FTC Disclosure: This review is brought to you by a partnership between Tempo Storm and Massdrop.
An unfortunate side effect of the convenience of online shopping is the fact that it’s tough to see exactly what you’re getting until it arrives at your front door. However, due to Tempo Storm’s partnership with
Massdrop, they sent me some free earbuds – the
Massdrop x NuForce EDC In-Ear Monitors – so I can analyze the product for you and help you see exactly what you’re buying.
I have a bad history with headsets. I wear glasses, and when I try to use a headset, the large ear pads push the legs of my glasses into my temples and make me dizzy. So, ever since I was a child, I’ve always used either earbuds or speakers.
The earbuds that Massdrop sent me are the most advanced earbuds I’ve ever owned. They’re priced at $99.99, but as of the date of this writing, they’re discounted 40%, and you can get your own for only $59.99. Act quick – the drop ends in only 5 days.
There are two things I particularly like about this set of earbuds, the first being the massive number of options you have in terms of the actual buds. A lot of upper-end earbuds come with multiple-sized buds, but this is the first set I’ve seen that comes with an “earplug” style of attachment. They work just like regular earplugs – pinch the foam to reduce their size, stick them in your ears, and wait for them to expand and fill your external auditory meatus (yes, that’s actually what it’s called).
These earplug attachments are great for blocking out background noise. Whenever my housemate is streaming, I pop these in my ears to block out the sound of her voice and let me focus on my work. This would be effective on airplanes as well – I used to travel a lot before I moved to Southern California, and I wish I had these to block out the sound of the aircraft engine (even though I’m really good at falling asleep through the noise regardless).
The second thing I like is the fact that you can swap out the cables. I personally like the double-twisted cable – they seem to get tangled less often, and if they ever do, they seem to be easier to unravel. I also like the texture of them, and will gently massage them up and down while I’m listening to music or watching videos as a secondary stimulant (sort of serving the purpose of a fidget spinner).
To switch out the cables, all you have to do is yank apart the cable from the listening device. They will separate and the cable will have two golden prongs as connectors. The ease with which this can be done, and how clean the connecting area looks, makes me appreciate the attention to detail with which these earbuds were manufactured.
Because these earbuds come with so many accessories, it also comes with a convenient, sturdy carrying case – you can use this to store away all your spare accessories, or keep your accessories at home and use it as a travel case.
I’ve used these earbuds myself on and off for about three weeks now, and I’m overall very satisfied.
The first thing I noticed about them is that they have very heavy bass, so much so that I went into my iTunes Equalizer and changed the setting away from Bass Booster. But, it’s not so extreme that it drowns out the rest of the sound – other sound, especially in the mid-range, still goes through crisp and clean.
On the
Massdrop page for this product, it showed photos of people wearing the earbuds with the cable looped up, around, and behind the ear. I don’t wear these earbuds during physical activity (but rather, when I’m just sitting at my desk), so I don’t need the extra secure hold in my ear. I let the cable just fall straight down, and it still provides a very comfortable fit.
Overall, I’m very satisfied with these earbuds. I obviously have only had them for less than a month, so I can’t say much about their longevity, but based on what I see in terms of attention to detail and clean construction, I can’t imagine them going bad any time soon.
I was the first one around the convention center today from Tempo Storm to scout out the area. I explored the convention center and snapped some photos as I went. I’m not exactly sure how much of the Long Beach Convention Center is going to be used for TwitchCon, but it was actually pretty big.
I thought I was early, but apparently, the construction crew has been at it already for a while now, because everything was set up inside and ready for us to get started. We’re booth #437 towards the back-center of the exhibitor area. Our Merchandising Director Ryan Wagner stopped by a bit later to help out; we spent today erecting our custom walls (because we didn’t even realize that Twitch would be providing us with these walls that you see in the top-right photo.
They also set up a lot of the Twitch Partner Lounge as well. Apparently, the mobile game Arena of Valor is sponsoring the Partner Lounge, and it’s basically a restaurant that is normally inside the convention center, but is being taken over to be a partners-only area. The rest of the convention center wasn’t air conditioned because most of the garage panels were open to the outside for moving in equipment, but the Partner Lounge was nice and cool, so I snuck in here to relax after I discovered it was open.
And of course, it wouldn’t be a real blog post nowadays without some food photos. I went out with our merchandising director and executive assistant for lunch, and got myself a burger. Our executive assistant got herself a massive salad that probably had more calories than my burger.
I’m lodging in Huntington Beach (which is nearby Long Beach), and I went to a place called Sushi on Fire for dinner. I got a refreshing roll upon recommendation by our executive assistant (which was a good choice, but it had too many lemon peels which I personally thought sort of conflicted with the rich sushi flavor), as well as a magic mountain (which was a lot more food than I thought it would be).
