Gadgetory

when HTC sold back at stake and Beats Audio and took the controversial technology off its flagship smartphone line it came as welcome news to audio files many of whom reviled Beats destructive effects on music but it also left HTC with one less differentiator in a very competitive landscape with the Harman Kardon edition of the One m8 HTC looks to change that at least on one US carrier this audio centric variant is exclusive to Sprint and the carrier is using it in conjunction with a big Spotify deal to try to boost its own visibility in the high-end smartphone scene but is an outstanding audio experience enough to convince subscribers to stick with the carrier that's been losing customers for the past two years let's find out I'm Michael Fisher with PocketNow and this is our video review of the HTC One m8 Harman Kardon Edition on the hardware side we're looking at almost exactly the same One m8 we detailed in our full review available for your eyeballs here on youtube and at pocket now linked in the description below same awesome display same HTC Sense same love it or hate it duo camera obviously this one is back and sprint specific radios for 3G and 4G and it also features a sporty or paint job jet black aluminum with champagne accents on the camera lens around back and across the top and bottom panels on the face and minimal Harman Kardon branding on the tail bone as always whether you prefer this livery to the standard colors will depend on your personal preference the only objective downside is that the black surface shows smudges more readily but that's a small price to pay for the other out of box standout the high-end Harman Kardon earbuds bundled with the device these buds are the AES model a variation on the AE available from Harman Kardon for a sale price of around 80 bucks they're bigger and heavier than most inbox earbuds made of aluminium alloy for added bass and low frequency reproduction and featuring nine millimeter drivers for extended dynamic levels and high sound pressure levels according to the company's website now I don't know what any of that means really but you don't need to be an audiophile to know when you're handling premium hardware everything from the build of the inline control collective to the gauge of the wire screams high end and up against typical in earbuds from HTC or Samsung the AES models definitely live up to their vaunted brand name the added base is probably the most noticeable with a throaty or thump and a much richer sound on the low end while other parts of the range are brighter sharper more defined every OEM set just sounds thin and tinny by comparison with the Harman Kardon but even callers said we sounded more authentic through the inline mic though they said noise cancellation was better on the stock HTC headset the downsides to the aes buds are fairly minor there is some crackling if you really blast the volume which I didn't expect from such an expensive accessory also the sharp corners on the casings might irritate you depending on the shape of your ears and the inline volume controls don't always work as designed instead of making music louder or softer they skip tracks instead whether you're using the google play music player the stock HTC app or Spotify and contrary to what you might expect from an audio files handset Spotify is a major consideration here Sprint's deal with the company extends six months of free membership to One m8 buyers and it's not just the earbuds that make the Harman Kardon model here an ideal match the phone brings a software enhancement called clarify that promises to restore the quality of compressed audio also here live stage which is said to give onboard audio you guessed it a more live sound but on first listen I can't seem to make out all the differences I should be hearing from the software the kind of enhancements that Miriam Schwarz spoke about on the latest pocket and weekly podcast what they're doing is they're there over sampling up sampling low sample row normal sample rate audio to 192 which will make a difference so I took a trip to see someone who would be able to tell whether clarify was doing its job professional DJ audiophile and friend of the PocketNow weekly Chris Larson whose ears I trust above most others I set him up with the freshly gelled aes buds and took him through several songs over the course of 30 minutes toggling clarify and live stage on and off here's what we found of the two modes live stage is the more aggressive flattening some of the highs and adding a slight bit of reverb the effect is a track that sounds more immediate and less harsh on sibilant sounds like the claps and the high hats so with live stage enabled the sound is more pleasant to my ear but the condensed dynamic range might not best reflect the artists intention so if you're the type of music lover who places authenticity above everything live stage may not be for you clarify is another story we kept our Spotify settings on extreme throughout our testing so some songs didn't sound different at all with clarify compared to without but when we downloaded a track from the Google Play Store clarify brightened up the mix making things seem warmer richer the difference was significant enough that in a blind taste test Chris preferred the Harman Kardon m8 run and clarify to the older M aid with standard boom sound citing wider dynamic range and a clearer more precise sound back in the sound booth the Harman Kardon One m8 isn't done surprising us while live stage isn't available in loudspeaker mode and the difference in amplitude between the two versions is at most one decibel the Sprint version really does sound better maybe it's the clarify working its magic but it's just a little extra oomph that we appreciate and let's not forget the devices other capabilities like the LG g2 before it this version of the One m8 supports 24 bit 192 kilohertz playback so if you go to a site that offers high quality song downloads you can move those FLAC files right to the phone jumping back and forth between the extreme quality Spotify version and the flack download of a track from the national the difference was apparent to my ears if not necessarily mind-blowing sadly this being a sprint exclusive there are some downsides and well they're exactly where you'd expect while Sprint's LTE throughput can be quite impressive in our experience that's performance limited to the outdoors move inside and speed crashes into the basement along with signal strength and most of the time it's fine ding 4G coverage that's the hard part more often than not you're trapped on a slow 3G signal that the device annoyingly holds on to even after it's moved into an LTE area we had more jumps and stutters streaming Spotify on this device than we've had on AT&T or Verizon in months while Sprint's new HD voice service and its promised high quality calling may be enough to counter some of those obstacles it's not going live till this summer so the question of whether the Harman Kardon One m8 is the device for you depends almost entirely on whether you're a sprint customer if you are and you're happy with coverage where you live and work there's a lot of value to be had in Sprint's Fram lay plans which include some significant discounts on Spotify access and if you're an audiophile the extra 30 bucks you pay over the standard One m8 on a contract is trivial considering the huge bump you're getting in earbuds and audio capabilities but as Taylor Martin recently demonstrated it doesn't take much for the dedicated smartphone Tweaker to port many of these capabilities to a plain vanilla one m8 when you consider that along with the fact that the standard one I made itself sounds pretty awesome on both speakerphone and headset it's tough for us to recommend jumping to sprint just for this device unless the framily plan is a very good fit for you or you really really like the color black once again see our full review of the HTC One m8 here on YouTube and at pocketnow.com and please subscribe like follow and comment if you did enjoy this video this has been michael fisher with PocketNow thanks for watching and we'll see you next time