Review: Adorable colors, smart design (plug slightly shorter?)
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 05 9, 2013
The Moshi Moonrock lime color looks very adorable. This obviously doesn't affect the music quality, but it can make them good gift candidates. The headphones are stored in a see-through plastic container that looks like shrink-wrap frustration but you can easily open it with fingers and maybe nails. Two additional ear plug sizes are included (the medium size is installed on the earphones). Also included is a small user manual in many languages. The english part is two pages long. The font is fairly small.There are three ways to figure out the left/right earphones: 1) the click button is on the right side, 2) the head of the right earphone matches the color scheme (lime in this case) while the head of the left earphone is white 3) a L and R is written next to the point where the audio cable connects to the headphone head.The sound is as expected in this price range. You are not going to get audiophile quality under $50, but you are also getting better sound than basic headphones included with many devices or you find at the checkout stand in mass market stores.There are three main areas to cover in this review.1. Playing music with the 3.5mm cableMost of the devices I used it with had no problems, but a couple did have problems. The Samsung Chromebook has a known issue with the way its headphone port is designed, so make sure you put the cable all the way in. Initially I didn't realize this, and I could only get audio from the right ear.The other issue is with the good old Creative Lab Zen mp3 player. Putting the cable all the way in, does not produce good sound. If I leave the cable one step out of the headphone slot, the sound is normal. The Zen was fine with 3 different earphones and two different headphones I tried after noticing this.This got me looking. An unscientific comparison showed the Moshi plug was very slightly shorter than the other five earphones and headphones.The majority of devices have no problem. I tried a number of devices after noticing this problem and they had no issues, including the iPod 4 Touch, LG Nexus 4, two older Android phones, original Kindle Fire, Sandisk Clip and Clip Plus mp3 players. Before noticing the problem, I tried it with more devices, but I did not keep track of them since I wasn't expecting this type of an issue to crop up.2. Click button works with some devicesThe Moshi Moonrocks are advertised as Kindle Fire HD headphones, but the Click functionality works with other devices as well in varying degrees. The Play/Pause function works in more devices, but the Next/Previous work with fewer devices.For example, on the LG Google Nexus 4, all works with the Google Music app. With the Amazon Cloud Player, the previous doesn't work. With the Rdio app, only Play/Pause works. With the YouTube app, play/pause works (I didn't try YouTube playlists, so I don't know if Next/Previous works).On the iPod 4 Touch with the latest iOS version installed, all four functions work with the Amazon Cloud Player, but only 3 out of 4 with the Rdio app.It did not work with: first generation Kindle Fire with the native Amazon Music app, Samsung Chromebook, Honeycomb hardware Acer Android tablet, older Android 2.x phone3. Wrapping the cablesThe contraption for wrapping the cables is actually a smart idea but it takes some getting used to it and practice. Once you figure it out, it's fairly easy to get them in and out. Granted, not as fast as throwing them in a bag :)To put them in the headphone storage:a. align the two cables attached to the earphone heads into the Y groove of the baseb. the bottom of the storage inverts downwards like a skirt and stays fairly putc. with the bottom inverted, wrap the cables around itd. lift up the bottomTo unwrap the headphones, invert the bottom, and unwrap the cables.