cheap in comparison to the rest of the headphone. Yeah its a bit disappointing but hey the headphones only cost £15 and obviously something has to give at that price.
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| Mic on control module |
Sound quality, Isolation and Noise leak
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| 8mm driver |
Is very good. I was actually surprised at how they sound. Now obviously they aren't going to compare to £50 / £100 headphones but for their price range they are very good. For example I got a pair of Skullcandy INK'd headphones for £19 and the House of Marley beats them hands down across the board.
The bass is really good its not overpowering, but its present enough for you to be impressed by it. Its nice and clean and doesn't muddy the rest of the sound. However that's with my eq settings on my phone. Turn the eq to a flat response and the bass isn't really that noticeable. So in that respect you need to fiddle with your eq to get the bass to come out.
The mids again good is what I can say. Again very clean and fits nicely with the bass. They dont overpower the bass which is good (but only when you alter your eq) and they dont interfere too much with the highs either. The vocal production again is just decent.
Finally to the highs again just pleasant.
I wasn't particularly overwhelmed with the sound quality, yeah they are good but I guess I was just expecting better, maybe even too much.
But I will say they still beat the Skullcandy. (Sorry Skullcandy but its true)
As for isolation they do a fairly reasonable job, you can still hear background noise but it doesn't effect the sound too much. However if your like me I find that in-ears just dont seem to fit right (no matter what size silicon tips you get) the isolation is not great. So I tried the medium ones which where ok but kept falling out, the smaller ones where too small and really hurt. So I guess what I'm saying is I'm just not a fan of in ear headphones.
Finally noise leak, no obviously I can't wear them and tell you so I got a friend to wear them for me. I found that you could hear them a bit, it wasn't too overly noticeable from a distance but if you were sat next to someone on the bus or train then it would be slightly more noticeable. However compared to the stock Apple headphones these are very quiet.
(I mean those Apple headphones really leak a lot). But anyway they are good at keeping the noise from leaking out.
Quick Summary
To to wrap up this review, I would like to say that I am very impressed with the build quality, the sound quality is average and the headphones overall are not enough to persuade me away from on-ears. I guess I just find them too uncomfortable but anyway that's just me.
If I did like in-ears already or thinking of getting a pair, the Chant would be a good gateway into the in-ear headphone (you know to see if in-ears are for you). I will also like to say they are leaps and bounds better than most stock headphones you get with mp3 players and phones, so maybe these could be an affordable way to get better quality than the included ones.
Thanks everyone for reading this review.
Finally don't forget to checkout my video unboxing and my video review and also check out my channel AcousticAppraisal
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