Gadgetory

hey everyone I'm just a new headphone editor for cnet.com and today I'm taking a first look at the SMS sync by 50 cent headphones these are built for listeners that take fashion pretty seriously and shop for headphones to match that lifestyle but it's definitely not the first celebrity-endorsed headphone that we've seen in the marketplace dr. dre set the standard first with the active noise-cancelling beats by dre then Ludacris followed up with his soul headphones but the sings taken one step further with wireless technology by way of clear you may be disappointed when you take them out of the box however because they definitely don't feel like they're $400 similar to the Beats the plastic exterior tends to creak like crazy even when they're on your head and the thin plastic connecting the headband to the adjusters on the side can barely support the heft of the ear cuffs in my opinion nothing that costs 400 bucks should make this sound the idea of creating a wireless connection to any music source using this dongle sounds pretty good in theory but the hardware misfires again in practice small details make a big difference in headphones and this plug feels alarmingly like those FM transmitters that came out with the original iPods what's worse is that the plug tends to wiggle around in the housing a little bit and that'll likely create stability issues in the future and as you can see it's free to just dangle around here on top of your iPhone it also happens to cover the power button as well which is another design flaw the sinks come in black or white and some may enjoy the blinking blue lights on the side I like that you can actually turn them off if you want by pressing the track navigation button for about three seconds those buttons are also used to connect the dongle to the headphones by way of clear digital technology the way you connect them to the source however is different from Bluetooth headphones those bluetooth headphones compress the audio signal to send it wirelessly so this version will sound a lot more robust and cleaner than what you'd ever hear out of those competing Bluetooth headsets on that note I should say that I like the way these sound more than the ludicrous and the monster beats by dre and it's also pretty cool that if you do lose power on the rechargeable battery you can just connect this cable they give you and keep on listening getting rid of the wire though is a pretty good way to listen to music the frequency response will definitely appeal to fans of music with heavy beats and synthesized tones at the same time you won't find active noise-cancelling on these headphones like you get on the competitions so you may be happier with those other ones if that's an important feature for you regardless though 400 bucks is a pretty ambitious price tag for a device that feels more like a hundred bucks I'll give clear digital credit for the lossless audio tech but SMS audio needs to really work on the build integrity before they can compete with other $400 headphones now you can read all the details in our full review on cnn.com but that's gonna do it for me I'm Justin you and you just took a first look at the SMS audio sync by 50 cents