Parrot Zik (by Philippe Starck) Unboxing

This headphone is an active noise-canceler, with four microphones, a jawbone sensor, proximity sensor, Bluetooth, NFC sensor (for pairing), and a gesture touch control panel (for play/pause, next-track/previous-track, volume-up/down, and call answer/drop). And it was designed by Philippe Starck (and very much looks the part).

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The Parrot Zik (by Philippe Starck) in its box.

Jul 26, 2012

The Parrot Zik's box, left side. That's a photo of Henri Seydoux (he's Parrot's Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer) and designer Philippe Starck. (Starck is on the left, Seydoux on the right.)

Jul 26, 2012

Jul 26, 2012

Jul 26, 2012

The Parrot Zik (by Philippe Starck) comes with a micro-USB cable for charging, an audio cable (mini-to-mini) for passive use, and a drawstring carrying pouch.

Jul 26, 2012

The Parrot Zik (by Philippe Starck) uses four microphones placed internally and externally for active noise cancellation. This shot shows the external microphones, the power button, the audio cable jack, and the USB charging jack.

Jul 26, 2012

Jul 26, 2012

The Parrot Zik (by Philippe Starck), side view.

Jul 26, 2012

The Parrot Zik (by Philippe Starck). In this shot, you can see on the right earpad the proximity sensor and jawbone sensor. When you take the headphones off your ears, the proximity sensor will pause your music (when listening to music), or transfer the call to handset (if you're on a phone call). The jawbone sensor is used for noise reduction for calls (reducing ambient noise from the wearer's side).

Jul 26, 2012

The Parrot Zik (by Philippe Starck) looks (as one of my industry friends said) like a Philippe Starck juicer and Bowers & Wilkins P5 had a love child. Both of those are beautiful examples of design, so I see it as a compliment for the Zik. Simple, elegant, beautiful.

Jul 26, 2012

The Parrot Zik (by Philippe Starck) headband and yoke design has Starck's signature fluidity.

Jul 26, 2012

I picked the Parrot Zik (by Philippe Starck) from Parrot. (That's the boxed Zik on the table.)

Jul 26, 2012

Comments (16)

LuNaTiiK 7/27/12 at 9:50pm

Killer looking headphones. Hope they sound as good as they look!

I notice you're using our headphone stand ;)

J.Pocalypse 7/28/12 at 10:05pm

I love the look of these. It'd be nice if you could revive Head-Fi TV with a in depth review of these beauties.

StringBoi 7/29/12 at 5:01pm

Very nice....what stand is that btw?

LuNaTiiK 7/29/12 at 9:54pm

@StringBoi: That would be the Astro Gaming Headset Stand! Unfortunately we are not currently producing these at the moment and they are out of stock in both our astrogaming.com store and the Microsoft store.
Link to MS store info page: http://bit.ly/MNSN2H

They aren't gone forever however; they'll be back as soon as we find a new manufacturer.

StringBoi 7/30/12 at 7:32am

Thanks for the reply, I really like the stand....I'll keep that bookmarked and hope to see it for sale soon!

DoomForce 7/30/12 at 5:48pm

Beautiful. I wonder if the sound quality is going to be good on them though, being wireless and all?

schaaf 7/30/12 at 8:55pm

@LuNaTiiK & StringBoi - Man I got lucky then. I just ordered one from the MS store Friday.

ChunkyBunker 7/31/12 at 3:01pm

These look fantastic. I love the technology added, as well.
I just hope they're as good in reality as they are on paper.

complin 8/4/12 at 12:14am

Not rated well here http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/02/parrot-zik-by-starck-review/

boomslang06 8/7/12 at 12:16am

that stand looks really nice

anetode 8/7/12 at 4:35pm

Amazing design, so-so sound. I hope that other companies catch on to the feature complement and/or Starck's bold design. (though the B&W range nailed it a couple of years back on the design part)

bhaycraft 8/9/12 at 8:28pm

The tech is cool but the sound was less than impressive. Sound fuzzy and dirty compared to my ER4P.

Darknet 8/26/12 at 1:02pm

tried them the other day.... really didn't particularly impressive... they do look nice I'll give you that

William007 8/28/12 at 9:52am

are they available?

J.Pocalypse 8/28/12 at 9:58am

@William007, yes. For around $400 - $500 last I saw. Too much, considering their SQ. But, if that's not your main worry, then the technology inside might warrant such a cost.